- Also called:
- history of the motion picture
- Related Topics:
- film
At the end of the 20th century, the notion of national cinemas had become problematic in many of the traditional film cultures of western Europe. This is not to say that national cinemas had ceased to exist—the situation of France would contradict such an assertion—but that the trends toward international coproduction and toward filmmakers and performers working in different countries and languages had reached a stage where coherent film movements identified with a particular national culture, such as Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, or New German Cinema, had become difficult to identify or sustain. A film such as Heaven (2002), cowritten by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski, with Tom Tykwer from Germany as director, set in Italy and spoken in Italian and English by American and Australian lead actors, seemed the rule rather than the exception. Another example is provided by the German-born director Michael Haneke, whose movies included the Austrian Der siebente Kontinent (1989; The Seventh Continent), the French and German La pianiste (2001: The Piano Teacher), the French Caché (2005), the German Das weisse band: Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009; The White Ribbon), and the French-language Amour (2012). French director Michel Gondry, known in France for La science des rêves (2006; The Science of Sleep), shared a writing Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), his best-known movie, and also directed the comedies Be Kind Rewind (2008) and The Green Hornet (2011). Even as many countries produced substantial numbers of films, the idea of nationality was exemplified more by singular individuals than by wider groupings.
Among the outstanding figures of European cinema were Pedro Almodóvar of Spain, Manoel de Oliveira of Portugal, Théo Angelopoulos of Greece, Aki Kaurismäki of Finland, and Nanni Moretti of Italy. Almodóvar, who had broken sexual taboos in his early work, entered a mature period of great human subtlety and complexity in the 1990s and 2000s with such works as La flor de mi secreto (1995; The Flower of My Secret), Carne trémula (1997; Live Flesh), Todo sobre mi madre (1999; All About My Mother), Habla con ella (2002; Talk to Her), La mala educación (2004; Bad Education), Volver (2006), La piel que habito (2011; The Skin I Live In), Julieta (2016), and Dolor y gloria (2019; Pain and Glory). Other Spanish filmmakers included Fernando León de Aranoa, director of Los lunes al sol (2002; Mondays in the Sun) and A Perfect Day (2015).
Oliveira—who was born in 1908, made his first films in the 1930s, and was artistically restricted for years by the Portuguese dictatorship—continued to direct until his death at age 106. He had perhaps his most productive period after 1990 with such films as Vale Abraão (1993; Abraham’s Valley) and Viagem ao princípio do mundo (1997; Voyage to the Beginning of the World), the latter starring Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni in his last screen role. Oliveira’s later films included Um filme falado (2003; A Talking Picture), Singularidades de uma rapariga loura (2009; Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl), and O Gebo e a sombra (2012; Gebo and the Shadow).
Angelopoulos, a master of Greek cinema since his first feature film in 1970, made several ambitious works fusing the personal and the historical: To Vlemma tou Odyssea (1995; Ulysses’ Gaze), Mia aeoniotita ke mia mera (1998; Eternity and a Day), and I skoni tou hronou (2008; The Dust of Time). Kaurismäki, one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan filmmakers, returned to Finnish themes in Kauas pilvet karkaavat (1996; Drifting Clouds), Mies vailla menneisyyttä (2002; The Man Without a Past), Laitakaupungin valot (2006; Lights in the Dusk), and Toivon tuolla puolen (2017; The Other Side of Hope). Moretti became a popular figure in Italy by writing, directing, and performing in his own films, of which Caro diario (1993; Dear Diary), La stanza del figlio (2001; The Son’s Room), and Mia madre (2015); My Mother) were exemplary.
The one concerted effort to launch a film movement in Europe came from a filmmakers’ collective in Denmark, which unveiled a doctrine called Dogme 95 (Dogma 95) at the Cannes film festival in 1998. The 10 rules of the Dogme manifesto argued against technological gadgetry in cinema and for a straightforward realism in style and content. A leader of the group was Lars von Trier, a Danish director whose films included the English-language Breaking the Waves (1996). The first Dogme work, Festen (1998; The Celebration), directed by Thomas Vinterberg, was well received, and dozens of films were subsequently released under the movement’s banner, including works by American and French directors as well as by Danes.
