Introduction

The institutionalisation of American independent cinema from the late 1980s onwards transformed radically a sector that was originally organised around the quality low-budget, theatrically distributed and exhibited feature-length fiction film. Despite the fact that the industrial and institutional apparatus that helped transform the sector was originally instigated by organisations and companies that had few or no links with the Hollywood majors and were envisaging an American independent cinema that would be markedly different from the cinema associated with the films of the now conglomerated ex-studios, the truth of the matter is that Hollywood was never too far away from the independent sector. For instance, as we saw in Chapter 8, the majors’ classics divisions distributed some well known independently produced films in the first half of the early 1980s, even though they stayed away from finance and production. Furthermore, the ex-studios themselves routinely financed and sponsored events in support of the independent film sector and participated in independent film markets and fairs in the hope of identifying films with commercial potential and exploiting that potential by using their marketing and distribution resources. They also underwrote a substantial part of the operating costs of organisations such as the Sundance Institute, while talent (actors, writers, directors and producers) associated with Hollywood cinema was drafted in to contribute to the Institute's programmes right from the start. Indeed, such initiatives often attracted considerable criticism as they were deemed mainstream Hollywood efforts to ‘refine’ oppositional film practices and use the low-budget quality film sector as a springboard for recruiting the most promising talent for major productions.

However, it was the conglomerated majors’ second entry to the independent film market, through the establishment of specialty film subsidiaries or the corporate takeover of standalone companies and their relaunch as ‘major independents’, that became the lynchpin for a massive investment in that sector in the 1990s.