ACADEMY FILM SCHOLARS GRANTS 2,020. PROJECT "UNIONS AND RISING PRODUCTION BUDGETS IN THE U.S. FILM INDUSTRY: THE SLAVES WHO DON'T PICTURE THEMSELVES AS FREEMEN."

Academy Grants Program

---

sguthrie@oscars.org	Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 3:55 PM
To: JORGEVILLACORTA1@gmail.com Cc: grants@oscars.org
Dear Jorge: I hope this email finds you safe and well during these uncertain times.  As I mentioned in an earlier email, our grants committee was delayed in completing the Film Scholars Program review process due to emergency grant funding that our Board of Governors authorized for film nonprofits that were suffering financially due to the shutdown.  Recently, however, the Academy’s Grants Committee was able to meet virtually to select the recipients of the 2020 Academy Film Scholars Grants.  Out of 85 applications received, the Committee members were pleased and excited to discover a number of exceptional proposals.  After a great deal of discussion including praise for a number of the proposals, the committee ultimately selected two.  Regrettably, your proposal was not selected. A press release announcing the two newest Academy Film Scholars will be distributed in the near future and I will make sure a copy is e-mailed to you. The committee asked me to inform the applicants how much they enjoyed reading the proposals and how worthy many of them seemed.  They anticipate that a number of the proposals will come to fruition.  They also wanted you to know that your re-application to the program in the future would be welcome.  The online application form will be available once again in late summer or early fall. Best of luck in all your future endeavors. Sincerely, Shawn Guthrie Sr. Manager, Grants and Student Academy Awards ------ Unions and Rising Production Budgets in the U.S. Film Industry: The Slaves Who Don't Picture Themselves As Freemen. Project Statement By Jorge Villacorta a. Description of the project. This will be a book that describes, providing historical examples, how the working class, as a potentially self-conscious social class, has developed in the film industry a strategy based on economics rather than class political objectives, reproducing its own subordination to the bourgeoise political interest. While petit bourgeois members of the film industry managed to move from petit bougeois to bourgeois members of such industry through a variety of tactics that reinforced their own role, the working class, through its unions, played from a defensive position that limited its own political importance. b.. Definitions: Objective and methodology. B1. Objective: To illustrate why the economic strategy of the working class in the film industry was destined to lose the class struggle, while petit bourgeois members of the film industry taking advantage of their cultural capital raised to bourgeois positions. B2. Methodology: Critical reading of the information provided by a variety of sources (thesis, papers, books, interviews, documentaries, etc.) will allow me to conceptualize and describe the strategies used by the unions and the petit bourgeois and bourgeois members of the film industry, identifying the class ideologies behind concepts as “art” and “artist.” c. The project in the academic context. Books on the sociology of art like Art worlds by Howard S. Becker describe art production in the capital system while never considering capitalism as a socio-economic system that generates and reproduces its own conditions of existence, missing the historical foundations of social structures and the concepts that describe them. On the other hand, a sociologist of art like Pierre Bourdieu, considering the “classes” as “constructs well founded  in reality”, has described the art world with logical consistency in books like Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste, The rules of art, and The love of art: European art museums and their public. Scholars like Gregory Black in Hollywood Censored and Peter Decherney in Hollywood and the culture elite: How the movies became American have pointed out the bourgeois political interests behind “self-regulation” and the recognition of the film industry productions as an “art” by museums, government agencies, universities and other cultural institutions. While these texts illustrate the facts from the perspective of the successful bourgeois and petit bourgeois political strategies, the self-defeating strategies of the working class through its unions and a potentially conscious social class are missing. Other studies like Drawing the line: the untold story of animation unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson by Marc Sito and The New Zealand Hobbit crisis: how Warner Bros. bent a government to its will and crushed an attempt to unionize The Hobbit  by Jonathan Handel and Pip Bulbeck that describe specific cases of class struggle in the film industry do not consider them as a part of a general class strategy. This project would have a wider political basis taking into account the analysis elaborated by Leon Trotsky, Lenin, and other revolutionary theoreticians. d. Subjects or ideas underrepresented in the canon of film scholarship to date. The film industry, controlled by the bourgoise with the more o less reluctant consent of the working class, is a capitalist film industry that reinforces the political control of the capitalists. The unions in the film industry, following a strategy based on economic demands in a capitalist society, have forgotten the working class’s historical role as a potential ruling class. This consideration is underrepresented in the canon of film scholarship, even though the analysis intuitively move around this idea, a lack of political consciousness impedes its clear-cut expression. e. Significance in its field of study. The capitalist technological development has already achieved feats beyond the necessities of the contemporary productive organization known as the film industry. As a consequence, a change in the social organization is happening slowly but irreversibly. Nick Bilton wrote on Vanity Fair in January 29, 2017, that There are other, more dystopian theories, which predict that film and video games will merge, and we will become actors in a movie, reading lines or being told to “look out!” as an exploding