Following on the heels of One Day in September, another exceptional documentary arrives at the Phoenix this week, amid what many critics reckon to be a renaissance for the genre, writes David Parkinson.

Although some have dismissed it as a cruel swipe at a talentless geek, American Movie is a genuinely fond record of an amateur film-maker's determined attempt to complete his picture and fulfil a lifetime's obsession. Resident in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Mark Borchardt lives to make movies. However, shortage of funds has prevented him from finishing any of them. So, in order to finance his ambitious horror feature, Midwestern, he revives an old short subject, Coven, in the hope of securing a few profitable screening dates.

Documentarists Chris Smith and Sarah Price have their names above the title, but Borchardt is pretty much the director of this often hilarious, but never dismissive portrait of a wannabe, as it's his strategies that determine the course of the action.

However, the focus occasionally shifts to Mark's parents, his gnarled Uncle Bill (a wonderful old curmudgeon, who is backing the film from his savings and taking a cameo role) and his loyal buddy, Mike, a recovering substance addict, who has composed the highly respectable soundtrack. We also get to meet Mark's stock company of am-drams, who make Ed Wood's cabal look like the RSC. A scarecrowish thirtysomething, with long, lank hair and a slacker turn of phrase, Borchardt has a firm grasp of the mechanics of movie-making, even though his homages to Night of the Living Dead are incredibly rough-and-ready and reveal a limited intellect behind the pretension and enthusiasm. However, he's got the drive to give it a go, which is supposedly what the American Dream is all about.