Continuing Explorations in Independent Screen Performance

Abstract

This chapter analyzes evolving cultural-aesthetic innovations that reflect independent films’ changing relationships with Hollywood and sustained connections with progressive cultural politics. It discusses performances in acclaimed films ranging from Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) to The Grand Budapest Hotel (W. Anderson, 2014) to The Master (P.T. Anderson, 2012), and sees different types of independent film stardom in the careers of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward James Olmos. It also analyzes performances in Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere (2012), which illuminates the interior life of a young black woman, Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night (2016), which combines a look at the Korean community in Los Angeles with a queer coming-of-age story, and Chloé Zhao’s naturalistic character study, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), set on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The chapter proposes that performances in American independent cinema will continue to reflect the influence of multiple aesthetic traditions, that independent filmmaking will remain a field for inquiries into the politics of representation, and that the interplay among performance details, music, setting, framing, and other formal elements will be an ongoing area of research in studies of American independent cinema.