Paul Thomas Anderson occupies a unique position in the American film industry: a cinephile auteur working within the confines of the major Hollywood studios but making his own brand of idiosyncratic, distinctive films with an eye for art over commerce. Anderson’s films cover wide dramatic terrain, from the inner workings of American pseudo-cults in Boogie Nights and The Master, to the sprawling interrogation of family in Magnolia, to the Southern California oil boom at the turn of the 20th century in There Will be Blood. A child of Los Angeles, his work has largely focused on the marginalia of the City of Angels, off the well-worn, glamorous path, shaping everyday lives into poetic meditations on modern existence. In addition to Anderson’s seven features we are pleased to offer 14 films that have influenced his work over the years. As all of Anderson’s films have been shot on film, most of the films in the retrospective will be screened on 35mm prints—an increasingly limited possibility in the era of digital cinema.