American Independent Cinema

American Independent Cinema offers a welcome original take on US indie films. The first book-length study to engage with this most popular of forms using Deleuze, it provides a refreshing political engagement with the aesthetics of US indies. Backman Rogers’ deft argument insightfully illuminates how US indie’s manifold bodies in crisis (for example, consider Bill Murray’s ubiquitous deadpan lethargic characters) produce a "radical or cerebral critique" of neoliberal USA. A sophisticated scholarly endeavour, the engaging prose enables Deleuze’s complex ideas to be realised in the most lucid way, and in relation to some of the most important films of recent decades: from Dead Man through Elephant and Broken Flowers to Somewhere. -- Professor David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow
Its arguments are lucid, thought provoking, and convincing; its remarks on individual movies are exemplary instances of close readings. The text should be read by anyone pursuing scholarly work on contemporary cinema, and its greatest value is perhaps that it offers inspiration and justifications for similar studies of other films.' -- Christopher K. Coffman, Boston University * Journal of Popular Film and Television *
[American independent cinema: rites of passage and the crisis image] presents case studies of films that offer aesthetic forms of ‘radical or cerebral critique’ (2). These films not only rethink what American independent cinema can do, but also rethink how we can think through cinema.' -- Laura Stamm, University of Pittsburgh * New Review of Film and Television Studies *