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Just a few decades into its life, Hollywood found itself old.

In the mid-1960s, spurred on by audiences' growing political sentiment and access to galvanising world cinema (not to mention television), studios that once swore by opulent dramas and lavish musicals were seeking films that were relevant to a younger generation – and lucrative for their producers. Rock 'n' roll was sweeping the nation; the movies needed its equivalent.

Equally crucial was that, for the first time in decades, artists could wholeheartedly embrace challenging subject matter. The 1968 dissolution of the censorious Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code – guidelines that regulated what was and wasn't allowed onscreen to uphold so-called 'correct standards' – meant ambitious new talent had freedom to create films unlike anything the industry had known.

It's no coincidence that, just a year before, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde arrived on screens: an all-guns-blazing story of young lovers turned bank robbers, burning bright and fast through an evolving America. Critic Roger Ebert described it as being "like a slap in the face". Audiences had never seen anything like it.

This season journeys through a particularly illustrious period of what came to be called 'New Hollywood' filmmaking, highlighting a range of films from the '60s and '70s that changed the shape of American cinema forever: helmed by innovative, decadent, young auteurs, filled with genre-blending and boundary-crossing (sex, violence, you name it!) with a focus on depicting something closer to real life.

While some involved also bolstered the 1980s blockbuster bombast that came after – who could have known the man behind scrappy coming-of-ager American Graffiti would go on to create Star Wars? – this collection of films epitomises a galvanising, independent-spirited vision of what American cinema can be. We can but hope that a new New Hollywood is on its way.   Lara Peters

THE LINE-UP

From beloved classics to unearthed gems, reintroduce yourself to the best films of yesterday with reDiscover — be that last decade, or last century.