Filmmaking was inevitably affected by the prolonged, bitter, and brutal breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Under the circumstances, every film from the region was likely to come under attack from some group as a work of propaganda. This was the case for the work of Emir Kusturica, who had gained wide recognition for his films in the 1980s but caused controversy in the 1990s with Underground (1995) and Crna macka, beli macor (1998; Black Cat, White Cat). Australia, New Zealand, and Canada
In the late 20th century it sometimes seemed that Australian and New Zealand filmmakers were more active in Hollywood than in their home countries. Many Hollywood blockbusters, with leading actors such as Mel Gibson and prominent directors such as Phillip Noyce, had a strong Australian influence. The most prominent figure to remain outside the Hollywood orbit was Jane Campion, born in New Zealand and based in Australia, whose films include Sweetie (1989), An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano (1993), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and Holy Smoke (1999). In New Zealand Peter Jackson made his mark with the horror comedies Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1990), Braindead (1992; released in the United States as Dead Alive), and The Frighteners (1996), along with an impressive art film about a 1950s murder case, Heavenly Creatures (1994). He directed one of the most extensive projects in Hollywood’s history, an adaptation of the classic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by English author J.R.R. Tolkien. All three parts of Tolkien’s trilogy were shot at the same time in New Zealand and later released as The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). He also cowrote and directed a remake of King Kong (2005).
Peter Jackson directing Naomi Watts in a scene from King Kong (2005).Universal Pictures Inc./Wing Nut Films
The situation was the same for English-language filmmakers in Canada, although Hollywood’s lure affected Canadian performers more than directors. Canadian filmmakers of note included Atom Egoyan, whose work in the 1990s included The Adjuster (1991), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Felicia’s Journey (1999), and David Cronenberg, who in the same period made Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996), and eXistenZ (1999). Filmmaking in Quebec, which had gone through a strong period in the 1970s and ’80s, made a lesser impression in the 1990s. Denys Arcand, a key figure of the earlier period with such works as Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986; The Decline of the American Empire) and Jésus de Montréal (1989; Jesus of Montreal), made Love and Human Remains (1993) and Stardom (2000) in English. His Les Invasions barbares (2003; The Barbarian Invasions) won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Mexico
Mexican cinema was representative of many national film cultures that had, as it were, one foot in its own language and film traditions and the other connected to influences from and opportunities in Hollywood. The actor Alfonso Arau directed a highly popular film based on a novel written by his wife, Laura Esquivel, Como agua para chocolate (1992; Like Water for Chocolate). He then went on to be a director in American film and television. Alfonso Cuarón, who had been working in Hollywood, returned to Mexico to direct the acclaimed Y tu mamá también (2001; “And Your Mother Too”). Among those who remained in Mexico were Arturo Ripstein, director, among other works, of Profundo carmesi (1996; Deep Crimson) and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999; No One Writes to the Colonel), and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made Amores perros (2000) and Babel (2006). The success of nearly all these works as international art films was a sign that, despite Hollywood’s dominance of the world film marketplace, there was still a place for distinctive national visions in cinema at the turn of the 21st century. United States
In the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st, the idea of “synergy” dominated the motion-picture industry in the United States, and an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions pursued this ultimately elusive concept. Simply put, synergy implied that consolidating related media and entertainment properties under a single umbrella could strengthen every facet of a coordinated communications empire. Motion pictures, broadcast television, cable and satellite systems, radio networks, theme parks, newspapers and magazines, book publishers, manufacturers of home entertainment products, sports teams, Internet service providers—these were among the different elements that came together in various corporate combinations under the notion that each would boost the others. News Corporation Ltd., originally an Australian media company, started the trend by acquiring Twentieth Century–Fox in 1985. The Japanese manufacturing giant Sony Corporation acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., from The Coca-Cola Company in 1989. Another Japanese firm, Matsushita, purchased Universal Studios (as part of Music Corporation of America, or MCA) in 1990; it then was acquired by Seagram Company Ltd. (1995), became part of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (2000), and merged with the National Broadcasting Co., Inc. (2004), a subsidiary of General Electric Company. Paramount Pictures, as Paramount Communications, Inc., became part of Viacom Inc. In perhaps the most striking of all ventures, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. to become Time Warner Inc., which in turn came together with the Internet company America Online (AOL) to form AOL Time Warner in 2001. The company then changed its name again, back to Time Warner Inc., in 2003, a year after the company suffered a quarterly loss that was at that time the largest ever reported by an American company. The Disney Company itself became an acquirer, adding Miramax Films, the television network American Broadcasting Company, and the cable sports network ESPN, among other properties. The volume of corporate reshuffling and realignment had an undoubted impact on the studios involved. Nevertheless, the potential for success of such synergistic entities—and, more particularly, the positive or negative effect on their motion-picture units—remained an open question.
It could well be argued, however, that motion-picture companies’ corporate links with the wider media world and emergent communications forms such as the Internet fostered receptivity to new technologies that rapidly transformed film production in the 1990s and into the 21st century. As early as 1982, the Disney film Tron made extensive use of computer-generated images, which were introduced in a short special-effects sequence in which a human character is deconstructed into electronic particles and reassembled inside a computer. A few years later computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into a computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000.