Acting Indie: Industry, Aesthetics, and Performance

by Cynthia Baron, Yannis Tzioumakis

Overview

This book illustrates the many ways that actors contribute to American independent cinema. Analyzing industrial developments, it examines the impact of actors as writers, directors, and producers, and as stars able to attract investment and bring visibility to small-scale productions. Exploring cultural-aesthetic factors, the book identifies the various traditions that shape narrative designs, casting choices, and performance styles. The book offers a genealogy of industrial and aesthetic practices that connects independent filmmaking in the studio era and the 1960s and 1970s to American independent cinema in its independent, indie, indiewood, and late-indiewood forms. Chapters on actors’ involvement in the evolution of American independent cinema as a sector alternate with chapters that show how traditions such as naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and Third Cinema influence films and performances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137408624
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/30/2020
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance
Edition description:	1st ed. 2020
Pages:	347
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Cynthia Baron is a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University, USA. Her most recent book is Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre.

Yannis Tzioumakis is a Reader in Film and Media Industries at the University of Liverpool, UK. He is the author of four books, most recently American Independent Cinema, 2nd Edition, and co-editor of six anthologies.

Table of Contents

Introducing Acting Indie: Key Principles in Approaching a Field of Study.-Actors and the Eras of American Independent Cinema.-Acting and Aesthetics in American Independent Cinema.-Independent Film Production and Performance in the Hollywood Renaissance.-Acting Innovations on the Coasts in the 1960s and 1970s.-Neo-Naturalism, Regional Film, Quality Cinema.-Key Expressions in the Independent Cinema Era.-Stardom and the Indie Film Industry.-A Diversity of Performances under the “Indie” Label.-Specialty Film Divisions and Indie-Hollywood Stars.-The Richness of Twenty-First-Century Performances.-Beyond “indiewood”: American Independent Cinema in the Digital Age.-Continuing Explorations in Independent Screen Performance

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“the book is unique in its framing and ambition. By alternating chapters on actors’ contributions to the evolution of American independent cinema with chapters showing how formalist traditions (e.g. naturalism, modernism, postmodernism) influence both performance and cinema at large, Baron and Tzioumakis provide a text especially useful to scholars of either sub-field looking for further interdisciplinarity. Despite the familiarity of its topics, the text feels especially fresh and well situated for current graduate students” (Adam Christian Clark, University of Southern California, for Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television)

“This is an important contribution to scholarship on American independent cinema and on actors & acting, two fields of study which have seen tremendous growth in recent years but are rarely explored together. Expertly combining textual and contextual, performance and industrial analysis, this book will, I think, soon come to be regarded as a milestone.” (Peter Krämer, author of The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars, and editor of Screen Acting)

Editorial Reviews

The text feels especially fresh and well situated for current graduate students of theatre, cinema, and media studies.” (Adam Christian Clark, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, February 26, 2020)

From the Publisher