"Looking beyond the directors and works that have branded indie discourse in the 1990s and 2000s, US Independent Film After 1989: Possible Films attends to a group of 20 texts that have not been so fully subsumed by existing critical and promotional rhetoric. Through individual studies of films including All the Real Girls, The Exploding Girl, Laurel Canyon, Jesus' Son, Old Joy, Primer and You Can Count on Me, leading cinema scholars consider how notions of indie practice, poetics and politics can be opened up to account for a larger body of work than the dominant canon admits. With particular attention to female directors, this innovative and comprehensive book explores the central tenets of indie scholarship while simultaneously emphasising the classifying processes that can limit it."--Quatrième de couverture.

"Looking beyond the directors and works that have branded indie discourse in the 1990s and 2000s, US Independent Film After 1989: Possible Films attends to a group of 20 texts that have not been so fully subsumed by existing critical and promotional rhetoric. Through individual studies of films including All the Real Girls, The Exploding Girl, Laurel Canyon, Jesus' Son, Old Joy, Primer and You Can Count on Me, leading cinema scholars consider how notions of indie practice, poetics and politics can be opened up to account for a larger body of work than the dominant canon admits. With particular attention to female directors, this innovative and comprehensive book explores the central tenets of indie scholarship while simultaneously emphasising the classifying processes that can limit it."--Back cover.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Maverick Movies tells the improbable story of New Line Cinema, a company that cut a remarkable path through the American film industry and movie culture. Founded in 1967 as an art film distributor, New Line made a small fortune running John Waters's Pink Flamingos at midnight screenings in the 1970s and found reliable returns with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the 1980s. By 2001, the company competed with the major Hollywood studios and reached global box office success with the Lord of the Rings franchise. Blurring boundaries between high and low culture, between independent film and Hollywood, and between the margins and the mainstream, New Line Cinema epitomizes Hollywood's shift in focus from the mass audience fostered by the classic studios to the multitude of niche audiences sought today.

Independent Women: From Film to Television explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world. "Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist". This volume investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays in the volume offer insights into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women. They also examine how these connotations of creative control influence perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television during the first decades of the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

This book illustrates the many ways that actors contribute to American independent cinema. Analyzing industrial developments, it examines the impact of actors as writers, directors, and producers, and as stars able to attract investment and bring visibility to small-scale productions. Exploring cultural-aesthetic factors, the book identifies the various traditions that shape narrative designs, casting choices, and performance styles. The book offers a genealogy of industrial and aesthetic practices that connects independent filmmaking in the studio era and the 1960s and 1970s to American independent cinema in its independent, indie, indiewood, and late-indiewood forms. Chapters on actors’ involvement in the evolution of American independent cinema as a sector alternate with chapters that show how traditions such as naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and Third Cinema influence films and performances.

Explores the films, practitioners, production and distribution contexts that currently represent American womens independent cinemaWith the consolidation of aindie culture in the 21st century, female filmmakers face an increasingly indifferent climate. Within this sector, women work across all aspects of writing, direction, production, editing and design, yet the dominant narrative continues to construe amaverick white male auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson as the face of indie discourse. Defying the formulaic myths of the mainstream achick flick and the ideological and experimental radicalism of feminist counter-cinema alike, womens indie filmmaking is neither ironic, popular nor political enough to be readily absorbed into pre-existing categories. This ground-breaking collection, the first sustained examination of the work of female practitioners within American independent cinema, reclaims the adifference of female indie filmmaking. Through a variety of case studies of directors, writers and producers such as Ava DuVernay, Lena Dunham and Christine Vachon, contributors explore the innovation of a range of female practitioners by attending to the sensibilities, ideologies and industrial practices that distinguish their work while embracing the ain-between space in which the narratives they represent and embody can be revealed.Key FeaturesCovers American womens independent cinema since the late 1970sAnalyses the work of acclaimed but critically overlooked female practitioners such as Kelly Reichardt, Christine Vachon, Miranda July, Kasi Lemmons, Nicole Holofcener, Mira Nair, Lisa Cholodenko, Megan Ellison, Lynn Shelton, Ava DuVernay, Mary Harron and Debra GranikDistinguishes four different approaches to analysing womens independent cinema through: production and industry perspectives; genre and other classificatory modalities; political, cultural, social and professional identities; and collaborative and collectivist practicesContributorsJohn Alberti, Northern Kentucky UniversityLinda Badley, Middle Tennessee State UniversityCynthia Baron, Bowling Green State UniversityShelley Cobb, University of SouthamptonCorinn Columpar, University of TorontoChris Holmlund, University of Tennessee-KnoxvilleGeoff King, Brunel University, LondonChristina Lane, University of MiamiJames Lyons, University of ExeterKathleen A. McHugh, UCLAKent A. Ono, University of UtahLydia Papadimitriou, Liverpool John Moores UniversityClaudia Costa Pederson, Wichita State UniversityClaire Perkins, Monash UniversitySarah Projansky, University of UtahMaria San Filippo, Goucher CollegeMichele Schreiber, Emory UniversitySarah E. S. Sinwell, University of UtahYannis Tzioumakis, University of LiverpoolPatricia White, Swarthmore CollegePatricia R. Zimmermann, Ithaca College

Irony in Film is the first book about ironic expression in this medium. We often feel the need to call films or aspects of them ironic; but what exactly does this mean? How do films create irony? Might certain features of the medium help or hinder its ironic potential? How can we know we are justified in dubbing any film or moment ironic? This book attempts to answer such questions, investigating in the process crucial and under-examined issues that irony raises for our understanding of narrative filmmaking. A much-debated subject in other disciplines, in film scholarship irony is habitually referred to but too seldom explored. Combining in-depth theorising with detailed close analysis, this pioneering study asks what ironic capacities films might possess, how film style may be used ironically, and what role intention should play in film interpretation. The proposed answers have significance for our understanding of not only ironic filmmaking, but the nature of expression in this medium.