ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between American indie film and the broader realm of international art cinema. It uses the term "indie" here to signify a particular range of American independent cinema that came to prominence in the period from around the mid-1980s to early 1990s and that has remained a reasonably distinct category to date. A more explicit account of the relationship between specifically American indie film and art cinema is offered by Michael Newman. American indie film has largely been ignored in most academic accounts of art cinema, the international or global basis of which is often also marked in distinction from a US cinema sometimes seemingly conflated with Hollywood. The chapter suggests that art cinema is one major pole of influence on the sector, in textual dimensions such as prevalence of low-key or more complex narrative strategies and in use of both realist and expressive formal approaches.
