Film: Nick Fraser on the future of independent cinema

I lost count of the anorak-clad sages who told me at the Sundance Festival that the era of the small, independently financed film is over. With the crash, the argument goes, there's less risk-money. Audiences want reassurance, and that's supplied by the Hollywood majors. So we can expect a long, safe moment in which we take refuge in the local multiplex. The ultimate marriage of convenience of Disney and Spielberg is a sign of the times. According to Variety, this prophecy is fulfilled. Even allowing for bloated marketing budgets, Disney's Bolt has made a pile, so has Madagascar, and indeed The Day the Earth Stood Still. Mass American taste has long been global, and many Hollywood productions now take more cash outside the US. Meanwhile, Bollywood is making an "innovative foray" into Hollywood. The idea, according to Amit Khanna, head of Reliance Big Entertainment, is to marry the two traditions. Spielberg's DreamWorks films are now partly financed by Reliance. Julia Roberts and Will Smith are among a number of stars whose production companies have Indian backing. Oscar favourite Mickey Rourke is set to make a film with top Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and Paul Schrader is quitting Hollywood to make films in Mumbai. But it would be wrong to ignore the advances of so-called independent films. In the past decade films have benefited from two related developments. First is the swift change in distribution. When they aren't pirated via the web, films are increasingly viewed at home, on DVD. Netflix boasts an astonishing 100,000 titles, shipped to subscribers. Many Americans no longer go to a multiplex or watch TV. They do watch foreign films. And this revolution in consumer habits is just beginning. The second shift is a creative blurring of categories. One aspect of the over-touted appearance of documentary in cinemas is the degree to which fiction and non-fiction feed off each other. There will be more documentaries (like Man On Wire), and more clever half-fictional adaptations (Milk, Frost/Nixon). But there will also be more small films that attract large audiences. Slumdog Millionaire is a big, small film. It marries Bollywood to UK pop culture. As soft money and investors become harder to find, the result will be fewer films made for no discernible audience. But I don't despair of the prospects of intelligent, provocative films. We'll want them for the long post-crash nights. So far, only the internet has offered a first outing to amateur films on YouTube. But the scene is shifting, and it will soon be possible to premiere downloadable films on the net. The next step will be the creation of works made especially to be viewed online. Far from being moribund, the revolution has just begun. Netflix has anticipated the arrival of the new world by initiating a competition for first-time filmmakers, the winner of which will premiere online later this year.