Indie - An American Film Culture

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-231-14464-3
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Film and Culture Series

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Newman, Michael Z.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgattungen, Filmgenre
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Film, Video, Foto

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Context 1. Indie Cinema Viewing Strategies2. Home Is Where the Art Is: Indie Film InstitutionsPart II: Character 3. Indie Realism: Character-Centered Narrative and Social EngagementPart III: Formal Play 4. Pastiche as Play: The Coen Brothers5. Games of Narrative Form: Pulp Fiction and BeyondPart IV: Against Hollywood 6. Indie Opposition: Happiness vs. JunoNotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Z. Newman is an assistant professor of media studies in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He blogs at zigzigger.blogspot.com.