Me and You and Memento and Fargo

An enormous burst of creative production has recently emerged from American "independent" filmmakers. From Stranger than Paradise (1984) and Slacker (1991) to Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), indie cinema has become part of mainstream American culture. But what makes these films independent? Me and You and Memento and Fargo argues that the American independent feature film from the 1980s to the present has developed a distinct approach to filmmaking, centering on new conceptions of cinematic storytelling. One consequence of this is to show the uniqueness of this phenomenon by positioning it as a hybrid form that exists somewhere between the classical Hollywood tradition and "art cinema."