car comes hurtling in our direction, not too dissimilar from Mildred Montag’s evening rituals in Fahrenheit 451. When we finally get there, you can be sure of two things. The bad news is that many of the people on the set of a standard Hollywood production won’t have a job anymore. The good news, however, is that we’ll never be bored again. If what Bilton states “becomes true” (and is not already true), the working class in the film industry would have lost the opportunity of guiding the technological development in this branch of social production and it would be useful to understand why this happened. Therefore, a study like this would have a political impact in society and in the field of film studies. f. How my professional experience is relevant to the project. Working for free for Leonidas, the Anti-Communist Filmmaker, since 2008, as the ghostwriter of his “Official Blog” (http://leonidaszegarra.blogspot.com), as his media adviser, as his personal film critic and as the manager of his IMDb.Pro account https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7039401/ (that I financed) and in 2010 during the shooting, editing, promotion and exhibition of María y los niños pobres (2010) as his assistant director, co-editor, crew in the direct sound department, promoter, sponsor, and security guard at the rented movie theater where the film was exhibited, I have accumulated experience in different áreas of the film production that shows me the artificiality of the work division and the specialization that rules the film industry. This work division that conditions the participation of the working force allows the production of industrial products undermining the class consciousness of the workers, who must pay attention to obtaining more work under these (capitalist) conditions, as jobs, instead of understanding that the whole society is organized with the same capitalist model and recreates the same problems faced by the working force again and again. My experience, generated by a petit bourgeois mode of film production is very useful at the time of analyzing the political strategies of the bourgeoise film industry, that takes advantage of the little amount of economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital owned by the working class and even the petit bourgeosie. Only certain members of the petit bourgeioise take advantage of their power as owners of cultural capital, becoming members of the bourgeoise film industry after creating their companies in a variety of áreas such as production, special and visual effects, public relations, etc. As a teacher of the course “Directing Actors Workshop” at the University of San Marcos (Lima – Peru), for one semester (2017-II), after inviting Leonidas Zegarra to my classroom, I observed the reactions and interaction between the filmmaker and the students, which provided me with deeper insight into the petit bourgeois mind that is under the influence of the bourgeois film mode of production. As the appointed curator of the Leonidas Zegarra (Film) Museum [Casa Museo Leonidas Zegarra, in Spanish], which is a project in development initiated in 2010, I have had to study Mr. Zegarra’s film career and accompany him at a variety of artistic events, retrospectives, and homages developed along the streets, in cultural centers, art galleries and museums, as well as to hear negatives to exhibit his autobiographical movie at multiplexes located in Lima, Peru. This experience allowed me to see how the reputation of the “artist” as well as the reputation of the film as “art” are created, recognizing its dependency on basic material interests. Having a Master’s degree in Social Communication and having undergone a doctoral program in the History of Art (2012-2013), I have the cultural capital required to develop my project successfully. g. The project’s significance to my own professional development. Working for Leonidas Zegarra, the Anti-Communist Filmmaker, demands detailed knowledge of the Communist and Socialist ideas on the film industry and the art world in order to defend Mr. Zegarra’s position. Developing this project will give more ideological ammunition to protect and promote Mr. Zegarra’s career, which has been attacked in the past for self-proclaimed “pro-socialist intellectuals” who don’t understand their own class extraction and in fact, have politically conservative positions. As an aspiring artist who is interested in creating his own audiovisual production company, the knowledge acquired through this study would help me to keep clear anti-unionist policies. h. Timetable for completing the project. 2020: Reception of funds. January – July 2021. Analysis of the information available. August – November 2021. Elaboration of the text. December 2021: Final draft. January 2022: Publication. i. Additional resources and how I intend to use the grant. I don’t have additional resources and I intend to use the grant wisely. The core of the project is conceptual, which demands books and time to read and/or interview key sources if necessary. The grant will be used to cover these costs and to pay for the cost of publishing the book. ------- Unions and Rising Production Budgets in the U.S. Film Industry: The Slaves Who Don't Picture Themselves As Freemen. Select Bibliography By Jorge Villacorta Becker, Howard Saul. (2008). Art Worlds. Berkeley; Los Angeles ; London: University of California Press Becker, Howard Saul. (1974). Art As Collective Action. American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 6. (Dec., 1974), pp. 767-776. Billingsley, Lloyd (2000). Hollywood party: how Communism seduced the American film industry in the 1930s and 1940s. Roseville: California: Forum. Bilton, Nick (January 29, 2017). Why Hollywood as we know it is already over. Vanity Fair. pp 143–149.https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/why-hollywood-as-we-know-it-is-already-over Bilton, Nick; Chamberlain, Mike (2010). I live in the future & here’s how it works: why your world, work, and brain are being creatively disrupted. New York: Books on Tape. Biskind, Peter (2004). Easy riders, raging bulls: how the sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll generation saved Hollywood. London: Bloomsbury. Black, Gregory (2001). Hollywood censored: morality codes, Catholics, and the movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bordwell, David; Thompson, Kristin; Smith, Jeff (2020). Film art: an introduction. