a reflection on independent film

I am a big fan of premium cable movie channels - Cinemax, HBO, Starz, Showtime, Encore, they all have their charms. My favorite is Cinemax. I grew up with it and probably developed my interest in movies because of it. It helped me discover the, at the time, emerging world of independent film. I. film in the early to mid-90's was at its heyday of underground art, before the concept of independent film was commercialized by IFC, Sundance Channel, and eventually Hollywood conglomerations, who somehow found a way to buy out what started out as a counter movement to them. Almost every big studio has an indie production house. Look at last year's Best Pic Oscar nominations. The new American classics seen with PT Anderson's wonderful "There Will Be Blood" and the Cohen Brothers' masterwork "No Country For Old Men" were a product of indie subsidiaries. I can't criticize the fact that such unbelievably great films didn't go overlooked, as would usually happen to films of their nature. But I do think that the "Independent Spirit" seen with 80's and 90's mavericks like Jim Jarmusch has been forgotten about. Brilliant directors like Tom Dicillo are now having difficulty finding an audience for their films possibly because their charm as alternative filmmakers has become lost among mainstream-seeking tastes. The big indie films are all about auteurs and actors. Emerging voices, and truly independent voices of the past, are at a period in film history where content is either commercial or extremely diversified.

What does that say for the current film school generation of the 2000's? Its truly hard to tell. We've grown up watching auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Andersen, PT Anderson and Harmony Korine find large-scale success at very young ages. We all want what they earned, and the competition has never been so fierce. There has never been a period with more content providers and we have created a large mass with a very uncertain future. The technology is at our fingertips and we have never had greater access to influential films, which the advent of DVD and preservation societies like Janus Films are making widely available. As the future of exhibition is so clouded, there is no way to tell what kind of an industry us film students will be working in. All I know, is that it seems to be heading in a quickly rising new wave, putting independent film at ground zero once again.