Academic discourses and American independent cinema: in search of a field of studies. Part 2: from the 1990s to date

Abstract

This paper examines the ways academic discourses shaped the field of American independent cinema. Through a discussion of a large number of works that examined the question of independent filmmaking in the USA and were published from the 1940s onwards, the paper provides a number of distinctions between particular approaches to what constitutes American independent cinema, and in effect offers a history of film criticism on the subject. More specifically, it groups work in the field under five different categories, each driven by agendas and objectives that were often conflicting. This conflict can be seen most clearly during the 1980s when a particular group of scholars examined American independent cinema as intricately linked to the Hollywood film industry and the studios while a second cluster of academic researchers located independent film completely outside the mainstream and as part of alternative media. In this respect, independent film production in the USA has come to represent a different set of characteristics for different groups of scholars, which to some extent explains why a consensual definition of the label ‘independent film’ has remained elusive. (Part 1 of this paper was published in the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2011.)

Keywords:

• American independent cinema
• discourse
• periodisation
• Hollywood
• film criticism

Notes

1. For reference purposes and besides Rosen and Hamilton these studies include: Lyons 1994; Pierson 1995; and Ferncase 1996.

2. Rather oddly, even though he cites Lewis's New American Cinema in general and Guerrero's essay on black independent film in particular, Levy does not seem to have read Kleinhans's essay.

3. Kamera Books, www.kamerabooks.com (last accessed 19 December 2010).

4. As Thomas Schatz demonstrated in his essay ‘New Hollywood, New Millennium’, in 2007 approximately 115 out of 130 distributors failed to generate any significant business at the theatrical box office (2009, 27).

5. The studies she cites are Kleinhans 1998; Levy 1999; Merritt 2000; Pierson 1995; and Rosen and Hamilton 1990.

6. For a discussion of the avant-garde and its links with the mainstream, see Hawkins 2005, 89–105; for the avant-garde and its flirting with pornography, see Capino 2005, 155–73; for discussions of independent cinema as exploitation, see Conrich 2005, 107–22 and Lowry 2005 [1986], 41–51; for independent cinema and alternative practices, see James 2005 [1989], 59–67; for black independent film, see Reid 2005, 141–53; for queer representation in contemporary independent film, see Holmlund 2005a, 177–91; for women filmmakers within the independent sector, see Lane 2005, 193–209; for questions of diaspora, see Marchetti 2005, 211–25; for independent filmmakers innovating distribution, see Wyatt 2005, 229–44; for questions of stardom in independent cinema, see Negra 2005, 71–88; for infrastructural concerns, see Eberwein 2005, 265–81; for John Sayles and his practices, see Carson 2005, 125–39; and finally for the impact of digital technology on independent cinema, see Zimmerman 2005, 245–64.

7. In 2006, the same author had published an essay on independent film and questions of characterisation (Newman 2006, 89–106), which is one of the essays I did not manage to engage with here but which I would also recommend as essential to future researchers of American independent cinema.

8. See, for instance, the work of David E. James (1989) who uses the term ‘American art cinema’ and ‘American art film’ in relation to a very different body of films.

9. King 2010 (Lost in Translation); Needham 2010 (Brokeback Mountain); Molloy 2010 (Memento); Davis 2011 (Far from Heaven); Holmlund 2011 (Being John Malkovich).