France
In France, cinema remained at the forefront of cultural and intellectual life, and French film and television companies managed to finance a rich and varied group of filmmakers while also helping to support production in such other regions as eastern Europe and Africa. Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda remained active after nearly half a century as directors, and French New Wave figures, including Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer, continued to make films. In 2001 alone, among the year’s most innovative and challenging films were Rohmer’s L’Anglaise et le duc (The Lady and the Duke), Rivette’s Va savoir (Who Knows?), and Godard’s Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love).
New works by mature and emerging French filmmakers played a central role in international art cinema at the turn of the 21st century. A partial list of prominent names, with their films, would include Olivier Assayas, director of L’Eau froide (1994; Cold Water), Irma Vep (1996), and Fin août, début septembre (1998; Late August, Early September); Claire Denis, with Nénette et Boni (1996; Nenette and Boni) and Beau travail (1999; Good Work); Bruno Dumont, who made La Vie de Jésus (1997; The Life of Jesus) and L’Humanité (1999); Catherine Breillat, director of Romance (1999) and Sex Is Comedy (2002); and Raúl Ruiz, who worked in France after going into exile from Chile in 1973, with Trois vies et une seule mort (1996; Three Lives and Only One Death) and Le Temps retrouvé (1999; Time Regained). French-language cinema also saw the emergence in Belgium of the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, whose films La Promesse (1996; The Promise), Rosetta (1999), Le Fils (2002; The Son), L’Enfant (2005; The Child), and Deux jours, une nuit (2014; Two Days, One Night) examined the moral quandaries involved in issues of employment and unemployment in contemporary Europe. Other notable filmmakers included Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001; Amélie) and Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004; A Very Long Engagement) won widespread notice, and Jacques Audiard, who directed Un prophète (2009; A Prophet) and De rouille et d’os (2012; Rust and Bone).
Great Britain
After a period in which filmmaking appeared to be subordinated to television production, British cinema experienced a revival in the 1990s. Two major figures whose careers followed this pattern were Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, who began their careers as film directors, worked primarily in television during the 1970s and ’80s, and then resumed film production. Leigh’s works included High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1991), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999), Vera Drake (2004), Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010), Mr, Turner (2014), and Peterloo (2018). Loach directed Riff-Raff (1991), Raining Stones (1993), Ladybird Ladybird (1994), Land and Freedom (1995), My Name Is Joe (1998), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), The Angels’ Share (2012), and I, Daniel Blake (2016) among other films, all of which centered on themes of working-class life. Loach set several of his films in Scotland; other works on Scottish subjects included Trainspotting (1996), directed by Danny Boyle, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002), and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013).
British filmmakers also were active in alternative cinema practices. A founder of the black British Sankofa workshop, Isaac Julien made documentary and fiction films including Looking for Langston (1989), Young Soul Rebels (1991), Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996), and BaadAsssss Cinema (2002), the latter a documentary on 1970s American blaxploitation films. Bullet Boy (2004), directed by Saul Dibb, John Akomfrah’s The Stuart Hall Project (2013), Amma Asante’s Belle (2013), and Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014) also center on the Black British experience. Steve McQueen, an artist who won the Turner Prize in 1999, began directing feature films with Hunger (2008) and made Shame (2011), the highly acclaimed 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Widows (2018). Derek Jarman’s films dealt with the subject of male homosexuality; his Blue (1993) was a remarkable work showing only a monochrome blue screen while on the sound track he discussed the failure of his eyesight as a result of AIDS. Weekend (2011), a story of a romance between two men that was directed by Andrew Haigh, also won praise.
Eastern Europe and Russia
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the film cultures of Russia and the former Soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe experienced dramatic transformations. Formerly controlled and supported by the state, film production shifted into private hands. With the boundaries that previously had divided eastern from western Europe now torn down, filmmakers were freed to work where they pleased or where opportunities existed. A prominent example was the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, who in 1991 made La Double Vie de Véronique (The Double Life of Veronique), which suggested a mysterious symmetry between two women, one living in Poland and the other in France. Kieślowski shifted his filmmaking work to France, where he made the important Trois couleurs (“Three Colors”) trilogy—Bleu (1993; Blue), Rouge (1994; Red), and Blanc (1994; White)—before his death in 1996. Other Polish directors, including Agnieszka Holland and Janusz Kaminsky, worked largely in the United States.
Nonetheless, movies continued to be produced in Poland, especially after the turn of the 21st century. Veteran filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski returned to Poland after decades abroad to make 30 Door Key (1991; Ferdydurke) and later, Cztery noce z Anna (2008; Four Nights with Anna). Marek Koterski won praise for Dzień świra (2002; Day of the Wacko), Wszyscy jestesmy Chrystusami (2006; We’re All Christs), and 7 uczuc (2018; 7 Emotions). Pawel Pawlikowski, who became known as a British director, also helmed the Polish movies Ida (2013), which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, and Zimna wojna (2018; Cold War).
In Russia a significant figure to emerge was Aleksandr Sokurov, whose early films had been “shelved,” or prohibited from public screening, until 1987. Sokurov’s first film to be widely seen internationally was Mat’ i syn (1997; Mother and Son). In 2002 he made Russki kovcheg (Russian Ark), a 96-minute tour of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, in a single take without cuts, the longest Steadicam shot ever recorded. Aleksey Balabanov directed both crime dramas—Brat (1997; Brother) and a sequel, Brat II (2000; Brother II)—and meditative historical works, including Pro ourodov I lioudiei (1998; Of Freaks and Men), Gruz 200 (2007; Cargo 200), and Morfiy (2008; Morphine). Andrey Zvyagintsev created the unsettling family dramas Vozvrashchenie (2003; The Return) and Izgnanie (2007; The Banishment), the existential thriller Elena (2011), the atmospheric Leviafan (2014; Leviathan), and the heartbreaking Nelyubov (2017; Loveless).
Filmmaking was inevitably affected by the prolonged, bitter, and brutal breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Under the circumstances, every film from the region was likely to come under attack from some group as a work of propaganda. This was the case for the work of Emir Kusturica, who had gained wide recognition for his films in the 1980s but caused controversy in the 1990s with Underground (1995) and Crna macka, beli macor (1998; Black Cat, White Cat). However, Bosnian director Danis Tanovic was acclaimed for No Man’s Land (2001), Epizoda u zivotu beraca zeljeza (2013; An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker), and Smrt u Sarajevu (2016; Death in Sarajevo). Another Bosnian, Jasmila Zbanic, won notice for Grbavica (2006; Gravica: Land of My Dreams) and Quo vadis, Aida? (2020).
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada
In the late 20th century it sometimes seemed that Australian and New Zealand filmmakers were more active in Hollywood than in their home countries. Many Hollywood blockbusters, with leading actors such as Mel Gibson and prominent directors such as Phillip Noyce, had a strong Australian influence. The most prominent figure to remain outside the Hollywood orbit was Jane Campion, born in New Zealand and based in Australia, whose films included Sweetie (1989), An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano (1993), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and Holy Smoke (1999). In New Zealand Peter Jackson made his mark with the horror comedies Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1990), Braindead (1992; released in the United States as Dead Alive), and The Frighteners (1996), along with an impressive art film about a 1950s murder case, Heavenly Creatures (1994). He directed one of the most extensive projects in Hollywood’s history, an adaptation of the classic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by English author J.R.R. Tolkien. All three parts of Tolkien’s trilogy were shot at the same time in New Zealand and later released as The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). He also cowrote and directed a remake of King Kong (2005).