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education Bordwell, David (2015). Narration in the fiction film. New York; London: Routledge, Taylor & Franics Group. Bordwell, David; Staiger, Janet; Thompson, Kristin (2015). The classical Hollywood cinema: film style & the mode of production to 1960. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Bordwell, David (2010). The way Hollywood tells it: story and style in modern movies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu; Pierre; Turner, Christ (2016). The social estructures of the economy. Cambridge; Malden: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre; Nice, Richard; Benntt, Tony (2015). Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Bourdieu, Pierre (1996). The rules of art. Cambridge: Polity Press Bourdieu, Pierre; Chamboredom, J.C.; Passeron, Jean Claude; Krais, Beate (1991). The craft of sociology: Epistemological preliminares. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, J., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (1986), Westport, CT: Greenwood, pp. 241–58. Capra, Frank (1971). The name above the title: an autobiography. New York: Macmillan. Cowie, Peter (2001). The Apocalypse Now book. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Dunne, John Gregory (1998). The estudio. New York: Vintage Books. Eisner, Michael; Schwartz Tony (1999). Work in progress. London: Penguin. Esquire, Jason E. (2017). The movie business book. New York: Routledge. Epstein, Edward Jay (2012). The Hollywood economist, release 2.0: the hidden financial reality behind the movies. Brooklyn, NY: Melville. Epstein, Edward Jay (2006). The big picture: money and power in Hollywood. New York: Random House. Evans, Robert (2002). The kid stays in the picture: a notorious life. Beverly Hills, CA: New Millenium Press. Ferber, Bruce (ed.) (2019). The way we work. on the job in Hollywood. Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books. Fritz, Ben (2019). The big picture: The fight for the future of the movies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Gray, Lois S.; Seeber, Ronald Leroy (1996). Under the stars: essays on labor relations in arts and entertainment. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Handel, Jonathan (2014). Entertainment residuals: a full color guide. Los Angeles, CA: Hollywood Analytics. Handel, Jonathan; Pip Bulbeck (2013). The New Zealand Hobbit crisis: how Warner Bros. bent a government to its will and crushed an attempt to unionize The Hobbit. Los Angeles, CA: Hollywood Analytics. Handel, Jonathan (2013). Entertainment labor: an interdisciplinary bibliography. Los Angeles, CA: Hollywood Analytics. Handel, Jonathan (2011). Hollywood on strike! An industry at war in the internet age. Los Angeles, CA: Hollywood Analytics. Hearn, Marcus (2005). The cinema of George Lucas. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Huston, John (1994). An open book. New York: Da Capo Press. James, David E.; Berg, Rick (1996). The hidden foundation: cinema and the question of class. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. Kael, Pauline (1987). Kiss kiss bang bang: film writings 1965-1967. London: Arena Ed. Kaufman, Lloyd; Antill, Sara (2017). Sell your own damn movie! New York: Focal Press. Kaufman, Lloyd; Antill, Sara; Tlapoyawa, Kurly (2016). Direct your own damn movie! London, New York: Routledge. Kaufman, Lloyd; Collins, Ashley Wren (2009). Produce your own damn movie! Burlington, MA: Focal Press. Kaufman, Llody; Gunn, James (1998). All I need to know about filmmaking I learned from the Toxic Avenger. Troma Entertainmet / Berkley Boulevard Books. Kazan, Elia (1989). Elia Kazan: a life. New York: Doubleday. Litwak, Mark (2016). Dealmaking in the film and televisión industry: from negotiations to final contracts.  Los Angeles, CA: Silman – James Press. Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick; Wood, Ellen Meikskin (1998). The Communist manifestó. Principles of Communism. New York: Monthly Review Press. McGilligan, Patrick; Buhle, Paul (2012). Tender conrades: a backstory of the Hollywood blacklist. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. Mosco, Vicent; MacKercher, Katherine (2009). The laboring of communication: will knowledge workers of the world unite? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Nielsen, Mike; Gene Mailes (1995). Hollywood’s other black list: unión struggles in the studio system. London: British Film Institute. Parisi, Paula (1999). Titanic and the making of James Cameron: the inside story of the three-year adventure that rewrote motion picture history. London: Orion. Phillips, Julia (1992). You will never eat lunch in this town again. New York: Signet. Reynolds, Jr., Robert Grey (November 2019). Willie Bioff: Theatrical unions, Walt Disney strikers, and film industry extorsion. Epub: Smashwords Edition. Rodriguez, Robert (1995). Rebel without a crew, or, How a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player / Robert Rodriguez. New York: Plume. Rosenfeld, Jake (2014). What unions no longer do. Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press. Ross, Steven J. (1999). Working class Hollywood: silent film and the shaping of class in America. Princenton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Salamon, Julie (2002). The devil’s candy: the bonfire of the vanities goes to Hollywood. Cambridge, MA: DaCapo Press. Schwartz, Nancy Lynn; Sheila Schwartz (1982). The Hollywood writer’s wars. The Ten and their lawyers. New York: Knopf. Sito, Tom (2006). Drawing the line: the untold story of animation unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. Thomas, Bob (1994). Walt Disney: an American original. New York: Hyperion. Vogel, Harold L (2015). Entertainment industry economics: a guide for financial analysis. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press. Wilkerson, Billy (2018). Hollywood godfather: the life and crimes of Billy Wilkerson. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press. ------- Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato Leonidas Zegarra "Huanchaco", Fernando Alonso Gutiérrez Cassinelli "María y los niños pobres" (2010)

ACADEMY FILM SCHOLARS GRANTS 2,020. PROJECT "BOURGEOIS AND PETIT BOURGEOIS FILM MODES OF PRODUCTION AS ART PROJECTS OR, THE AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY , ITS ARTISTIC BOUNDARIES, AND THE KIND OF FILM STYLE BEYOND THE OUTER LIMITS TO ITS ACCUMULATED ECONOMIC, CULTURAL, SOCIAL, AND SYMBOLIC CAPITAL" BY JORGE LUIS VILLACORTA SANTAMATO.

Academy Grants Program

---

sguthrie@oscars.org	Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 3:55 PM
To: JORGEVILLACORTA1@gmail.com Cc: grants@oscars.org
Dear Jorge: I hope this email finds you safe and well during these uncertain times.  As I mentioned in an earlier email, our grants committee was delayed in completing the Film Scholars Program review process due to emergency grant funding that our Board of Governors authorized for film nonprofits that were suffering financially due to the shutdown.  Recently, however, the Academy’s Grants Committee was able to meet virtually to select the recipients of the 2020 Academy Film Scholars Grants.  Out of 85 applications received, the Committee members were pleased and excited to discover a number of exceptional proposals.  After a great deal of discussion including praise for a number of the proposals, the committee ultimately selected two.  Regrettably, your proposal was not selected. A press release announcing the two newest Academy Film Scholars will be distributed in the near future and I will make sure a copy is e-mailed to you. The committee asked me to inform the applicants how much they enjoyed reading the proposals and how worthy many of them seemed.  They anticipate that a number of the proposals will come to fruition.  They also wanted you to know that your re-application to the program in the future would be welcome.  The online application form will be available once again in late summer or early fall. Best of luck in all your future endeavors. Sincerely, Shawn Guthrie Sr. Manager, Grants and Student Academy Awards

-------------

Bourgeois and Petit Bourgeois Film Modes of Production as Art Projects or, The American Film Industry, its Artistic Boundaries, and the Kind of Film Style Beyond the Outer Limits to its Accumulated Economic, Cultural, Social, and Symbolic Capital.

