with its use of Hong Kong action film techniques
and the characters’ flying sequences.
An outgrowth of CGI was animated films. Disney
had long led the field in animation that was created
mostly for children, but in 1995, it introduced
Toy Stor y, a computer-generated animation. Later,
Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former animator at Disney,
lured animators away from Disney to join his new stu-
dio, DreamWorks, and began producing computer-
generated animated films includingThe Prince of Egypt
(1998) andAntz(1998) for different audiences.
Independent Films The traditional concept of the
independent film as a small, low-budget film with
unconventional subject matter that expresses the
filmmaker’s perspective was no longer valid in the
1990’s. Hollywood’s persistent search for the block-
buster to the exclusion of smaller, more socially con-
scious films, along with the shrinking foreign film
market in the United States, has created a niche for
serious films—whether made on an individual’s
shoestring budget or on a larger budget filmed at an
“independent” arm of a major studio. Ties between
Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival and large
studios have raised concerns about the potential
profitability of independent films. Also, the record
of Miramax pictures, an “independent” subsidiary
of Disney, suggests that Disney enforced its own
agenda onto Miramax, consequently doing its part
to banish the true independent film into oblivion.
Typically, independent films are made by individ-
uals who have been denied a voice in white-male-
controlled Hollywood. Of these individuals, many
women have stories to tell of their own experiences
that connect with other women. Allison Anders de-
picted the bleak existence of a single-parent waitress
in her initial effortGas, Food, Lodgingin 1992. Nancy
Savoca continued her films of Italian American cul-
ture withDogfight(1991), in which an unattractive
girl has been unwittingly entered into an ugly girl
contest. Maggie Greenwald wrote and directedThe
Ballad of Little Jo(1993), which concerns a girl in a
circumspect family who gives birth to an illegitimate
child and, being subsequently cast out, spends the
remainder of her life in the frontier West passing as a
man. Mary Harron’sI Shot Andy Warhol(1996) de-
picts Valerie Solanas as an unsympathetic man-hater
whose reason for shooting Warhol is not made clear.
Numerous non-white directors rose to fame in
the 1990’s. Spike Lee, who began in independents
and soon switched to studio-financed films, re-
turned to independent inGet on the Bus(1996),
about the Million Man March on Washington, D.C.
Charles Burnett’sTo Sleep with Anger(1990) cautions
black viewers against forgetting their past oppres-
sion, andThe Glass Shield(1994) surveys racism and
corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department.
John Singleton’sBoyz ’N the Hood(1991) explores Af-
rican American issues of gang violence, drug cul-
ture, and the absence of strong father figures.
Reginald Hudlin’s comedyHouse Party(1990) is no-
table for its absence of violence. Julie Dash’s stun-
ningDaughters of the Dust(1991) provides a history of
the Gullah culture. Asian American filmmakers—
Wayne Wang inSmoke(1995) andBlue in the Face
(1995), and Ang Lee inSense and Sensibility(1995)
andThe Ice Storm(1997)—both demonstrated a
shift in concern from Asian issues to American sen-
sibilities.
Many white male independent filmmakers con-
tinued careers begun one or two decades earlier. Jim
Jarmusch continued in the 1990’s with the visually
strikingDead Man(1995) and others; veteran film-
maker John Sayles released five films in the 1990’s,
most remarkablyLone Star(1996), which explores
corruption and interracial relationships over gener-
ations. Master of the controversial, David Lynch
again baffled film audiences—this time withLost
Highway(1997). A newer generation of filmmakers
who commented on the excesses of modern life in-
cluded Richard Linklater inSlacker(1991), whose
characters talk aimlessly, and Hal Hartley, whose
films about self-knowledge reached an apex inHenr y
Fool(1997). Other low-budget independent films
whose fame and earnings soared were Robert Rodri-
guez’s El Mariachi (1992); Kevin Smith’s Clerks
(1994), the story of a day in the life of a convenience
store employee; Quentin Tarantino’s violentPulp
Fiction(1994); Billy Bob Thornton’s 1996 directorial
debut,Sling Blade; and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo
Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Project (1999), which
grossed well over $200 million.Film Noir Since the birth of noir, films have seemed
to delight in exposing the underside of the Ameri-
can Dream and concentrating on moral disorder.
Noir films of the 1990’s, mostly in color, are classified
as postmodern noirs, in that they typically appropri-
ate past forms, suggesting that creativity resides not
in authenticity, but in the reworking of the social and334 Film in the United States The Nineties in America