There were some outstanding Australian filmmakers in the 21st century. Warwick Thornton directed Samson & Delilah (2009) and Sweet Country (2017), both dramas about Aboriginal Australians living in modern Australia. The actress Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut was the popular horror film The Babadook (2014). New Zealand films of note included Niki Caro’s Whale Rider (2002), Brad McGann’s In My Father’s Den (2004), and Roger Donaldson’s The World’s Fastest Indian (2005). Actor-turned-director Taika Waititi found success with Eagle vs Shark (2007), Boy (2010), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Jojo Rabbit (2019).
The situation was the same for English-language filmmakers in Canada, although Hollywood’s lure affected Canadian performers more than directors. Canadian filmmakers of note included Atom Egoyan, whose work in the 1990s and early 21st century included The Adjuster (1991), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Felicia’s Journey (1999), Ararat (2002), and Chloe (2009), and David Cronenberg, who in the same period made Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996), eXistenZ (1999), Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis (2012), and Maps to the Stars (2014).
Canadian filmmakers who emerged in the 21st century included Michael Dowse, director of such comedies as It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2004), What If (2013), Stuber (2019), and Coffee & Kareem (2020). Filmmaking in Quebec, which had gone through a strong period in the 1970s and ’80s, made a lesser impression in the 1990s. Denys Arcand, a key figure of the earlier period with such works as Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986; The Decline of the American Empire) and Jésus de Montréal (1989; Jesus of Montreal), made Love and Human Remains (1993) and Stardom (2000) in English. His Les Invasions barbares (2003; The Barbarian Invasions) won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. He went on to direct L’Âge des ténèbres (2007; Days of Darkness), Le Règne de la beauté (2014; An Eye for Beauty), and La Chute de l’empire américain (2018; The Fall of the American Empire). Xavier Dolan arrived on the scene with J’Ai tué ma mère (2009; I Killed My Mother) and Les Amours imagininaires (2010; Heartbeats) and continued with, among others, Laurence Anyways (2012), Mommy (2014), the English-language The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2019), and Matthias et Maxime (2019; Matthias & Maxime).
Mexico
Mexican cinema was representative of many national film cultures that had, as it were, one foot in its own language and film traditions and the other connected to influences from and opportunities in Hollywood. The actor Alfonso Arau directed a highly popular film based on a novel written by his wife, Laura Esquivel, Como agua para chocolate (1992; Like Water for Chocolate). He then went on to be a director in American film and television. Alfonso Cuarón, who had been working in Hollywood, returned to Mexico to direct the acclaimed Y tu mamá también (2001; “And Your Mother Too”). He then directed the American movies Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and Gravity (2013), for which he won a directing Academy Award. He later garnered Oscars for directing and for cinematography for the Mexican-language Roma (2018), which also was named best foreign-language film.Other prominent Mexican directors were Arturo Ripstein, whose works included Profundo carmesi (1996; Deep Crimson) and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999; No One Writes to the Colonel), and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made Amores perros (2000) and Babel (2006) as well as Biutiful (2010) before moving to Hollywood to direct the Academy Award winners Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Revenant (2015). Guillermo del Toro also worked in both Hollywood and Mexico, and he was noted for his fantasy and horror films, including Cronos (1993), El espinazo del diablo (2001; The Devil’s Backbone), and El laberinto del fauno (2006; Pan’s Labyrinth); however, his most successful movie was the American The Shape of Water (2017), for which he won an Oscar for best director. The success of nearly all these works as international art films was a sign that, despite Hollywood’s dominance of the world film marketplace, there was still a place for distinctive national visions in cinema at the turn of the 21st century.
