For more than 30 years, the Sundance Film Festival has served as the preeminent venue for exhibiting and selling American independent films. Since the festival’s inception, however, the distinction between Hollywood and indie films has become increasingly unclear, and Sundance has been accused of selling out to the mainstream. On one hand, the Sundance Institute continues to support and incubate truly independent artists who otherwise may never get their films made; on the other hand, the festival that the institute puts on every year is full of A-list stars, corporate sponsors, and countless other examples of Hollywood elitism. The American independent cinema is as vibrant in 2017 as ever, and new powerful players such as Netflix and Amazon who seemed to enter the scene overnight are now investing a great deal of money in the production and acquisition of Sundance films. Though it may seem counterintuitive, 2017’s edition of the festival proves that the presence of these massive corporations and Hollywood stars fosters and facilitates the creation and celebration of American independent film.

The goal of this study is to understand the institutional and cultural relationship between modern American independent film and the Academy Awards by focusing on the rise in success for independent films from 1992-2007. Two are two main approaches implemented throughout the work. The first focuses on the cultural construction of the indie brand on certain films during this time and the second analyzes how a production or distribution company tries to strategize the marketing of their films to boost their Oscar chances. These approaches allow a conversation for the occurrences of when these two meet and provide a coherent film identity I have identified as an “Oscar indie.” Starting with Miramax in the 1990s and ending with the Oscar race of 2007-08 a trend can be found which shows a rise in success of “indie” branded films at the Academy Awards. The implications of this trend are as simple as more “indie” films being released each year and as complicated as changing the face of the American film industry as a whole. / text

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In 2010, IFC (formerly Independent Film Channel) underwent a major rebrand campaign, which included a redesigned logo, tagline, and channel name; a transition to ad-supported programming and airing films with commercial interruptions; a reliance on original scripted comedy series; an emphasis on so-called 'blockbuster' indies over lesser-known films; and a general de-emphasis of independent film as the core of the brand identity. The features of the rebrand closely mirrored actions already taken by other film-based cable channels, most notably IFC's current parent channel, AMC (formerly American Movie Classics). In refashioning the IFC brand identity, IFC executives seized upon the instability of the term independent within existing discourses around independent film and music production and constructed a looser definition -- one that was no longer rooted in independent film and also hailed a very specific gendered, raced, and classed audience in order to attract new advertisers. This project contextualizes IFC's pre- and post-rebrand brand identity within the American independent film and music movements that began in the late 1980s and continued into the 1990s before analyzing the paratextual means through which the post-2010 IFC brand identity has been constructed, including upfront presentations, trade press coverage, press releases, on-air promotional spots, materials for prospective advertisers, images from graphic design agency portfolios, and IFC employee instructional guides on the use of language and image following the rebrand. Finally, this project examines how IFC has constructed its niche cable viewership following the rebrand in order to deliver the traditional commodity audience to its advertisers. Together, these analyses form a compelling look at the shifting discourses of independent cultural production and how independent-ness is situated within IFC's construction of a niche cable brand identity. / text

This thesis examines the influence of Romanticism on a selection of seven films from four contemporary American filmmakers: Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze. The research questions are as follows: How do particular Romantic ideas, either canonical ones or those located on the more critical fringes of Romanticism, relate to the work of the filmmakers I consider? What Romantic features do these films regularly exhibit, both aesthetically and in terms of narrative? How do these features inform their overall point of view? Finally, how do such Romantic ideas and aesthetics relate to the current cultural milieu in which the films were created? There are many familiar and more obscure Romantic strains running through the films. These include a preoccupation with personal history and memory; an undercurrent of deeply felt emotion and reliance upon mood and tone to convey it; a foregrounding of the creative process and the imagination; and an ambivalent relationship to both the natural world and civilised society. In terms of aesthetics, the films in question depend on qualities of the beautiful, picturesque, and sublime to represent the complex emotional states of their characters and to elicit emotional responses in their audiences. Above all, these films represent a preoccupation with subjectivity and self-consciousness: specifically, the coming to personal self-consciousness that creates a rift between the individual subject and a greater sense of society. By utilising the work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantic authors and philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, John Keats and others, combined with twentieth- and twenty-first century readings of these works via literary and cultural theorists and critics such as Harold Bloom, M.H. Abrams, Leo Marx and Anne Mellor, I emphasise the historical trajectory of general Romantic concepts. Taking established cinematic theories (“quirky” cinema, “smart” film, the “new sincerity”) as a point of entry, I explore the underlying stylistic and narrative connections between the films I discuss. I argue these films share a fundamentally Romantic form and vision specific to their own historical and cultural environment.

This study explores the reasons for the rise in independent film's popularity, which have created a unique Hollywood phenomenon, the successful "mini-major" independent studio, dedicated to both art and commerce. Chapters cover the history of independent film, characteristics of both independent and mainstreamfilms with regards to financing, acquisition, distribution and marketing, trends within independent film in the late 1980s and 1990s, crucial distributors and landmark independent films, and key growth areas in the future for independent film.

MIA-mi is a feature-length, micro-budget, and digital motion picture, produced, written, and directed by Yesenia Lima in pursuit of the Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The film is a satirical and naturalistic look at the standing global image of a city, Miami, FL, and its inhabitants. The guiding question behind the production is whether a portrayal of a city, outside of its stereotypical portrait in mass media, could spark and affect a dialogue on the global image of the city and its inhabitant's ability to adjust that image rather than conform to it. The film was produced in a micro-budget (under $50,000) model, following the program's guidelines. It was shot on location in Miami, FL, with a volunteer cast and crew. This thesis is a record of the film's development from inception to post-production, in preparation for distribution.

During the last 15 years, the film industry has undergone severe technological, cultural, and economic transformations initiated through online film distribution. Existing players need to adapt and innovate their business models to stay competitive. However, there is little knowledge about what players actually do in this respect. Since the film industry is of great economic and cultural importance, it is essential for researchers and managers alike to understand the transformations in the business models of film companies. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate which areas of the business models of Nordic film studios have been most affected by changes and how the studios have responded to these transformations. Based on a longitudinal, comparative case study of the companies SF Studios and Nordisk Film, the study reveals that distribution channels, revenue streams, margins, partner network, customer needs, and core offerings have changed the most. The main transformations can be seen in stronger partnerships and an increased focus on in-house production to serve the high demand for content, secure a content flow for distribution, and generate new revenues. / Under de senaste 15 åren har filmindustrin genomgått stora tekniska, kulturella och ekonomiska förändringar som inleddes av den digitala filmdistributionens uppkomst. För att förbli konkurrenskraftiga måste nuvarande aktörer anpassa och förnya sina affärsmodeller. Det finns dock lite kunskap om vad företagen faktiskt gör i detta avseende. Eftersom filmindustrin har ett stort ekonomiskt och kulturellt värde är det avgörande att förstå förändringar i filmbolagens affärsmodeller, både för forskare och ledare. Syftet med denna uppsats är därför att undersöka vilka delar av nordiska filmstudiors affärsmodeller som är mest drabbade av förändringar och hur studiorna har reagerat på detta. Baserat på en longitudinell, jämförande fallstudie av företagen SF Studios och Nordisk Film visar denna studie att distributionskanaler, intäkter, marginaler, partnernätverk, kundbehov och kärnutbud har förändrats mest. De huvudsakliga förändringarna visas i starkare partnerskap och ett ökat fokus på egen produktion, för att uppfylla den höga efterfrågan på innehåll, säkra ett innehållsflöde för distribution samt generera nya intäkter.

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