Independent film in the United States has rarely gotten the attention it deserves. More often than not, Americans prefer big explosions, hi-tech special effects and lots of T & A to help focus their attention on the silver screen.

Hollywood is driven by market forces which are not primarily concerned with art for its own sake. This is quite clear when one looks at the slew of action movies that are guaranteed to “blow you away.”

Even Woody Allen, who is relatively popular, can usually expect to only run in large cities that support art house films and college towns. Frequently, Allen fans are forced to get their fix on video.

Henry Jaglom is an independent filmmaker who has made twelve motion pictures — his way. Jaglom got his start as an editorial consultant in 1969 working on the American cult classic “Easy Rider” with Dennis Hopper.

His directorial debut was “A Safe Place” which starred Tuesday Weld, Orson Welles and Jack Nicholson. The director’s other movies include 1989’s “New Year’s Day” with David Duchovny, “Eating” (1990) and “Last Summer in the Hamptons” which starred his wife and current co-author, Victoria Foyt.

Jaglom’s films have traditionally focused on themes which revolve around genuine human emotions. They are close-ups into the human condition and present us with feelings more often than actions. He likes to see reality on the screen, not just acting.

“Most of my movies are theme-driven like ‘Eating,’ Jaglom said. “I create a loose atmosphere. The actors gave me the dialogue frequently because I didn’t want to write about somebody who had an eating disorder and put words in their mouth. I’d rather hire actors who had that disorder and have them convey it.”

Jaglom’s latest film, “Deja Vu,” is a mild departure from past efforts. Working from a short story idea which has been a near obsession since 1974, Jaglom decided that this film would have a more structured narrative style.

“Deja Vu” is the story of a young, American woman named Dana (Victoria Foyt) who meets an older French woman (Aviva Marks) while traveling in Jerusalem. The French woman tells her the story of her one true love who left her at the end of World War II never to return.

She gives Dana a pin which was given to her by her lover before she disappears. Dana travels to Paris in hopes of returning the pin to the woman. From there, she goes to Dover, England where she meets Sean (Stephen Dillane), to whom she is inexplicably drawn.

It is an idea which is rooted in a classic cinematic format from the Golden Age of cinema — when love stories were filled with mystery and possibilities.

“There were these movies in the 1940s that were very haunting and had this feeling when they dealt with the subject of love,” Jaglom said. “[Love] is such an irrational, emotional subject. Certain things that can’t be explained take place when love is involved because you’re emotionally reacting to another human being in what would seem to be an irrational way.”

Jaglom explained how logic and love often have nothing to do with each other. People can be motivated by feelings which they would be hard-pressed to explain; as if they were being acted upon from outside rather than simply acting.

“There are other forces that feel like they’re at work so I just take that and I extend that and I try to create this kind of ‘Twilight Zone’ in which the inexplicable comes to the foreground and you’re not quite clear how things happen because love is not a logical emotion and people, when they experience love, cannot explain it any logical way. So you create a universe which is ‘post-logical,'” he said.

It is in the realm of the post-logical universe that Jaglom’s actors are encouraged to experiment with their own feelings. Though more structured than many of his previous efforts, this film uses Jaglom’s unique style of storytelling to give the audience the feeling that they are watching a documentary.

“I do a lot of takes, and I don’t require anybody to worry about the dialogue that’s been written.” Jaglom said. “What [the actors] have to do is know who their characters are and how their characters would act in a particular scene, and then I encourage them to work a certain kind of way.”

This use of personal experiences is what gives Jaglom’s films their sense of realism. In “Deja Vu,” this is felt nowhere so strongly as when Vanessa Redgrave, as Skelly, tells a childhood story about being in the hospital, pretending to be another little girl who had developed a relationship with a wounded soldier.

“When [Redgrave] tells that story, I knew that story going in and that’s the story I wanted her to tell,” Jaglom said. “It’s her story; I didn’t write it. It’s her own truth about how she became a strong person because of this five-year-old girl singing a song.”

Though tempted in the past with large sums of money to work for the studios, Jaglom has declined, preferring instead the complete autonomy and total creative control which comes from being independent.

“When the head of a studio offered me $32 million for a certain movie he wanted me to direct, I said ‘I don’t want to do that but if you give me the $32 million I’ll go away and in five years I’ll come back with 10 movies,'” Jaglom said.

Big money is not what motivates Jaglom — it is the ability to tell a story unfettered by the Hollywood movie mills which crank out nearly identical films, mass-produced for mass-consumption.

You will never see a Coke can surreptitiously displayed in one of Jaglom’s films.

But what you will see is an genuine, heart-felt attempt to recreate a piece of the true human experience.