United States
In the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, the idea of “synergy” dominated the motion-picture industry in the United States, and an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions pursued this ultimately elusive concept. Simply put, synergy implied that consolidating related media and entertainment properties under a single umbrella could strengthen every facet of a coordinated communications empire. Motion pictures, broadcast television, cable and satellite systems, radio networks, theme parks, newspapers and magazines, book publishers, manufacturers of home entertainment products, sports teams, Internet service providers—these were among the different elements that came together in various corporate combinations under the notion that each would boost the others. News Corporation Ltd., originally an Australian media company, started the trend by acquiring Twentieth Century–Fox in 1985. The Japanese manufacturing giant Sony Corporation acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., from The Coca-Cola Company in 1989. Another Japanese firm, Matsushita, purchased Universal Studios (as part of Music Corporation of America, or MCA) in 1990; it then was acquired by Seagram Company Ltd. (1995), became part of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (2000), and merged with the National Broadcasting Co., Inc. (2004), a subsidiary of the Comcast Corporation. Paramount Pictures, as Paramount Communications, Inc., became part of Viacom Inc. In perhaps the most striking of all ventures, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. to become Time Warner Inc., which in turn came together with the Internet company America Online (AOL) to form AOL Time Warner in 2001. The company then changed its name again, back to Time Warner Inc., in 2003; it was purchased by AT&T in 2018 and renamed WarnerMedia. The Disney Company itself became an acquirer, adding Miramax Films, the television network American Broadcasting Company, the cable sports network ESPN, and, in 2019, 20th Century Fox, among other properties. The volume of corporate reshuffling and realignment had an undoubted impact on the studios involved. Nevertheless, the potential for success of such synergistic entities—and, more particularly, the positive or negative effect on their motion-picture units—remained an open question.
It could well be argued, however, that motion-picture companies’ corporate links with the wider media world and emergent communications forms such as the Internet fostered receptivity to new technologies that rapidly transformed film production in the 1990s and into the 21st century. As early as 1982, the Disney film Tron made extensive use of computer-generated images, which were introduced in a short special-effects sequence in which a human character is deconstructed into electronic particles and reassembled inside a computer. A few years later computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into a computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000.
In the 1990s computer-generated imagery (CGI) made rapid strides and became a standard feature not only of Hollywood action-adventure films but also of nearly any work that required special visual effects. Examples of landmark films utilizing the new technologies included Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993); Independence Day (1996), directed by Roland Emmerich; and The Matrix (1999), written and directed by Larry (later Lana) Wachowski and Andy (later Lilly) Wachowski. In Spielberg’s film, based on a best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, a number of long-extinct dinosaur species are re-created through genetic engineering. At the special-effects firm Industrial Light and Magic, models of the dinosaurs were scanned into computers and animated realistically to produce the first computer-generated images of lifelike action, rather than fantasy scenes. In Independence Day, a film combining the science-fiction and disaster genres in which giant alien spaceships attack Earth, an air battle was programmed in a computer so that each individual aircraft maneuvered, fired its weapons, and dueled with other flying objects in intricate patterns of action that would have been too time-consuming and costly to achieve by traditional special-effects means. By the end of the 1990s, the developing new technologies were displayed perhaps more fully than ever before in the Wachowskis’ spectacular film, in which the computer functions as both a central subject and a primary visual tool. For a scene in which actor Keanu Reeves appears to be dodging bullets that pass by him in a visible slow-motion trajectory, a computer program determined what motion-picture and still images were to be photographed, and then the computer assembled the images into a complete visual sequence.
In part through the expensive and lavish effects attained through the new technologies, American cinema at the end of the 20th century sustained and even widened its domination of the world film marketplace. Domestically, the expansion of ancillary products and venues—which during the 1990s were dominated by the sale and rental of video cassettes and then DVDs for home viewing as well as by additional cable and satellite outlets for movie presentation—produced new revenues that were becoming equal to, or in some cases more important than, income from theatrical exhibition. Nevertheless, exhibition outlets continued to grow, with new “megaplex” theaters offering several dozen cinemas, while distribution strategies called for opening major commercial films on 1,000 or more—sometimes as many as 3,000 by the late 1990s—screens across the country. The competition for box-office returns became something of a spectator sport, with the media reporting every Monday on the previous weekend’s multimillion-dollar grosses and ranking the top-10 films by ticket sales. The exhibition environment seemed to demand more than ever that film production be geared to the tastes of teenage spectators who frequented the suburban mall cinemas on weekends, and commentators within the industry as well as outside it observed what they regarded as the diminished quality of mainstream films. As if reflecting that judgment, in 1996 only one major studio film, Jerry Maguire, was among the five nominees for best picture at the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards ceremony (the other nominees were an American independent film, Fargo; an Australian work, Shine; a film from Britain, Secrets & Lies; and the winner, an international production with British stars and based on a novel written by a Canadian, The English Patient).
