E. P. Thompson and Eurotrash

This may be a somewhat obscure post but...

In his preface to The Making of the English Working Class, E. P.Thompson famously stated:

"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity."

If you were rewriting this with reference to European cinema who and what would you commutate into the stockinger, Luddite and so forth as filmmakers and cycles to be 'rescued'?