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

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.)