Us Independent Film After 1989

"Looking beyond the directors and works that have branded indie discourse in the 1990s and 2000s, US Independent Film After 1989: Possible Films attends to a group of 20 texts that have not been so fully subsumed by existing critical and promotional rhetoric. Through individual studies of films including All the Real Girls, The Exploding Girl, Laurel Canyon, Jesus' Son, Old Joy, Primer and You Can Count on Me, leading cinema scholars consider how notions of indie practice, poetics and politics can be opened up to account for a larger body of work than the dominant canon admits. With particular attention to female directors, this innovative and comprehensive book explores the central tenets of indie scholarship while simultaneously emphasising the classifying processes that can limit it."--Quatrième de couverture.

This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915−2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American independent cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly Indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters also introduce students to different approaches within film studies including historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.

A Companion to American Indie Film features a comprehensive collection of newly commissioned essays that represent a state-of-the-art resource for understanding key aspects of the field of indie films produced in the United States. Takes a comprehensive and fresh new look at the topic of American indie film Features newly commissioned essays from top film experts and emerging scholars that represent the state-of-the-art reference to the indie film field Topics covered include: indie film culture; key historical moments and movements in indie film history; relationships between indie film and other indie media; and issues including class, gender, regional identity and stardom in in the indie field Includes studies of many types of indie films and film genres, along with various filmmakers and performers that have come to define the field

Explores the films, practitioners, production and distribution contexts that currently represent American womens independent cinemaWith the consolidation of aindie culture in the 21st century, female filmmakers face an increasingly indifferent climate. Within this sector, women work across all aspects of writing, direction, production, editing and design, yet the dominant narrative continues to construe amaverick white male auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson as the face of indie discourse. Defying the formulaic myths of the mainstream achick flick and the ideological and experimental radicalism of feminist counter-cinema alike, womens indie filmmaking is neither ironic, popular nor political enough to be readily absorbed into pre-existing categories. This ground-breaking collection, the first sustained examination of the work of female practitioners within American independent cinema, reclaims the adifference of female indie filmmaking. Through a variety of case studies of directors, writers and producers such as Ava DuVernay, Lena Dunham and Christine Vachon, contributors explore the innovation of a range of female practitioners by attending to the sensibilities, ideologies and industrial practices that distinguish their work while embracing the ain-between space in which the narratives they represent and embody can be revealed.Key FeaturesCovers American womens independent cinema since the late 1970sAnalyses the work of acclaimed but critically overlooked female practitioners such as Kelly Reichardt, Christine Vachon, Miranda July, Kasi Lemmons, Nicole Holofcener, Mira Nair, Lisa Cholodenko, Megan Ellison, Lynn Shelton, Ava DuVernay, Mary Harron and Debra GranikDistinguishes four different approaches to analysing womens independent cinema through: production and industry perspectives; genre and other classificatory modalities; political, cultural, social and professional identities; and collaborative and collectivist practicesContributorsJohn Alberti, Northern Kentucky UniversityLinda Badley, Middle Tennessee State UniversityCynthia Baron, Bowling Green State UniversityShelley Cobb, University of SouthamptonCorinn Columpar, University of TorontoChris Holmlund, University of Tennessee-KnoxvilleGeoff King, Brunel University, LondonChristina Lane, University of MiamiJames Lyons, University of ExeterKathleen A. McHugh, UCLAKent A. Ono, University of UtahLydia Papadimitriou, Liverpool John Moores UniversityClaudia Costa Pederson, Wichita State UniversityClaire Perkins, Monash UniversitySarah Projansky, University of UtahMaria San Filippo, Goucher CollegeMichele Schreiber, Emory UniversitySarah E. S. Sinwell, University of UtahYannis Tzioumakis, University of LiverpoolPatricia White, Swarthmore CollegePatricia R. Zimmermann, Ithaca College

"Maverick Movies tells the improbable story of New Line Cinema, a company that cut a remarkable path through the American film industry and movie culture. Founded in 1967 as an art-film distributor, New Line made a small fortune running John Waters's Pink Flamingos at midnight screenings in the 1970s and found reliable returns with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the 1980s. By 2001, the company competed with the major Hollywood studios and reached global box-office success with the Lord of the Rings franchise. Blurring boundaries between high and low culture, between independent film and Hollywood, and between the margins and the mainstream, New Line Cinema offers a compelling case study of the evolution of contemporary film culture through the disintegration of the mass audience fostered by the classic Hollywood studios into the multitude of niche audiences that Hollywood seeks today"--

This book illustrates the many ways that actors contribute to American independent cinema. Analyzing industrial developments, it examines the impact of actors as writers, directors, and producers, and as stars able to attract investment and bring visibility to small-scale productions. Exploring cultural-aesthetic factors, the book identifies the various traditions that shape narrative designs, casting choices, and performance styles. The book offers a genealogy of industrial and aesthetic practices that connects independent filmmaking in the studio era and the 1960s and 1970s to American independent cinema in its independent, indie, indiewood, and late-indiewood forms. Chapters on actors’ involvement in the evolution of American independent cinema as a sector alternate with chapters that show how traditions such as naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and Third Cinema influence films and performances.

Independent Women: From Film to Television explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world. "Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist". This volume investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays in the volume offer insights into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women. They also examine how these connotations of creative control influence perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television during the first decades of the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

With the chick flick arguably in decline, film scholars may well ask: what has become of the woman’s film? Little attention has been paid to the proliferation of films, often from the independent sector, that do not sit comfortably in either the category of popular culture or that of high art––films that are perhaps the corollary of the middle-brow novel, or "smart-chick flicks". This book seeks to fill this void by focusing on the steady stream of films about and for women that emerge out of independent American and European cinema, and that are designed to address an international female audience. The new woman's film as a genre includes narratives with strong ties to the woman’s film of classical Hollywood while constituting a new distinctive cycle of female-centered films that in many ways continue the project of second-wave feminism, albeit in a modified form. Topics addressed include: The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995); the feature-length films of Nicole Holofcener, 1996-2013; the film roles of Tilda Swinton; Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008); Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013); Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012), Belle (Amma Asante, 2013), Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (Sundance Channel, 2013-).