Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir looks at the year in indie film and focuses on the changes that new technologies and consumer viewing habits are bringing to the theatrical marketplace. As VOD and download technologies become more popular and portable platforms become ever more sophisticated, the industry is changing at a pace that induces motion-sickness in most people over the age of 15. Meanwhile, aficionados of “challenging” films are finding new ways to get their arty fix.

Predicting the end of moviegoing is like predicting the end of the oil business — people keep doing it, and they keep on being wrong. So I’m not predicting any such thing, and I’m not even saying that strange and adventurous little movies won’t keep playing in theaters into the indefinite future. But this time, cinephiles, the writing is on the wall. If 2006 was the year when the indie-film marketplace decisively split into the haves and the have-nots, 2007 looks to me like the year when the artier and more ambitious fringes of that marketplace began to visibly evaporate.