Annotation
Please note that this course runs every second Tuesday as a double session from 17:00 to 20:00 in room 2018 of Jinoice [Odd weeks: Feb 19, Mar 5, Mar 19, April 2, April 16, April 30 ]. My other Spring course "Key Trends in American Cinema" runs on the alternate Tuesdays (Even Weeks: February 26; March 12; March 26; April 9; April 23; May 7] and requires separate registration.
This course offers a new perspective on American Independent Cinema, by inviting students to think about "indie" as a cluster of ideas activated in and around certain movies by stakeholders. The course employs these ideas to consider four culturally significant developments in American audiovisual culture which require us to expand the terms under which we imagine indie cinema. First, we consider how the key ideas central to indie were key tenets of non-theatrical media of the 1990s, focusing on the example of skateboard videos. From there, the notion that genres - supposedly the antithesis of indie - boast "indie wings" will be explored with reference to the "Progressive Auteur Horror Cinema" of the 1970s and 80s, especially that of writer-director Wes Craven. We then shift our focus to a cultural current that tends not to be included in discussions of indie, even though it is underwritten by the cornerstones of indie: "paracinema" ( movies deemed so bad they are good). Lastly, we consider how the "Midnight Movie Phenomenon" of the 1970s indicates that indie surfaced, albeit under a different name, long before its supposed 1990s emergence. In so doing, this course encourages students to rethink this important aspect of US culture, by recognizing that is - and has been - more than just a series of hip movies made outside the commercial mainstream of Hollywood and released in theaters in the 1990s and 2000s.