“Pandering” hardly seems an adequate word for American Gangster, a biopic of 1960s Harlem heroin king Frank Lucas directed by middle-aged white millionaire Ridley Scott, written by middle-aged white millionaire Steve Zaillian, produced by middle-aged white millionaire Brian Grazer, and designed to soft-sell an African American audience on the proposition of the druglord as symbol of heroic honesty and self-determination in a racist society.

The often wracking struggle to bridge the gap between interior experience and exterior expression is the central concern of the IFC Center’s “The New Talkies: Generation D.I.Y.” series, a survey of the so-called “Mumblecore” movement.