Not Hollywood
Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10496675 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yannis Tzioumakis (0000-0002-6224-2959, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 155-158 |
| Publication date | 2014-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Screen (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-9543 • E-ISSN: 1460-2474 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/screen/hjt048 |
| OpenAlex | W2314398038 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
It is not common for scholars specializing in one particular discipline to undertake long-term research projects in a seemingly unrelated one. Understanding the history of a field of study, becoming acquainted with its (often) vast literature, being trained in research methods that may be area-specific, and a host of other factors provide often insurmountable problems for a scholar wishing to engage with a new field. Thus this recent contribution from leading anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner to the ever expanding scholarly literature on US independent cinema has come as something of a surprise, particularly as the only comparable example of such a switch took place more than sixty years ago, with the publication of Hortense Powdermaker's Hollywood: the Dream Factory.1 Ortner originally aimed to replicate Powdermaker's study (p. 2), but having found it impossible to gain access to contemporary film studios she decided instead to focus on the more accessible independent film sector in the USA. With a long and distinguished career that includes extensive fieldwork with indigenous people in Nepal, Not Hollywood is part of Ortner's more recent focus on the USA and questions relating to class mobility, on which she has also done widely recognized work. It appears that her training as an ethnographer and her expertise on issues of class are also her entry points to the study of independent film. Both of these are safe choices for an ‘outsider’, given film studies' long history of engagement with questions of class and its representation on the screen, and the discipline's more recent adoption of ethnographic research methods, mainly as a result of its increasing convergence with other cognate fields such as media and cultural studies (where such methods have had a much longer presence)
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Dream · Film director · Film studies · Hollywood · Indigenous · Media studies · Movie theater · Sociology · Studio · Surprise · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Psychology · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2022 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |