At the end of his comprehensive study of American independent film, Yannis Tzioumakis notes that, in contradistinction to earlier moments in cinema history, twenty-first-century independent film is increasingly being replaced by such terms as ‘niche’ and ‘speciality’ ‘to accommodate recent developments’. Tzioumakis does not elaborate on these developments, but notes ‘independent film’ as an increasingly overburdened term. Now freighted with industrial agendas and institutional struggles, ‘independent film’ is used to signal both low-budget productions like lonelygirl15 and $270 million projects like The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003). Common to both ends of independent film's spectrum, however, are notions of uniqueness, transgression, authorial vision and independence from the major Hollywood studios: namely, Disney, Fox, MGM/UA, Paramount, Sony, Columbia/Tristar, Universal and Warner Bros. With this in mind, independent cinema seems an unlikely place in which to encounter the sequel. Yet the sequel shows up frequently in the ‘indie’ marketplace, from L''Age d'or (1930), Luis Buñuel's surrealist sequel to his Un Chien andalou (1929), to Lars von Trier's politically charged Manderlay (2005), the sequel to his Brechtian USA commentary, Dogville (2003). If independent film across all its guises and contexts is designed to counter the commercial and ideological imperatives of the mainstream, what purposes does the sequel serve?