Date: 12th January 2001

So, What's An Indie?


On the eve of this year's Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 18-28), festival director Geoffrey Gilmore is arguing that it may be time to alter the definition of independent films. In an interview with the London Independent newspaper, Gilmore observed that in the past, "American independent cinema was always defined as cinema having no resources, no actors of note, no technology, but those are boundaries that are no longer relevant." He noted that one of the films entered in this year's festival, Donnie Darko, employs remarkable special effects to tell a story about a teenager who moves through time portals to save his loved ones. (It was produced by Drew Barrymore.) Gilmore added that as a result of new digital technology, "what we'll see over this next decade is not a continuation of American independent cinema as we have seen it before, but a reinvention of that form... let's allow independent films to become what they want to be, not what they critics think they should be."

Source: Studio Briefing