Every major city in the U.S. has a film festival, but there's little doubt that the Sundance Festival is the premiere showcase for new American indies. Indeed, as far as industry heat and exciting discoveries are concerned, Sundance now ranks second only to Cannes on the film map. Celebrating new talent, Sundance has become a Mecca for aspiring independents.

The film schools that have sprung up all over the country produce a large number of ambitious filmmakers eager to take advantage of the new opportunitiess. Driven by a desire to communicate with images, most graduates insist that money is not the prime motivation for choosing a film career. Perceiving movies as the medium of their generation, young directors are encouraged by the prestige of indies which have made it easier for them to catch the industry's eye.

The decline in the popularity of foreign-language films has contributed to the increased success of American indies. “Independents are taking up the space a Fellini or a Truffaut film used to occupy,” said Philip Garfinkle of Entertainment Data. “Though an Il Postino (The Postman) occasionally breaks through, only American-style product travels well.” The Italian film was indeed the exception, first winning an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, then, with Miramax's help, running for months to a cumulative gross of $22 million. Which came first: the decline of foreign cinemas or the shrinking market for foreign films in the U.S. No matter, indie filmmakers have captured the art-house audiences of two decades ago, appealing to those viewers who embraced the work of Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, and Kurosawa.

For two decades, American filmgoers have been buying roughly a billion tickets each year. In 1989, the film industry was a $5 billion business (1.1 billion ticket sale), the highest since 1984, and in 1993, as a result of summer hits and record-breaking holiday season, another peak of 1.2 billion was reached. In 1998, the film industry boasted an all-time record business of $6.88 billion, with an estimated 1.4 billion tickets sold.

One of the major forces driving the new American independent cinema is the increasingly greater ease in securing finance for indies. Over the past two decades, there has been increased capital by investors on both the domestic and foreign fronts, as well as more opportunities for films to be seen, not necessarily theatrically, but in ancillary markets (television, video), cable channels and in the growing number of film festivals.