The motion-picture industry’s emphasis on pleasing the youth audience with special effects-laden blockbusters and genre works such as teen-oriented horror films and comedies inevitably diminished the role of directors as dominant figures in the creative process, further reducing the status that Hollywood directors had attained in the auteur-oriented 1960s and ’70s. Still, more than a handful of filmmakers, several of them veterans of that earlier era, maintained their prestige as artists practicing in a commercial medium. Two of the most prominent, who had launched their careers in the early 1970s, were Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. In addition to Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s works in the 1990s included Schindler’s List (1993, winner of an Academy Award for best picture), Amistad (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998), with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), and Bridge of Spies (2015) among his subsequent films. Scorsese directed GoodFellas (1990), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006; winner of an Academy Award for best picture), and The Irishman (2019), the latter of which made use of CGI to make veteran actors look decades younger.
The actor-director Clint Eastwood was also prolific in this period, winning the best picture Academy Award with Unforgiven (1992) and directing such other films as Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004; Academy Award for best picture and best director), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Gran Torino (2008), Invictus (2009), American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016), and The Mule (2018). Stanley Kubrick died before the release of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his first film since Full Metal Jacket (1987). Two decades passed between Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), but he became more prolific after the turn of the 21st century, directing The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), Knight of Cups (2015), and A Hidden Life (2019).
A succeeding generation of filmmakers who could claim the status of auteur included such figures as David Lynch, Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and Spike Lee. Lynch’s work in the 1990s and beyond included Lost Highway (1996), The Straight Story (1999), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006). Stone, best known for politically oriented films such as JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), W. (2008), and Snowden (2016), also made Natural Born Killers (1994), U-Turn (1997), Any Given Sunday (1999), and Savages (2012). Cameron’s Titanic (1997), re-creating the 1912 sinking of an ocean liner on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg, won an Academy Award for best picture and broke domestic and worldwide box-office records. He created an immersive new world in the fantasy adventure Avatar (2009). The British-American Nolan burst onto the scene in 2000 with Memento, a mystery centring on a man with short-term memory loss, He followed up with the psychological thriller Insomnia (2002). Nolan also directed the Dark Knight trilogy (Batman Begins [2005], The Dark Knight [2008], and The Dark Knight Rises [2012]), the London-set The Prestige (2006), the science-fiction adventures Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020) as well as the historical drama Dunkirk (2017). Lee, the most prominent among a group of young African American filmmakers who began working in mainstream cinema in the 1980s, was best known for Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992). His many other films included Crooklyn (1994), Summer of Sam (1999), BlacKkKlansman (2018), and Da 5 Bloods (2020), along with documentaries such as 4 Little Girls (1997), concerning the deaths of four young Black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, and When the Levees Broke (2006), about New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Among newcomers who emerged during the 1990s, Paul Thomas Anderson stood out with Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2008), The Master (2012), and Phantom Thread (2017). Also notable were Wes Anderson, director of Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); and David Fincher, whose films included Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl (2014), and Mank (2020).
