Little Fugitive

Three New York photographers put together a low-budget movie in 1953, outside the Hollywood system, using the story of a 7-year-old kid at Coney Island to provide a cinematic slice of real New York life, and Little Fugitive ended up being an influential example of independent film. The independent fiction film was indeed a rarity in the heyday of the studio system. In 1953, Hollywood was making widescreen spectaculars. But that same year, a group of New York photographers—Morris Engel, Ray Ashley, and Ruth Orkin—got together to make a movie at Coney Island on a shoestring budget. The result was…