Project Statement

By Jorge Villacorta

a. Description of the project.

This will be a book or booklet that will explain why the Bourgeois art project cannot be fully developed by the American film industry, even though this industry pretends to create art in the bourgeois sense because it depends on Petit Bourgeois consumption, a situation that at the same time limits the economic viability of the Petit Bourgeois film production that innovates in film style according to the Bourgeois project.

Experimentation in film style is not encouraged in the film industry because it is intended to be a profitable industry that creates what Pierre Bourdieu describes as popular art, art that seems to be an extension of daily experience and demands the emotional participation of the consumer. In the Bourgeois art project, recognizing style requires the ability to compare pieces of artwork while keeping contemplative distance. David Bordwell verifies that film style is non-existent for most moviegoers.

            For those of us who learned from Sarris, then, there remains much to do. In particular, although “style” as sensory bombast has become part of a movie’s packaging and marketing (X-Men and JFK order up Technique in 40-gallon drums), viewers remain almost completely unaware of style in any rigorous sense, let alone its nuances. “The auterists,” Sarris remarked over 25 years ago, “are still fighting an uphill battle to make movie audiences conscious of style.” La lutte continue, as the French used to say. (Bourdieu 2008: 262)

b.. Definitions: Objective and methodology.

B1. Objective:

To explain why the American film industry cannot fully develop the Bourgeois art project as it is described by Pierre Bourdieu and point out why its nature as popular art contributes to limit the economic viability of the Petit Bourgeois film production that innovates in film style according to the Bourgeois project

B2. Methodology:

Critical reading of information provided by a variety of sources (thesis, papers, books, interviews, documentaries, etc.) will allow me to conceptualize the relations between the Bourgeois art project, the American film industry, the Petit Bourgeois art project, and the Peti Bourgeois film mode of production.

c. The project in the academic context.

Up to this date, the history of art and the sociology of art have viewpoints that would enrich the history of film style when extended to this field, clarifying present pseudo-problems derived from insufficiency of sociological knowledge.

d. Subjects or ideas underrepresented in the canon of film scholarship to date.

Bourgeois and Petit Bourgeois film modes of production, concepts derived from the field of sociology and its concept of social class, have not been identified as such by the field of film studies. While a variety of terms like “independent film”, “low-budget”, “B movies”, or “microbudget” are applied to describe productions outside the American film industry or productions of lower legitimacy inside it, these designations do not characterize the social extraction of the productions, which shapes its main social tendencies in form and content. The censorship the American film industry applies to its productions, as described by Gregory Black in Hollywood Censored is a consequence of the film industry being a Bourgeois art project, based on its political importance, even though it is commonly assumed that the censorship is founded on profitability. Ruling the film market is a need for the American film industry, more for political reasons than for economic reasons, as Peter Decherney shows in Hollywood and the culture elite: How the movies become American. The museums, government agencies, universities, and other cultural institutions that helped organize an American Bourgeois society, supported the film industry as “art” because it had a vast audience which was not Bourgeois but, Petit Bourgeois or working class. Through the movies, the Bourgeoisie, educates the Petit Bourgeoisie and the working class during their “free time,” providing ideas and images created having in mind the Bourgeois (political) interest. In the area of filmmaking, Petit bourgeois or working-class art projects have immediately recognizable characteristics in form and theme, even when they become distinctive due to “a lack of resources” (material or intellectual) that are intrinsic to these social classes in contrast to the Bourgeois art project, represented by the ”American film industry.” So, there are “social class film styles”, in the plural, but the Bourgeois one in a Bourgeois society is considered the “legitimate” one. So, the distinction between Bourgeois and Petit Bourgeois film modes of production widens the understanding of film style being a useful application of a sociological concept that is not present in the film theory literature extensively up to this day.

e. Significance in its field of study.