A notable development in American cinema was the rise of significant female filmmakers, including Kathryn Bigelow, Patty Jenkins, Sofia Coppola, and Greta Gerwig. Bigelow’s films included the cult-classic vampire movie Near Dark (1987); the police thriller Blue Steel (1989); Point Break (1991), about an undercover FBI agent; and the science-fiction drama Strange Days (1995). Her accomplished Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker (2008) made her the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director, and it also received an Oscar for best picture. Her later movies included Zero Dark Thirty (2012), about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and Detroit (2017), focusing on the city’s 1967 riots. While Bigelow acquitted herself as a master of action pictures, Jenkins staked out a claim on superhero movies. She made her debut with Monster (2003), about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, but her best-known films were Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), both starring Gal Gadot. Coppola, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, made her feature film debut with The Virgin Suicides (1999), a drama about loss of innocence. Her screenplay for Lost in Translation (2003) earned her an Oscar, and she became the first American woman to be nominated for best director. Somewhere (2010) received the Golden Lion for best film at Venice, and Coppola took the award for best director at Cannes for her Civil War thriller The Beguiled (2017). Gerwig was an actor as well as filmmaker. After codirecting Nights and Weekends (2008), about a long-distance romance, she debuted as a solo director with the coming-of-age story Lady Bird (2017), for which she received Oscar nominations for both screenwriting and direction. She also garnered praise for Little Women (2019), based on the Louisa May Alcott novel. Her comedy-fantasy film Barbie (2023), cowritten with Noah Baumbach, broke box office records to become the highest grossing film in history by a solo female director. Other notable women directors included Lynn Ramsay, Lulu Wang, and Ava DuVernay, the latter of whom directed the acclaimed civil rights movement film Selma (2014).
Another significant development in late 20th-century American cinema was the emergence of a self-designated independent film movement. Its origins perhaps lay in the perceived diminution of opportunities for personal filmmaking in the post-1970s commercial industry. To take up the slack, organizations such as the Independent Feature Project and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, were founded to encourage and promote independent work. A major breakthrough was achieved when an American independent film, sex, lies and videotape (1989), the first feature by Steven Soderbergh, won the top prize at the Cannes festival in France. (Soderbergh went on, like Spike Lee and others, to work on both independent and mainstream projects; he won an Academy Award as best director for Traffic [2000].) In the 1990s independent directors began to develop projects that were closer in style to popular Hollywood genres such as the gangster film and post-World War II film noir. These proved exceedingly popular with Cannes festival juries, who awarded their top prize to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart in 1990, Barton Fink by the Coen brothers in 1991, and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in 1994. Tarantino’s other films included Reservoir Dogs (1992), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019). Among the Coen brothers’ works were Miller’s Crossing (1990), Fargo (1995), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007; Academy Award for best picture), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
Beyond this genre orientation, which cemented the popularity of independent films for many in the mainstream audience, the independent movement fostered what came to be called niche filmmaking, which generated works growing out of ethnic and identity movements in contemporary American culture. Among these were films by African American, Native American, and Latinx filmmakers, as well as works representing feminist and gay and lesbian cultural viewpoints and experience. African American director Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016), with an all-Black cast and an LGBTQ main character, won an Oscar for best picture. Jordan Peele brilliantly addressed racism in the horror movies Get Out (2017), for which he won a screenwriting Oscar, and Us (2019). Other movies from this category included Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind (2007), Miguel Arteta’s Beatriz at Dinner (2017), and Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2017).
Documentary filmmaking from these and other perspectives also thrived in the independent world. Independent nonfiction films of significance included Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988), an exploration of a miscarriage of justice in a Dallas murder case; Hoop Dreams (1994), by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, concerning the struggles of two young African American basketball hopefuls in Chicago; Crumb (1994), Terry Zwigoff’s portrait of the underground comic book artist Robert Crumb; Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder’s rediscovery of old-time popular Cuban musicians; Bowling for Columbine (2002), Michael Moore’s examination of the American propensity for gun violence; The Central Park Five (2012), an examination by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon of a 1989 case in which several Black and Latino teenagers were wrongly convicted for the rape of a white woman; and 20 Feet from Stardom, (2013), Morgan Neville’s exploration of the lives of backup singers.
Robert Sklar The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica