One thing you can say about America is that she has produced some of the greatest directors of all time. Even now, she still is. Terrence Malick, Martin Scorsese, Joel and Ethan Coen, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Francis Ford Coppola, and his daughter, Sophia Coppola, are a handful that come to mind. And these are ones who are still living and working. The Europeans had the painters of the Renaissance, but America has had the filmmakers of modernity and postmodernity. Even if my two personal favorites happen not to be American at all, but were Polish and Russian, respectively. I’m thinking of Krzysztof Kieślowski and Andrei Tarkvosky.