While a scholar like David Bordwell claims that the “viewers remain almost completely unaware of style in any rigorous sense, let alone its nuances” (Bordwell 2008: 262) pretending that they should be educated in this skill, he doesn’t differentiate between popular art and art for producers, as stated by Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste, which explains why most viewers demand a particular film style, that forces them to “remain almost completely unaware of” other kinds of film style. Bordwell narrows the awareness of style to the “rigorous sense” but, the viewers obviously identify a style and demand it, even though they may not have the concepts to explain with scholar terminology what they perceive. In studies like The love of art: European and museums and their public by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, the sociology of art shows that the art consumer is conditioned through social institutions like the family and school to appreciate what they see, hear, and value, which  means that even though the filmgoers may not have knowledge of the historical evolution of style they have notions that allow them to process their movie consumption. An evident example of this situation is the movie Grindhouse (2007), in which Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino alter the image quality of their films to resemble worn out celluloid and purposely eliminate already shot scenes to emulate missing reels. These traits were learned by film consumption conditioned by their social extraction. Even though it could be seen as a scholar homage to those movie classics that are lost and found and present different duration according to the copy of the film that is preserved, this more complex explanation is not the origin of this situation, which is the direct past experience of the filmmakers as viewers whose social position forced them to watch the movie in specific social circumstances that make them feel that missing reels and “low-quality image” were fundamental to the filmmaking experience. Had they watched films in theaters that projected mint prints, they wouldn’t dare to pretend it. Naturally, had they done that it would have meant they were in a different social position, which was not the case. Then, social extraction determines ways of consumption and perspectives of production. The sociology of art explains why David Bordwell’s expectations are unrealistic: “style in any rigorous sense” is an academic discourse disconnected from mass interest. Instead of suggesting that educating the public will be a difficult task to accomplish he should ask first why the “viewers remain almost completely unaware of style in any rigorous sense, let alone its nuances.” Once explained the causes of the situation, it would make sense to evaluate if raising awareness among the viewers is a sensible objective. In Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste Pierre Bordieu has compared the art historian with the religious priest, both dedicated to organizing the devotion of the sacred reliques. In Reproduction in education, society, and culture, with Jean Claude-Passeron, Bourdieu has shown that the educational system in a Bourgeois society is designed to protect the Bourgeois interest. With this knowledge, it is possible to understand Mr. Bordwell’s position as a scholar who concedes more importance to the film style as it is understood by the academic world than to the actual perception and behavior of the viewers. If the religious leaders don’t have access to “special information, knowledge, or qualities”, preferably magical ones, the faith of the followers may be weakened. The “artistic freedom” promoted by the Bourgeoisie in the field of painting cannot be assumed by the American film industry due to its dependence on a mass audience, therefore, it won’t produce the Abstract Expressionism film unless it becomes very popular, which is unlikely. In Narration in the fiction film David Bordwell identifies four kinds of historical modes of narration: Classical one, represented by Hollywood; Art-Cinema narration, Historical-materialist narration, and the Parametric narration. Extrapolating to the sociological description made by Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction, the first and fourth modes of historical narration would be popular art, one in the capitalist society (American film industry), and the other one in the Socialist society (Soviet film industry and other Socialist film industries). The third and fourth historical modes of narration would be art produced for art producers to be consumed by other art producers, identifiable by its formal innovation. According to Bordwell, who borrows the term “parameters” used by Noël Burch in Theory of film practice, the Parametric narration is the one that focuses on the style due to the fact that the way it tells the story doesn’t seem to explicitly serve the story told in the way “classical” or “historical-materialist” narration does, calling attention to itself. Obviously, as useful as this classification is, it would be improved by a deeper understanding of the sociology of art as elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu and other authors that work in that field. “Classical narration” or “Historical-materialist narration” wouldn’t be recognizable hadn’t they already a particular style. What the Parametric narration does is to deviate from both historical modes of narrations proposing a new artistic language, canon, or code as modern art under the capitalist system does. Nowadays around the world, with recording and editing equipment at hand, as humble as they may be, experimentation in feature films is possible at low costs but, as the popular art produced by the American film industry rules the market in many countries, feature films that create their own conventions and are produced in artisanal ways aren’t perceived as artistic by the mass viewers. These movies are better received by artists who are interested in the audiovisual field. This is a natural outcome of the existence of the American film industry and the viewers shouldn’t be blamed for gladly consuming what an industry that produces popular art offers to them. At the same time, artists who are interested in experimenting with the audiovisual narration should understand the position they occupy in society as producers of art for other producers. So, clarifying concepts related to film style and Bourgeois and Petit-Bourgeois films modes of production would generate a more realistic approach to film production by artists, investors and would-be investors, scholars, and the consumers.

f. How my professional experience is relevant to the project.

