[Culture Op-Ed] Does “independent film” mean a film independent of capital?

On the 14th of last month, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced its “Korean Film Industry Development Plan.” The centerpiece was the establishment of an “Independent and Art Film Distribution Support Center” (tentative name). The center would support independent films so that they can secure sufficient screening opportunities, build a database of independent films, and connect films to public and private theaters. It is also considering creating an integrated ticketing system for independent films and supporting their submissions to international film festivals.

This is nothing new. There has hardly been any administration that did not announce “independent film support measures” at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism level. That has been the case for at least the past 15 years. Yet the truth is that no administration has ever clearly defined exactly what “independent film” means.

“Independent film.” One likely has a certain image in mind. First, it is supposed to be low-budget. It is not the kind of film that brings in famous stars or directors. It may also seem somehow non-commercial and notably artistic. Rather than polished and sleek, it gives the impression of being rough and raw. That is the general image that has long been attached to “independent film.” But why, exactly, should “such films” be endlessly supported with taxpayer money? To answer that, let us first examine the general definition of “independent film.”

To begin with, independent film is a concept that originated in the American film industry. By the mid-1930s, five Hollywood studios had grown especially large and come to dominate the market; these were called the “major studios.” They were MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO, also known as the “Big Five.” Most of them also owned their own theater chains, giving them vertically integrated power over production, distribution, and exhibition. Today, Disney, Universal, and Columbia would be included among the majors. RKO went bankrupt in 1959, and 20th Century Fox was sold to Disney in 2019.

Then, in the 1940s, people began to emerge who were dissatisfied with this “Big Five” studio system. They criticized the fact that the overwhelming majority of films could not escape the influence of the Big Five, making it impossible to produce and distribute films that did not suit their tastes. That led to the establishment of SIMPP, the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, which targeted Paramount in particular for giving preferential treatment to its own films by screening them in its own theater chain. This ultimately led to the announcement of the so-called “Paramount law” in 1948, which barred vertical integration between production and exhibition.

In the end, the origin of “independent film” was simple. It was a concept created in opposition to the vertical integration of the major studios. It was coined by filmmakers dissatisfied with “major studio-style films” and wanting to create something different. In other words, “independent film” can simply be understood to mean film that is “independent of the major studios.”

And that concept continues to this day. Once a particular studio grows large enough to be called “major,” the films it produces are no longer considered “independent films.” In fact, that threshold is largely arbitrary. There is no clear standard. In the 1990s, for example, when Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax scored major hits with films such as Pulp Fiction and The English Patient, many argued that it could no longer really be called an independent production company. Yet the company itself insisted on that positioning and continued to be treated as an independent film company. That is to say, the concept was vague from the start.

But if we apply this to the Korean context, it becomes even stranger.

Star Wars and Terminator were also independent films by global standards

In Korea, what would count as a “major studio”? Given that the concept of independent film originally arose in relation to the Paramount law, only two companies in Korea really fit the definition: CJ Entertainment and Lotte Entertainment, both of which operate vertically integrated systems of production, distribution, and exhibition. Showbox is excluded, as it sold off the Megabox theater chain long ago.

But “everyone else” in Korea is not called an independent production company either. The reason is not even clear. There is even an argument that they are not independent film companies because they collude with CGV or Lotte Cinema to give their films wide release and earn large profits. If so, then would films called independent cease to be independent once they are screened at CGV or Lotte Cinema? That is not the case either. Films like Old Partner and My Love, Don’t Cross That River, each of which drew more than 3 million viewers through screenings at CGV or Lotte Cinema, are still called independent films.

There are more counterexamples. In the United States, major studios often have separate “independent film labels.” Nearly every studio operates such a label. Low-budget films seeking small-scale distribution are assigned to these labels. Paramount had Paramount Classics; Sony, which owns Columbia, has Sony Pictures Classics. These are independent film labels. Even the mini-major New Line had a separate independent film label called Fine Line.

So what if, in Korea, CJ created a label called CJ Classics and Lotte created one called Lotte Classics? They would probably still not be accepted as independent film labels. Judging by the claims made by Korea’s independent film circles so far, there is a high likelihood they would argue those do not count either, because independent films are supposed to be independent from big business “capital.” The Doosan Encyclopedia’s definition of “independent film” similarly says it is “a film produced according to the creator’s intent without relying on existing commercial capital.”

But even that position creates problems. Consider the case of George Lucas’s globally successful Star Wars franchise. The first Star Wars film in 1977 was made with financing from the major studio 20th Century Fox, but the second film, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, and the third, Return of the Jedi in 1983, were completed with the entire production budget directly borrowed from banks by Lucasfilm, George Lucas’s own production company, after Lucas had earned their confidence with the first film. Since this was not “existing commercial capital,” those films would be textbook independent films. More importantly, Lucas himself was the director, producer, and screenwriter, and he borrowed the money himself to make them, which fits exactly with the definition of “films produced according to the creator’s intent.”

On reflection, there are more cases like this than one might think. For example, The Terminator and Terminator 2, which helped define the model of commercial film in the 1980s and 1990s, were also in effect independent films. The context is very similar to Star Wars. Yet Star Wars and Terminator have never been classified or discussed as independent films by Korea’s independent film circles, not in the past, not now, and not in the future.

“We support it because it is art” — but what exactly is being defined as art?

If one asks why, the natural answer would be something like this: “Star Wars was made to make money, not to pursue artistry.” And indeed, Korea’s Korea-specific definition of independent film works that way. A 2004 Film Dictionary offers the following explanation:

“Whereas commercial films inevitably develop content advantageous from a marketing perspective in order not only to recoup production costs but also to generate excess profit, independent films are characterized by containing alternative content and forms intended to express the thematic consciousness of the producer or director.”

To begin with, it is unclear what “content advantageous from a marketing perspective” even means. Does it mean repeating the narrative development of previous success stories? If so, what about commercial films that pursue original storytelling? The notion that independent films embody “alternative content and forms” for expressing the producer’s or director’s thematic consciousness is also highly ambiguous. To begin with, how the concept of “alternative” should be interpreted in an artistic genre is itself a matter of debate.

This is why Korea overlays independent film with the concept of “art film.” That is also why the name of the new organization in the Ministry’s Korean Film Industry Development Plan is the “Independent and Art Film Distribution Support Center.” The logic is that independent film = art film, and therefore it is worthy of taxpayer support. But how, exactly, is one supposed to determine what is art and what is not? More importantly, who is supposed to decide?

There is a representative counterexample. Since 1952, the British film magazine Sight & Sound, founded in 1932, has conducted a once-every-ten-years poll of film critics and related artists around the world to rank the greatest films of all time. In the most recent poll in 2012, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo ranked first. But in 1958, Vertigo was not treated as an “art film” in any sense. The overwhelming majority regarded it simply as a “failed commercial film.” It was reappraised mainly by French critics in the 1960s and 1970s, and that is how it rose to its current stature.

Most of the rest are much the same. A great many films now regarded as all-time classics and artistic pinnacles were, in their own day, never discussed in terms of “art” at all. Conversely, many films once hailed as great art came to be seen less than ten years later as dreadful works not even worth mentioning. Whether something has artistic value or not changes with the times and with the perspective of the times, and it is not something that can be created by intention alone or guaranteed to provoke the intended response.

At this point, the concept of “independent film as art film” inevitably falls apart. So too does the logic for supporting it on that basis. If an independent film funded with tax money because it “seemed like an art film” is then harshly criticized and never mentioned again, should that now be considered a misuse of tax money?

The essence of “Korean-style independent film” is not independence from capital but subordination to public-sector concepts

At this point, it becomes ever more unclear what exactly “independent film,” as defined by the independent film world and the public-sector institutions that support it, is supposed to mean. It cannot simply mean low-budget film, and it comes with the strange label of “art film,” which itself is hard to define. So what is it? At this point, one needs to pay attention to a recurring peculiarity in the definitions used by various media sources, many of which likely reflect the views of the independent film world itself.

“It refers to films produced by a director’s own production or by non-commercial capital, separately from film capital that aims to earn profits exceeding production costs. Funding may be raised privately, or support may be received from the government or organizations.” (Film Dictionary)

“Because in most cases the result is unrelated to commercial purposes” (Comics and Animation Dictionary)

“Most are low-budget or financed privately. They receive financial support from government programs or funds.” (Dictionary of Video Content Production)

A few recurring codes emerge. First, it does not matter whether the film makes money or not; it may even lose money. Second, the production budget is to be provided mainly through public-sector channels. These are elements that do not even exist in the concept of “independent film” in the overwhelming majority of countries, including the United States. One could call this a Korea-specific concept of independent film. The Namu Wiki entry paints the situation even more frankly and in more dimensions:

“The significance of independent film lies in excluding the pressure of capital, which inevitably accompanies commercial filmmaking in the form of recouping production costs and generating profit, and in creating the conditions for diverse artistic experimentation. However, because filmmaking still costs a great deal of money, it is almost impossible to be completely free from the influence of capital unless one either makes films entirely with one’s own money as one pleases, or makes them with other people’s money that one does not have to repay (such as independent film support programs like the Korean Film Council fund).”

Exactly. As the independent film world argues, there is in practice only one way to make films free from the influence of capital: to make them with public funds of various kinds. Of course, that requires the prior premise that those funds are not intended to be recouped.

This raises a question. If so, then what exactly is Korean independent film — “Korea-specific independent film” — supposed to be independent from? Anywhere else in the world, independent films are “independent” only in the sense that they are free from the “box-office formula” controlled by major studios. No one claims that it is therefore perfectly fine for them to keep losing money indefinitely. In fact, there is not a single country that uses the term that way. Everywhere else, independent film is proclaimed in the spirit of cultivating “its own market,” of pioneering a new market that has not yet been properly tested or developed.

In the end, Korean independent film can be understood not as film that is “independent from capital,” but as film that is “independent from private capital” and, conversely, “subordinate to public capital.” That is the limitation of Korean-style independent film. The very idea of public capital being given “without conditions” is an illusion. Public-sector mechanisms, whatever they do, inevitably possess their own limitations and characteristics, just like every other field. For example, suppose one is in a position where one must obtain public funding, and one submits a film proposal that thoroughly criticizes the “current government,” which at least temporarily controls those public institutions. Would that proposal really be able to secure unconditional funding from the public sector? Or rather, has there been even one such case under the current administration? That is precisely the most fatal “condition” of all.

If, at this point, one takes the position that “all independent filmmakers support the current administration anyway, so there is no need even to consider such a case,” then one can only conclude that one has already become confused about what one is saying. That is exactly how typical totalitarian fascism begins.

To repeat, the Korea-specific concept of independent film can be defined more concretely as “film independent from private capital” and “film subordinate to public capital.” Strictly speaking, it is the latter trait that is more distinctive in comparison with other countries. In the end, the term “independent film” is less appropriate than “subordinate film.” Of course, there have been films subordinate to public capital overseas as well. There were propaganda films made during wartime, including World War II. But no one anywhere regarded them as “independent” from anything.

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 독립영화는 ‘자본으로부터 독립된 영화’를 가리킨다?

Author: Mun-won Lee

Date: 2019-12-02

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=11&idx=22110