Review of Michael Z. Newman, Indie: An American film culture [Book Review]

Trowbridge, Hayley 2012. Review of Michael Z. Newman, Indie: An American film culture [Book Review]. Journal of American Studies 46 (2) 10.1017/S0021875812000655

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Abstract

In Indie: An American Film Culture, Michael Newman defines indie cinema as the “Sundance–Miramax” era. Although Newman acknowledges the impossibility of declaring a definitive origin and conclusion, he does propose that the 1989 US Film festival (later renamed Sundance) at which Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Soderbergh, 1989) was screened and Disney's shuttering of Miramax in 2010 are events that help to construct a historical frame in which to situate indie cinema (1–2). Indie suggests that indie cinema is best understood as a “cultural category” which includes “a cluster of interpretive strategies and expectations” that are shared by film industry personnel, critics, audiences and so on (11). Newman proposes that indie cinema's audience use “viewing strategies” to understand and engage with indie cinema (11) and it is this argument that provides the book's structure; Part One discusses the discourse surrounding indie cinema, with the remaining sections examining the specific viewing strategies that the author identifies as being “characters as emblems, form is a game, [and] when in doubt, read as anti-Hollywood” (29).

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
ISSN:	1469-5154
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2023 14:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/160971

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