Working for free for Leonidas Zegarra, the Anti-Communist Filmmaker, during the shooting, editing, and exhibition of María y los niños pobres (2010)  I gathered experience in different áreas related to the “artisanal” or Petit-Bourgeois mode of production: as an actor, an assistant director, a co-editor, as crew in the direct sound department, as a promoter, as a sponsor, and as a security guard at the rented movie theater where the film was exhibited. Also, being an unpaid ghostwriter for Leonidas Zegarra, I have written his “Official Blog” since 2008, a situation that forced me to think and research different scholar material to understand the social situation that occupies an artist as Mr. Zegarra. As his unpaid media adviser and unpaid manager of his IMDb.Pro account that I finance, I have had to identify inexpensive methods that would help to develop the public image of a broke filmmaker. As a teacher of the course “Directing Actors Workshop” at the University of San Marcos (Lima – Peru), for one semester, after inviting Leonidas Zegarra to my classroom, I observed the reactions and interaction between the filmmaker and the students, which provided me with deeper insight into the Petit Bourgeois mind that is under the influence of the Bourgeois film mode of production. As the appointed curator of the Leonidas Zegarra (Film) Museum [Casa Museo Leonidas Zegarra, in Spanish], which is a project in development initiated in 2010, I have had to study Mr. Zegarra’s film career and accompany him at a variety of artistic events, retrospectives, and homages developed along the streets, in cultural centers, art galleries, and museums, as well as to hear negatives to exhibit his autobiographical movie at multiplexes located in Lima, Peru. Having a Master’s degree in Social Communication and having undergone a doctoral program in the History of Art (2012-2013), the data I accumulate is complemented by a permanent interest in film and art theory. So, if there is someone with the experience acquired in the artisanal film production field needed to develop the project, it is me.

g. The project’s significance to my own professional development.

The project is the theoretical extension of my experience working with Leonidas Zegarra, the Anti-Communist Filmmaker as well as a consequence of research I have developed to describe his film style in María y los niños pobres (2010). Being myself interested in the audiovisual narration and being an aspiring artist, a book or booklet that clarifies the position of the producer of art for other producers in the filmmaking field, would contribute to support my future practice. It is easier to refer the own practice to a written source than to explain every time what one is doing. Also, the ´project would clarify Mr. Zegarra’s film practice, facilitating my labor as curator of The Leonidas Zegarra (Film) Museum, which is a project in development.

h. Timetable for completing the project.

2020: Reception of funds.

January – May 2021. Analysis of the information available.

June – October 2021. Elaboration of the text.

November 2021: Final draft.

December 2021: Publication.

i. Additional resources and how I intend to use the grant.

I don’t have additional resources and I intend to use the grant wisely. The core of the project is conceptual, which demands books and time to read and these have costs. The grant will be used to cover these costs and to pay for the cost of publishing the book or booklet.

-----------

Bourgeois and Petit Bourgeois Film Modes of Production as Art Projects or, The American Film Industry, its Artistic Boundaries, and the Kind of Film Style Beyond the Outer Limits to its Accumulated Economic, Cultural, Social, and Symbolic Capital.

Select Bibliography

By Jorge Villacorta

Agassi, Joseph; Jarvie, Ian (2008). A critical rationalist aesthetics. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.

Bazin, Andre (1991). Orson Welles: a critical view. Los Angeles: Acrobat Books.

Black, Gregory (2001). Hollywood censored: Morality codes, Catholics, and the movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Becker, Howard Saul. (2008). Art Worlds. Berkeley ; Los Angeles ; London: University of California Press

Becker, Howard Saul. (1974). Art As Collective Action. American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 6. (Dec., 1974), pp. 767-776. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28197412%2939%3A6%3C767%3AAACA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z

Beller, Jonathan (2006). The cinematic mode of production: Attention economy and the society of the spectacle. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.

Bordwell, David; Thompson, Kristin; Smith, Jeff (2020). Film art: An introduction. New York, NY : McGraw-Hill Education

Bordwell, David (2015). Narration in the fiction film. New York ; London : Routledge, Taylor & Franics Group.

