What is independent cinema?

Résumé du document

Il s'agit d'un essai sur le cinéma indépendant et sa définition au travers des différents protagonistes de l'industrie cinématographique.

Il est structuré de la façon suivante :

I. Histoire et émergence du cinéma indépendant
II. Caractère financier impliqué par l'indépendance du cinéma
III. Approche artistique du cinéma indépendant

Extraits

[...] I think that the main idea was always to make a cinema that breaks with the influence of conventional one, whether it's a financial or artistic question. Essentially because mainstream cinema and independent cinema will forever be inter-dependent. It does not mean that it is not independent cinema for all that. In the end, independent cinema was shaped and defined by the ones who made it, who talked about it and who used it. That is why it is so hard to put words on it. [...]

[...] What is independent cinema ? The life aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson was produced by Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary of Walt Disney company, and distributed by Buena Vista Motion Pictures group, which is also a subsidiary of Walt Disney company. Terminator, on the other hand, was financed out of the Hollywood majors, by four independent productors (Hemdale Film Corporation, Pacific Western Productions, Euro Film Funding et Cinema 84). Yet, at first sight, Terminator seems more like a movie made for a large audience whereas The life aquatic has a stronger artistic vision and a more developed taste for aesthetics. [...]

[...] It is very long and violent, about 10 minutes. During the whole film, the camera moves constantly and follows the action closely, giving the viewer a nausea (accentuated by background noise with a frequency of 27 Hz5, hardly audible but which can be felt through the rib cage. For humans, this type of low frequency noise can cause nausea and dizziness). Yet, during the rape scene, the camera lands on the floor and remains as if completely paralyzed. The use of colors is also important in this film, especially the color red, which is the color of the walls of the underground in which the character is raped. [...]

[...] Soon, a hierarchy was established, with the big five majors (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount pictures, 20th century fox, Warner Bros, RKO pictures), the three minors (United Artists, Columbia Pictures and Universal studios) and the poverty raw, which contains a lot of companies. Already at that time, the independent cinema took many forms, ranging from independent famous producers, making "Prestige-level films" (as it is called by Yannis Tzioumakis in American independent cinema), to the poverty raw productions. I will focus on the case of the company United Artists, which proposed a response to the Hollywood monopole as independent cinema. United Artists was a distribution company created in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and David Wark Griffith. [...]

[...] These examples show that the "economical" definition of independent cinema has limits. Independent cinema could also be approached in a more artistic and aesthetic way. The idea is the same as the financial approach, to break from the conventions of classical cinema and big productions. This can be done through a particular narrative, a new aesthetic, more complex and elaborate characters and much more. I will take the examples of the movie Irreversible, by Gaspar Noé. Gaspar Noé is a French director who likes to provoke and disturb through subjects such as violence, abuse, love, sex but always with (in my opinion), a very strong message and vision of society. [...]