Back to selection
Independent Film’s Next Chapter
From observing the need to budget minimum wage when making a microbudget film to decrying the influence of television on cinema culture, producer and Emerson College associate professor Mike Ryan has long expressed a blunt, radical truth-telling in the pages of Filmmaker. Here, he asserts that the economic model that drove much independent production in the 1990s—creatively imagined features enabled by equity financing that was itself predicated on the existence of a competitive acquisitions market—is gone, but that this development is not actually one to lament.
For those who transgress, the future is yours.
The Hollywood-dependent system of so-called indie film is now in steep decline, both financially and spiritually.
Debt and consolidation have forced studios to only make content for a global mass audience. (It was for this reason, several years ago, that the streamers stopped buying independent films.) Now, as the studios are subsumed within a small number of media conglomerates, their interest in independents will decline even more. I, for one, have been saying for decades that if the business is collapsing, then we have something to cheer because the less financial motivation there is to make independent art, the better the art gets.
This is not the first time artists have had the sanctuary of an artistic medium free from market pressures. For example, during the period of the American film underground, starting after World War II and stretching into the mid ’80s, the country was dotted with film clubs and societies that would show challenging non-narrative films. The new American cinema, as it was also called, was totally artist-managed and free from corporate predators. The result was a vibrant cinematic scene that thrived because it resisted all aspects of commerciality.
Another art form that thrived without a market economy reason to exist was American indie rock pre-Nirvana. During the early ’80s, the corporations figured out how to control the rock and roll machine. From the airwaves of corporate-owned stations to corporate-owned arenas to chain record stores, a small handful of arena bands were forced down our ears. In revolt, local record labels sprung up in cities far from NY and LA, while tight spaces in the back of old run-down bars or VFW halls hosted live acts. The combination of local college radio stations, small record shops and local bookers enabled scenes in cities across the country, allowing a band to tour nationally. That all changed with Nirvana, unfortunately, when the corporations smelled money, swooped in and corrupted the scene with crossover, profit-minded dreams. The arc of rap was similar—it started in the school yards and backyards of NYC outer-borough neighborhoods with small indie labels and exploded with innovation and artistic energy until predatory managers and label owners started shaping the music for maximum profit.
As independent filmmaking moves into its next phase, what will matter to audiences are authentic, personal stories told in original ways that defy A.I-generated story logic. We are now free to break the rules that the market forced on us and which they have now fed into their A.I systems. What are those rules? Here are a few from classical-period cinema that distributors and global streamers cling to, out of fear of alienating or challenging audiences. If you break any one of the following rules you can pretty much be sure your film will not get into most American film festivals, although you may be celebrated abroad.
• Keep story conflicts focused on a single issue and make a central conflict external, not internal, and able to be fully resolved.
• Have your story be tied to the goals of a single protagonist who must face the challenge of a single antagonist who, in the climax, must be dominated and conquered.
• Maintain a linear causal relationship between events so that one event causes another, and time thus moves in a straight line.
• Have the story set in a relatable, clearly defined naturalistic space that resembles our own experience of reality (naturalism has enslaved American indie minds for decades).
• Have characters who learn something from their experiences, which implies also that characters have agency and thus have the ability to change themselves and the world.
• Make sure the author of the narrative remains invisible and their role in shaping of the characters, settings or narrative story world is not obvious to the audience.
While global corporations see the above as a successful formula to reach viewers across all language and cultural boundaries, most Americans under the age of 45 see these rules as a recipe for insipid, old-world drama. For them, they are no longer relevant because we no longer live in the world in which these rules were created. Today, owing in part to an understanding of generational trauma or a recognition of the failure of neoliberal politics, young people instinctively know that there is never a single cause for any one character’s internal problems. They know that linear causality is an oversimplification of how events and realities are entwined and linked. They also know, due to how they live their lives, that selfhood can flow and morph simultaneously through multiple spaces and through the conscious, willful deployment of various identities. The old reality was linear and straightforward. The modern reality is quite different. Is it any wonder why the past few years have seen post-classical narratives such as Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once win the Best Picture Academy Award?
But despite the ongoing string of successes of post-classical stories, streamers will continue to adhere to the global export model to serve stockholders who demand the maintenance of the myth of expanding markets. Global streamers, owned by media tech companies whose power also intersects with the internet, social media and government rule, are becoming the new monolithic institutions of control. YouTube and Vimeo were once predicted to be the new democratic alternative to corporate dominant media, but that space was also conquered by commodification.
The media philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote recently in his book The Crisis of Narration that we have become a world not of “story tellers but of story sellers.” The digital world has not only commodified our desires and sense of self, it has also turned our storytellers away from true community engagement by fragmenting our experience into bite-size digital clips of identity proclamations. The only way for us to resist commodification is for us to return, in small groups, to the physical realm of microcinemas, where alternative forms of meaning and purpose can be envisioned and sought.
A theatrical microcinema movement will allow us to redefine value and allow film artists a nonpredatory environment to create, exhibit and interact with audiences. A converted old, shuttered retail shop on Main Street, curated by an artist who understands the difference between innovative and corporate aesthetics, will become the new gathering spot for those who still have the courage and desire to resist commodification. In this alternative space, value will be defined not by quantity—box office returns or streaming metrics—but by the quality of personal exchange between artist and audience.
The decline of the functioning marketplace is not a situation isolated just in our industry. The elimination of competitive markets across all industries is proof that capitalism has morphed into something else, perhaps the “techno feudalism” of Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis. But the crisis of capitalism and the loss of jobs is tied into cinema’s very struggle to exist. The solution has to do with an alternative perspective about how we define sustainability and reorganize our society. The Italian political philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi has said, “In conditions of social recomposition, social autonomy from capitalism becomes possible.” In other words, our economic problems are entwined with how we socially interact with each other, and a political change will occur only when we redefine “value” together.
Currently, if you are a profit-minded exploiter, you’ve moved on from indie films.
The only ones in the space that remains are the artists who don’t treat audiences as though they are distracted 14-year-olds. With the money changers gone, let’s talk about how we reshape and redefine value so that we can keep the predators from swooping back in once formally challenging, transgressive cinema starts gaining velocity.
In NYC, non-profit, collective-run microcinemas like Spectacle, Maysles and UnionDocs, which show new work by artists whose work can’t be found on the streamers, are thriving. Similar theaters exist in other cities and countries. If we could link together the alternative microcinemas in New York with those in Chicago, Tucson, L.A. and Dallas, for example, we would have the start of a collective, artist-run, non-dependent film ecosystem.
The market for compromised, generic indie films has dried up, so it is time to celebrate that we are now free to create, once again, an artist-run, predator-free, not-for-profit, locally based cinematic ecosystem that celebrates radical, formally challenging cinema. I truly believe that risk-taking cinema is finally going to find its audience, and true indie (or, as some are retitling it, “NonDē”) film is about to start its greatest era.
The future is collective. The future is locally based. The future is theatrical. Give up a streaming subscription and join your local film collective or start your own microcinema. Fuck the robots; our future is now.
