In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios. ↗
For the first few years we lived in a tiny rented cottage at the bottom of a friend's garden. We often joked that there was plenty of film in the fridge, but not too much food! ↗