An art form that has traditionally required the use of prohibitively costly tools, cinema in the capitalist world has from its inception been shaped by the demands of commerce - those working under a regime than a corporation, meanwhile, must negotiate their own compromises. Such a thing as a free filmmaker has never existed, be it in Beijing or Hollywood or Timbuktu, and no small part of film scholarship consists of elucidating how artists have managed to function as artists within these imposed strictures, the proof that they've done so being readily found in the works they've left behind.