'Barbie'©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

IndieWire turns 30 this year, which means we’ve been covering independent film long enough to watch the entertainment industry revolutionize itself several times over.

Back in 1996, the map for American creatives was considerably easier to draw. New York and Los Angeles were the two obvious coastal capitals, while the Bay Area operated as an important center for documentary and experimental arthouse work. Simultaneously, Austinemerged as a nationally recognized warehouse for weirdos, and Sundance turned Park City into a place where indie auteurs could seemingly be born overnight.

Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch, and more legendary talents spent the previous decade transforming scrappy American cinema into a proper movement. Meanwhile, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Darren Aronofsky, and other emerging artists were beginning to redefine what “independent” filmmaking looked and felt like altogether.

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