America's independent films often seem to defy classification.
Their strategies of storytelling and representation range from raw,
no-budget projects to more polished releases of Hollywood's
"specialty" divisions. Yet understanding American indies involves
more than just considering films. Filmmakers, distributors,
exhibitors, festivals, critics, and audiences all shape the art's
identity, which is always understood in relation to the Hollywood
mainstream.
By locating the American indie film in the historical context of
the "Sundance-Miramax" era (the mid-1980s to the end of the 2000s),
Michael Z. Newman considers indie cinema as an alternative American
film culture. His work isolates patterns of character and realism,
formal play, and oppositionality and the functions of the
festivals, art houses, and critical media promoting them. He also
accounts for the power of audiences to identify indie films in
distinction to mainstream Hollywood and to seek socially emblematic
characters and playful form in their narratives. Analyzing films
such as "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (1996), "Lost in Translation"
(2003), "Pulp Fiction" (1994), and "Juno" (2007), along with the
work of Nicole Holofcener, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Steven
Soderbergh, and the Coen brothers, Newman investigates the
conventions that cast indies as culturally legitimate works of art.
He binds these diverse works together within a cluster of distinct
viewing strategies and invites a reevaluation of the difference of
independent cinema and its relationship to class and taste
culture.
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