Maybe That’s Enough: Towards the Social, and Socially Conscious, Micro-Budget Filmmaker

With his first two films Swanberg's work became engulfed under the notorious Mumblecore umbrella; part genre, part movement, part moment.Sound mixer Eric Masunaga jokingly devised the moniker to describe films he had worked on that were screening at 2005's South by Southwest Festival.It went viral when filmmaker Andrew Bujalski used it in an Indiewire.cominterview soon after.It is tough to believe, now or ever, that there is any room for autonomous cinema.When film critics encountered the works of the Mumblecore directors, many quickly denounced the films as being insignificant, and sanitized.Devin Faraci deemed Mumblecore as "the blandest, most self-indulgent bullshit, aimed only at the narcissists who make it" (personal communication, Sept. 22 2012).Stuart Cunningham writes in, "Rates of Change: Online Distribution as Disruptive Technology in the Film Industry," that "much debate in media and communication studies is based on exaggerated opposition between the digital sublime and the digital abject: overly enthusiastic optimism versus determined pessimism over the potential of new technologies" (2010, p. 119).Yet, reviewing contemporary literature on technological determinism and filmmaking proves that the simple fact for having cameras cannot account for Joe Swanberg's continuance in the industry.Similarly, there are academics who focus on mythologies of individualism, film students who dream of being found at Sundance, and audiences who see Indiewood as providing some sort of (illusion of) choice.This literature review works to deconstruct mythologies of technological determinism, and autuerism.Ultimately, the amount of agency afforded to other forces in their role in for promoting success for a film director, is less agency that can be given to social capital.