Imagined LifeAmerican Independent Cinema and Transcendentalism

A revisionist account and analysis of American independent cinema that accords with the American philosophy of Transcendentalism

• Delivers a revisionist account of American independent cinema that provides an original framework for its analysis and appreciation
• Examines the American philosophy of Transcendentalism in relation to American history, culture and film, thereby situating American independent cinema within a long tradition of American thought and protest
• Offers contextual, thematic and comparative analysis of key films in recent and contemporary American independent cinema, including films directed by Kelly Reichardt, Sean Baker, Ramin Bahrani as well as Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, Eliza Hittman, Debra Granik and Andrew Bujalski, amongst others
• Provides an overview of recent and contemporary American independent cinema as well as close readings that combine film theory with philosophy in their attention to film aesthetics as the carrier of thought and the vehicle of protest
• Explores a range of case studies of key films including Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), First Cow (Reichardt, 2019) and Nomadland (Zhao, 2020) and more

Imagined Life: American Independent Cinema and Transcendentalism examines the prevailing characteristics of American independent cinema and explores its longstanding debt to the Transcendentalists. This nineteenth-century New England group, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, subscribed to an idealistic philosophy based upon an intuitive and imaginative understanding that knowledge transcends logic and empiricism.

By analysing a range of American independent films, this book reveals a vital nexus operating in contemporary America between this uniquely North American philosophy and quintessentially American film.

Just as the Transcendentalists strategised immersion, observation and reflection and sought empathy as the key to meaning, which came when adherents acquired trust in themselves to comprehend what was morally right, so this volume argues that this same strategy informs and characterises the creative praxes prevalent in recent and contemporary American independent cinema. To the extent that American independent cinema continues to provide a forum for marginalised identities, whether these be racial, sexual, political or even philosophical, this study demonstrates that the conscience of America is sustained and strengthened in independent films that embody Transcendentalist ideas and praxes.