By MICHAEL CIEPLY


LOS ANGELES - The glory days of independent film, when hot young directors like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino had studio executives tangled in fierce bidding wars, are now barely visible in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.

Filmmakers are doing it themselves - paying for their own distribution, marketing films through social networking sites and Twitter blasts, putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges at luxury hotels in film festival cities to get them to whisper into the right ears.

The economic slowdown and tight credit have squeezed the entertainment industry along with everybody else, resulting in significantly fewer big-studio films in the pipeline and an even tougher road for smaller-budget independent projects. Independent distribution companies are much less likely to pull out the checkbook while many of the big studios have all but gotten out of the indie film business.

“It’s not like the audience for these movies has completely disappeared,” said Cynthia Swartz, a partner in the publicity company 42 West, which has been supplementing its mainstream business by helping filmmakers find ways to connect with an audience. “It’s just a matter of finding them.”

When “The Age of Stupid,” a climate change movie, “opens” across the United States in September, it will play on some 400 screens in a one-night event, with a video performance by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, all paid for by the filmmakers themselves and their backers. In Britain, meanwhile, the film has been showing via an Internet service that lets anyone pay to license a copy, set up a screening and keep the profit.

Another film, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” has shown that the odd approach can actually work. A documentary about a Canadian metal band, it turned into the do-ityourself equivalent of a smash hit when it stretched a three-screen opening in April into more than 150 screens.

“I paid for everything, I took a second mortgage on my house,” said Sacha Gervasi, the film’s director.

Mr. Gervasi, whose studio writing credits include “The Terminal,” directed by Steven Spielberg, began filming “Anvil!” with his own money in hopes of attracting a conventional distributor. The movie played well at Sundance in 2008, but offers were low.

So Mr. Gervasi put up more money - his total cost was in “the upper hundred thousands,” he said - to distribute the film through a company called Abramorama, while selling the DVD and television rights to VH1.

The aging rockers of Anvil have shown up at theaters to play for audiences. And an army of “virtual street teamers” - Internet advocates who flood social networks with admiring comments, sometimes for a fee, sometimes not - were recruited by a Web consultant, Sarah Lewitinn, who usually works the music scene.

“Anvil!” has earned roughly $1 million worldwide at the box office so far, its producer, Rebecca Yeldham, said.

Finding even relatively small amounts of money to make and market a film is, of course, no small trick. “The Age of Stupid” raised a production budget of about ￡450,000 (about $748,000) from 228 shareholders, and is soliciting a bit more to continue its release, Franny Armstrong, its director, said.

“Money has simply vanished,” said Mark Urman, an independent- film veteran, speaking of the financial drought that has pushed producers and directors into shouldering risks that only a few years ago were carried by a more robust field of distributors.

Many of those distributors have either disappeared or severely tightened their operations.

“Everyone still dreams there’s going to be a conventional sale to a major studio,” said Kevin Iwashina, once an independent-film specialist with the Creative Artists Agency and now a partner at IP Advisors, a film sales and finance consulting company.

Meanwhile, the next-wave Tarantinos are in Canada already - coddling not prospective buyers, but concierges, who just might steer people to promotional parties and screenings at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“These guys have figured it out,” Barry Avrich, a member of the festival’s governing board, said of the do-it-yourself crowd. “They’re into all the cool hotels, to get the concierges thinking about them.”


Robb Reiner, left, and Steve Ludlow in “Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Its director, Sacha Gervasi, paid for the film himself.