American Independent Cinema

Anna Backman Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter One: Adolescence: Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suicides’ (1999); Adolescence: Gus Van Sant’s ‘Elephant’ (2003); Chapter Two: Death: Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Dead Man’ (1994); Death: Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days’ (2004); Chapter Three: Life-Crisis: Sofia Coppola’s ‘Somewhere’ (2011); Broken Flowers (2005); Conclusion: The Crisis-Image –Mumblecore and Beyond; Bibliography; Filmography; Index

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.