A Companion to American Indie Film

King, Geoff (Editor)

1. Edition December 2016
544 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-118-75832-8

John Wiley & Sons

Wiley Online Library Sample Chapter

Further versions

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

Contributors viii

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction: What Indie Isn't... Mapping the Indie Field 1
Geoff King

Part One Indie Culture 23

1 Indie Film as Indie Culture 25
Michael Z. Newman

2 The Making of the Indie Scene: The Cultural Production of a Field of Cultural Production 42
Sherry B. Ortner

3 Indie as Organic: Tracing Discursive Roots 58
Geoff King

Part Two Indie and Other Media 81

4 Quirky Culture: Tone, Sensibility, and Structure of Feeling 83
James MacDowell

5 Independent Intersections: Indie Music Cultures and American Indie Cinema 106
Jamie Sexton

6 Post?]Cinema Soderbergh 129
Mark Gallagher

Part Three Criticism, Marketing, and Positioning Indie 153

7 Structuring Indie and Beasts of the Southern Wild: The Role of Review Journalism 155
Erin Pearson

8 Marketing American Indie in the Shadow of Hollywood 181
Finola Kerrigan

Part Four Movements/Moments 207

9 Proto?]Indie: 1960s "Half?]Way" Cinema 209
Janet Staiger

10 From Independent to Indie: The Independent Feature Project and the Complex Relationship between American Independent Cinema and Hollywood in the 1980s 233
Yannis Tzioumakis

11Going Mainstream: The Indie Film Movement in 1999 257
Thomas Schatz

12 Looking through a Rearview Mirror: Mumblecore as Past Tense 279
J.J. Murphy

Part Five Indie as Regional 301

13 The Pull of Place: Regional Indie Film Production 303
Mary P. Erickson

14 Rural Crimewave: Reconfiguring Regional Spaces through Genre in US Indie Cinema 325
John Berra

Part Six Aesthetics and Politics 347

15 Life During Wartime: Emotionalism, Capitalist Realism, and Middle?]Class Indie Identity 349
Claire Perkins

16 Indie Cinema and the Neoliberal Commodification of Creative Labor: Rethinking the Indie Sensibility of Christopher Nolan 368
Claire Molloy

17 "They Believe Every Fuckin' Word Because You're Super Cool": Masculine Cool '90s Style in Reservoir Dogs 389
Stella Bruzzi

18 The Craft of Independent Filmmaking: Editing in John Sayles' Return of the Secaucus Seven and Baby It's You 407
Warren Buckland

Part Seven Kickstarting Indie 431

19 Crowdfunding, Independence, Authorship 433
Chuck Tryon

20 Go Digital or Go Dark: Crowdfunding, Independent Financing, and Arthouse Exhibition on Kickstarter 452
Sarah E.S. Sinwell

Part Eight Indie Acting and Stardom 469

21 Casing Indie Acting 471
Chris Holmlund

22 Flexible Stardom: Contemporary American Film and the Independent Mobility of Star Brands 493
Paul McDonald

Index 000

Geoff King is Professor of Film Studies at Brunel University London, UK. He is the author of numerous books on American film topics, including American Independent Cinema (2005), Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets Independent Cinema (2009), Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film (2014) and Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in Contemporary Studio Film (2016).