Stacey Simcik, Laura Zinger, and Michelle Kaffko of Brown Finch Films.

Laura Zinger is on her way to achieving the new American dream: The good kind, the kind that involves breaking free from what seems easy, discerning ambition through all distractions and creating brilliant art that inspires others to do the same. I’m pretty sure she has no idea of this fact because I told her something of the kind and she sounded quite surprised.

When I asked Zinger how she got into film, her immediate response was, “It was a complete and utter accident.” The artist graduated from the University in 2002 with a degree in English. A film class a couple of years back had cemented her interest in film, and instead of resigning to her couch in an attempt to watch every movie ever made, she contacted all the local film clubs and started making short films with the few willing respondents.

After graduating, Zinger went to Los Angeles, but the big industry on the West Coast meant less to do for beginning independent filmmakers. She eventually moved back home to live with her dad, which allowed her to take advantage of the much-needed money saved on room and board to do what she really wanted.

“I tried the L.A. thing,” Zinger said. “That didn’t work. Start off in your hometown. Free rent helps a lot. You make choices — like having nice clothes or making art.”

It’s a good thing Zinger chose making art because her work is an asset to the film community. After making three documentaries on her town’s history for Naperville community television, Zinger ventured on to make Proceed and Be Bold!, which was initially a very short documentary about the printing press artist Amos Kennedy.

“I ended up putting it on YouTube so that Amos could see it,” Zinger said. When the view count surpassed her expectations, she expanded it into a full-length film about much more than just Kennedy. Proceed and Be Bold! is a fascinating look at race, art and rejecting expectations, all told through the life and work of the zany and wonderful Kennedy. As Zinger put it, “He found the path that I had been looking for.” What she doesn’t know is that she’s on it.

Zinger and her partners at Brown Finch Films have not approached filmmaking in the most orthodox of fashions, which is encouraging to the countless people who don’t have the resources, time or desire to go about things in a more traditional manner. “My background is not film school,” she said. “When I hear people say that they went to these really expensive film schools ... I don’t know ... If you don’t go to a fancy film school, it’s not like you won’t be a filmmaker.”

Zinger is now working on a new documentary called Dinner, which is about the social relationships that build at the dinner table, and a mini Web-series called Last Smokers on Earth, which is a post-apocalyptic look at what would happen if everyone on the planet was destroyed except for the heavy smokers. While her route into filmaking was far from traditional, Zinger is certainly on her way.