Page 208 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Independent C nema: The Myth and Necess ty of D st nct on | 1

Moment 1: Early Cinema and Hollywood (1909–18)
If we judge, as Tom Gunning does, early cinema to be a “cinema of attrac-
tions” in which it is the prime interest of films to attract spectators, then this
applies to both mainstream and independent cinema. In the case of mainstream
cinema, it means there is space to lay the foundations for formulaic but robust
patterns through which audiences can be entertained, shocked, or humored—in
other words, there is a space for an industry. According to Georges Sadoul, 1909
marked an important moment in this industrialization, when representatives of
the world’s major patent holders, distributors, and producers (Pathé, Eastman,
Edison, and others) met to discuss conditions for controlling the movie busi-
ness, and formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) trust to regulate
it. No sooner than its installation, exhibitors and rogue producers tried to cir-
cumvent and resist the MPPC’s efforts, and, calling themselves “independents,”
they moved productions out of reach of the MPPC’s areas of control to the geo-
graphical fringes of established production areas (such as California, Canada,
Belgium, the Balkans, and Latin America).
The appeal of the independents’ adventurous use of technology, scenery, and
personnel and their “crazy” attitude quickly made them audience favorites, and
led to the move to Hollywood and the installation of the star system (Florence
Lawrence and Mary Pickford becoming “IMP girls,” as one slogan had it—IMP
standing for Independent Motion Pictures, later to become Universal). By the
end of World War I, the independents had managed to establish wide networks
of exhibition and distribution that cornered the market, and led to the classical
Hollywood studio system. As one critic said after the birth of United Artists:
“The patients are taking over the asylum.”
By the mid-1920s, the former independents had become the mainstream, and
a new resistance rose, this time against them. It consisted of cine-clubs, political
networks (especially in Europe), and avant-garde movements (like surrealism).
While this new resistance never declared itself “independent” (it rather saw it-
self as serving “greater” needs), it did form significant inspiration for a second
moment.

Moment 2: Art House, Exploitation, and the New Waves (1959–75)

By the late 1950s, a new opportunity arose for a public debate over the dis-
tinction between mainstream and independent cinema—alternatives to main-
stream became visible and desirable again. World War II had destroyed much
of Europe’s commercial cinema (with notable exceptions, like the United King-
dom), and the 1948 “Paramount decision” had declared Hollywood’s vertical in-
tegration of production, distribution, and exhibition illegal. European art-house
films (like Rossellini’s Rome, Open City), and U.S.-grown exploitation movies,
like those from Roger Corman’s AIP (American Independent Pictures), prof-
ited from the opening, and gradually, in bits and pieces, grew into an alternative
for mainstream cinema. The 1959 breakthrough of the French “nouvelle vague,”
which combined art-house and exploitation elements, gave that development