Jason Wood,
100 American Independent Films.
London: BFI Publishing, 2004.
ISBN: 1 844 57006 1
204 pp
UK£13.99
(Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing)
Jason Wood’s 100 American Independent Films is one of the first titles to be released in the new BFI Screen Guides series and in its pages represents something of the purpose of the series. It is essentially a personal encyclopaedia of the field, prioritising the individual response as much as the informational foundation of the film guide. Small and squat, in format it resembles a notebook more than a textbook, a likeness also present in its content. Wood’s contribution to the field is more interested in sharing ideas and motivating interest in the American independent film, than it is with developing new work in the area or challenging and recreating definitions at its heart. Scott McGhee and David Siegel (Suture) in their preface, at first acknowledge the notion of steadfast and irrefutable markers of “independence” (whether financial or aesthetic) and then somewhat abandon them in favour of an elusive notion of “spirit”. Such a concept is ultimately invoked by Wood to justify the inclusion of some titles the author worries will surprise the reader, but which are essentially tied to the personal nature of the project and the sometimes inexplicable love for a film.
The accessibility of the text ultimately informs the theoretical simplicity underpinning the work – establishing workable criteria and explaining the inclusion of some questionable examples of the field (Soderbergh’s Schizopolis is invoked on this charge), Wood wastes little effort in laying the conceptual foundation upon which his 100 entries rest. He contextualises his selection with a brief theoretical and historical introduction to independent American cinema, including some of the filmmakers and movements which were excluded for the sake of refining the task. The bulk of the volume is occupied by the title entries in which Wood calls on published scholarly and popular material to provide critical and factual commentary (Hiller’s and Pierson’s work on independent cinema features heaviest). Each entry suggests a position within a larger system of production, be it generic, industrial or historical, and points to other films by which to read its position. Wood acknowledges the development and cultivation of genres largely unique to the independent scene – New Queer Cinema, the Horror New Wave of the Seventies, the Slacker pic – and attempts to thread such a reading through the included films. However, the alphabetical film-per-entry format of the book discourages such an approach to connect these films conceptually. There’s no real sense of an overarching cohesion forged among the hundred titles, instead they come across as a sometimes disparate collection of texts unified, at times precariously, by the notion of an “independent spirit”, itself an entirely subjective notion. This is not necessarily a weakness in the book – ultimately it points to the heterogeneity of the independent industry and the texts produced within its nebulous structure.
No doubt every reader will lament the exclusion of at least one of their own personal favourites, as McGhee and Siegel do of Billy Jack in their preface to the book, but such exclusions are entirely consistent with the nature of this new BFI Screen Guides series, focused as it is on allowing scholars to map their creative terrain with a degree of personal investment. The book skates the thin line between an encyclopaedic guide and a personal survey. Ultimately the format tends to drag after a couple of dozen entries as the limited word count for each title is inevitably consumed by production data with a tantalising hint of more substantial analysis and assessment. In a sense this particular Screen Guide feels like scanning a personal video or DVD collection – the cover is really all you have to go by. The cover text reveals fragments, from the names and details of production to the clues emitted by the design and images. What you really need in order to gather a reliable account of what each piece entails is to be let into the film itself, or to hear the collector’s account of what makes each one distinctive and unique. 100 American Independent Films would benefit from more of this kind of personal exposition. As it stands there is too much in the way of production background, synopsis, and details of particular merits to consider it as a personal celebration of cinema, and not enough for an encyclopaedic record.
What this title suggests about the BFI Screen Guides series is that it will occupy a position somewhere between the scholarly volume and the concise guidebook. In this respect it establishes itself as an adaptable text at home on the reference shelf or coffee table, but with no certainty of longevity.
Katy Stevens.
La Trobe University, Australia.
Created on: Monday, 6 December 2004 | Last Updated: 30-Nov-04