Želimir Žilnik and Eastern European Independent Cinema

e vast majority of literature devoted to independent cinema focuses on American fi lm production. When I was looking for books on independent cinema in my university library, out of about twenty fi ve, I identifi ed twenty or so devoted exclusively to American cinema. For the majority of scholars and students, using the term “independent” means independent from Hollywood, not only in terms of fi nancing and distribution, but also in style and ideology. “Independence” thus cuts across all aspects of a fi lm’s life: production, distribution and text. An American independent fi lm tends to have a low-budget, is viewed in smaller venues (such as university campuses) than block-busters, addresses a more sophisticated audience, breaks with genre conventions, rarely uses stars, diverts from a smooth narrative, and displays a critical attitude to the dominant ideology. Such a defi nition, however, carries many problems, as it assumes “dependent” cinema as being monolithic, while in reality it is heterogeneous. Th us, few independent fi lms “tick all the boxes” of independence, leaving critics to decide which aspect of the fi lm to privilege. Nevertheless, in most publications, independence manifested through a fi lm’s text is prioritised. For example, Scott Macdonald gave the title A Critical Cinema to his book of interviews with leading fi gures in American independent cinema, and announced in the introduction that “One of the goals of these critical fi lmmakers has been to place our awareness and acceptance of the commercial forms and their highly conventionalized modes of representation into crisis.”[1] Indepen dent fi lmmakers oft en make fi lms about independent and “dependent” fi lmmaking and, in a wider sense, about the status of art. Elsewhere, Macdonald underscores the link between independent cinema and individual authorship. Independent fi lmmakers “oft en appear personally with the fi lms, just as poets traditionally travel to read their works.”[2] It is the norm to regard independent fi lmmmakers as auteurs, as demonstrated by the fact that publications on this topic privilege fi lmmakers over fi lms, as in the previously quoted three-volume work by Scott Macdonald or in “American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader,” which includes sections such as “Pioneers,” “African Americans,” “Queers” and “Miniaturists and Minimalists.”[3] Th e concept of independent cinema in the West and in the East ewa mazierska