Meaningful Concept

As an aficionado and potentially aspiring member of the independent film community, I very much respect any filmmaker who deliberately chooses not to take part in the easier, though limiting, realm of Hollywood filmmaking. Thus, the "LA Rebellion" of the late seventies, outlined by Reid on page 11, is especially meaningful to me. All filmmakers, yes, who decide to work outside the system are to be admired, but this particular wave of filmmakers, being university trained, could have easily gotten much more steadily-paying jobs in equal opportunity Hollywood (13). So it would have been a very understandable reality had there been no "rebellion" during this time period, and Black filmmakers had sought economic stability over the ability to more directly control their films. These black filmmaking rebels were influenced by other revolutions that made their own lasting impacts on cinema (Italian Neorealism, French New Wave), yet the films of the LA Rebellion were able to truly explore what it meant to be Black in ways that Hollywood-produced cinema could not. Regretfully, this choice to work outside the system can lead to a smaller budget and thus less production capabilities, but that "lack of money" really came to define the LA Rebels' style (12). Also, though both types of Black filmmaking at this time used African American actors, popular music, and genres, the Hollywood filmmakers, even with their higher budgets, were usually not university trained, and also were often restricted to "exploit[ing] the more exotic elements of the Black American experience," as opposed to possibly limitless range of ideas to be explored by the independents (12-13). So, if it were not for those LA Rebels, Black independent film, and independent cinema as a whole, could not exist as it does today.