ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a history of the complex relationship between American independent cinema and television, concentrating on the ways in which the latter has supported the independent film sector in the US. Focusing specifically on the details of this relationship in the 1980s, the chapter examines three key manifestations of the intersection between the two media: a) the role foreign public service broadcasters played in financing American independent film production from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s; b) PBS's American Playhouse series and the ways in which it blurred the lines between independent film and television; and pay-TV with a focus on how cable channels in the 1980s became ancillary exhibitors for independent film, contributing to its popularisation as a distinct category of filmmaking and as a brand and helping usher a new era in the 1990s when cable networks like HBO became also producers of films. Although strictly speaking it was only the PBS-sponsored American Playhouse ‘experiment’ that constituted an example of an institutionalised ‘indie tv’ that challenged the borders between independent film and television, the chapter shows that the presence of independent films in all these television sectors influenced their modus operandi in the long term.
