Indepedant films - The genre and its History

Independent films informally known as ‘Indie films’ is a genre of movies outside the ‘major film company’ and are more commonly known as ‘Art House.’ The films are normally aimed at a ‘niche audience’ rather than a mass audience, therefore because the films are made on a low budget the small audience manages to support the films. The films are different from other films because they show the expressitivity of the director and they focus on thoughts and dreams of characters in a social realism style. Davis Bordwell (film scholar) quotes: “art cinema itself is a genre, with its own distinct conventions.” The independent films are normally played at speciality theatres and film festivals. They are associated with ‘auteur’ films and ‘national cinema.’ The films rarely get financial backing as they are not as big as the ‘Hollywood films’ and there fore would not be viewed as much. Because they are not backed in the same ways as the Hollywood films the directors use less well-known actors/actresses and less elaborate sets. Therefore more focus is on developing new narrative techniques or filmmaking conventions.

There is an appropriate amount of experience and intellect needed to understand the films in contrast with the Hollywood films, which are about escapism (the audience venture to the cinema to escape from reality). Mainly art films rely on critics to publicise their work.

The antecedents originated from the 1910s and they were D.W Friffiths who created the film ‘Tolerance’ and Sergei Eisenstein who created ‘Battleship Potemkin.’ Eisenstein experimented with montage for the first time, as he wanted to produce the greatest emotional response.

Art films were highly influenced by the Spanish avant-garde. The creators were Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. In the 1920s film societies were divided into two categories: “entertainment cinema for mass audience and serious art cinema for intellectual audience.” Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a film society that imported films that were ‘artistic achievements’ this included ‘Soviet films of dialectical montage and expressionist films from ‘Universium films’’ in Germany. Cinema Pur in the 1920s and 30s influenced the development of ‘art films’ and this included ‘Dada’ artists: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.

In the 1930s to 1950s Hollywood films could be divided into artistic aspirations one being Gangster thriller. In the late 1940s the Italian neorealist films and other European fare were different; defined by the ‘art house cinemas’ that were built.

Much of the public were wary of the mainstream ‘Hollywood’ films and started going to art house cinemas. The films included ‘British foreign-language and independent American films’ which were documentaries and revival of old classics such as Rossellini’s ‘Open City.’

In the late 1950s French filmmakers were inspired by Italian Neorealism and Classical Hollywood cinema. The French New Wave was created and this was the self-conscious reflection of classical cinematic form, the ‘spirit of youthful iconoclasm’ and social and political upheavals of the era. They experimented with editing, visual style and narrative part which was a general break with the conservative paradigm.

In the 1960s till 1970s the art film was more widely used in USA than in Europe. The USA classified the art films as ‘foreign speaking films’, experimental films, documentaries and short films. In the 1960s the art films contained racy Italian and French B-movies. In the 1970s the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as Swedish films. Hitchcock’s movies, experimental underground films, European couteur films, Us ‘independent film;” and mainstream foreign-language films were all classified as art-house films.

Finally in the 1980s until 2000s the major notion picture studios noted niche appeal and dedicated non-mainstream films to companies such as ‘Fox searchlight, 20^th century Fox, Focus features and Sony Pictures Classics and entertainment. By 2007 it was concluded that young people from 2000s do not have the patience to think deep about European films.

Lily