Not to beat a dead (or dying) horse, but here’s yet another article on the downturn / demise of indie-films as Hollywood studios continue to shutter their specialty divisions:

For my part, I am honestly sorry to see those small studio companies go, but their closings say less about independent film than they do about Hollywood. Some of the best American films of the past decade, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax), have been put out by specialty divisions, and it’s an open question whether corporate giants that close these units, like Time Warner, have the will to bring out movies that can’t be summed up in one sentence.

We’ve considered this issue here, here, here, and probably elsewhere, but perhaps we should take a break from all the hand-wringing.

It’s easy to get depressed about this stuff, I know. When I was a musician in Colorado in 1978-1980, local musicians got hammered my second winter season in Aspen by the emergence of disco. Actual live musicians with actual talent pushed aside by the singularly most annoying form of ‘music’ known to humankind. And there were a lot of long faces in our small musical community in the face of the Donna Summer tsunami.

And then one night at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1980, a bunch of performers ended up at a bar where some locals had thrown together an ad hoc rock band. The bass player announced that the guys wanted to try out this new song they’d heard a few times on the radio. So the band busts into a song I’d never heard before — “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits. I remember standing there, gut-punched by this awesome garage band rocker, the complete opposite of the disco sound – raw, retro, real. Once again, a creative type had risen from the masses and busted down the doors of conventionality — in this case Mark Knopfler with his kick-ass Fender Strat.

If there’s one thing that has been constant about movies in the last 100 plus years, it’s that there is nothing constant about them. It’s a continually evolving phenomenon, both as entertainment business and art form. And if the studios continue to bank on their belief that there will always be an audience for big popcorn movies, it’s equally likely there will also be an audience for more off-beat, indie-type fare.

Disco came and went. Rock and roll never dies. Popcorn movies are still hot. Meanwhile, there will always be filmmakers like these:

Lance Hammer’s “Ballast,” an elegiac, rapturously lovely story set in the Mississippi Delta and featuring a cast of unknown black actors, would have been news in any year, but it means more now because it’s another reminder that independent filmmaking means more than signing with Fox Searchlight. And, indeed, of these four films I just mentioned — all idiosyncratic, intensely personal, stylistically venturesome, nonformulaic — only “Sugar” will be released by a studio division, Sony Pictures Classics. “Momma’s Man” is being released by tiny Kino International and “Wendy and Lucy” will reach theaters later this year courtesy of a newcomer, Oscilloscope Pictures. Mr. Hammer originally signed on with IFC Films, but, believing he could improve profits without a middleman, especially in today’s overcrowded market, has decided to release his movie by himself.

If all the studios followed the lead of Time Warner and got out of the indie film business, it might help a film like “Ballast” find its way into the larger world, though that’s no guarantee. And perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it. Guarantees are for washing machines, after all, not art, and films like “Ballast” and “Wendy and Lucy” don’t need big distributors, a mass audience or a Spirit Award to prove their worth. Like the finest independents, they aren’t trying to emulate Hollywood, and while Michelle Williams has the lead role in “Wendy and Lucy,” it isn’t the kind of film that can be sold on a starlet’s smile. Like “Ballast” it will make its way into theaters, where it will be much loved and remembered long after it leaves.

UPDATE: In comments, Kevin notes:

I’ve seen about 8 movies there in the past few months and twice I was by myself in the theater and the others each time had less than 5 people. It is REALLY sad that the multiplex is filled down the street when these great movies are practically private screenings for me.

I checked on the ‘specialty film’ box office for the week of September 9 here. Not pretty:

Notice a majority of the movies in release have grossed less than $1M. And the only movies to break $10M are Vicki Cristina Barcelona and Kit Kittredge, both distributed by major studios (albeit through their specialty divisions).