Bordwell, David; Staiger, Janet; Thompson, Kristin (2015). The classical Hollywood cinema: Film style & the mode of production to 1960. London; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Bordwell, David (2010). The way Hollywood tells it: Story and style in modern movies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bordwell, David (2008). Poetics of cinema. New York; London: Routledge

Bordwell, David (1999). On the history of film style. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

Bordwell, David (1996). Making meaning: inference and rhetoric in the intepretation of cinema. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Bordwell, David (1994): Ozu and the poetics of cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bourdieu; Pierre; Turner, Christ (2016). The social estructures of the economy. Cambridge ; Malden: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre; Nice, Richard; Benntt, Tony (2015). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Bourdieu, Pierre (2008). Homo Academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1996). The rules of art. Cambridge : Polity Press

Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, J., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (1986), Westport, CT: Greenwood, pp. 241–58.

Burch, Nöel; Lane, Helen R. (2018). Theory of film practice. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Burch, Nöel; Brewster, Ben (1990). Life to those shadows. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Burch, Nöel (1979). To the distant observer. Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Burnett, Colin (2008). A new look at the concept of film style in film: the origins and development of the problem-solution model. Published online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17400300802098289

Commolli, Jean-Louis (2015). Cinema against spectacle Technique and ideology revisited. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Cutting, James E.; Brunick, Kaitlin L.; DeLong, Jordan E. (2011) How act structure sculpts shot lengths and shot transitions in Hollywood Film. Projections. Volume 5, Issue 1, Summer 2011: 1-16. doi: 10.3167/proj.2011.050102

Decherney, Peter (2005). Hollywood and the culture elite: How the movies became American. New York: Columbia University Press.

Edwards, Matthew (ed.) (2007). Film out of boundaries. Essays and interviews on non.mainstream cinema worldwide. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

Hadjinicolaou, Nicos (1979). Art history and class struggle. London: Pluto Press.

Jarvie, Ian C. (2014). Philosophy of the film: Epistemology, ontology, aesthetics. New York: Routledge.

Jarvie, Ian C. (2001). Towards a sociology of the cinema: a comparative essay on the structure and functioning of a major entertainment industry. London: Routledge.

Jarvie, Ian C. (1989-90). Audrey Hepburn: the performer and the star. Unpublished paper. http://www.yorku.ca/jarvie/online_publications/HepburnAudrey.pdf

Jarvie, Ian C. (1978). Controlling the international film industry. Unpublished paper. http://www.yorku.ca/jarvie/online_publications/Honolulu.pdf

Kapsis, Robert E. (1993). Hitchcock: the making of a reputation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kapsis, Robert E. (1993). Reputation building and the film art world: the case of Alfred Hitchcock. The Sociological Quaterly. Vol 30, No 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 15-35.

Kaufman, Lloyd; Antill, Sara (2017). Sell your own damn movie! New York: Focal Press.

Kaufman, Lloyd; Antill, Sara; Tlapoyawa, Kurly (2016). Direct your own damn movie! London, New York: Routledge.

Kaufman, Lloyd; Collins, Ashley Wren (2009). Produce your own damn movie! Burlington, MA: Focal Press.

Kaufman, Lloyd; Jahnke, Adam; Haaga, Trent (2003). Make your own damn movie! Secrets of a renegade director. New York: Saint Martin’s Griffin.

Kaufman, Llody; Gunn, James (1998). All I need to know about filmmaking I learned from the Toxic Avenger. Troma Entertainmet / Berkley Boulevard Books.

Klinger, Barbara (1994). Melodrama and meaning: history, culture, and the films of Douglas Sirk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Press.

Lindenmuth, Kevin J. (1998). Making movies on your own. Practical talk from independent filmmakers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

Linnell, Greg (1993). Prospects for a historical poetics of cinema: David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson,  and neoformalism. Thesis. Master of Philosophical Foundations in Aesthetics. Institute for Christian Studies. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. https://ir.icscanada.edu/bitstream/handle/10756/290830/Linnell_Greg_199309_MPhilF_Thesis.pdf

O’Pray, Michael (ed.) (1991). Andy Warhol film factory. London: British Film Institute Publications.

Pela, Robrt L. (2002). Filthy: The weird world of John Waters. Los Angeles, California: Alyson Books.

Raymond, Marc (2013). Hollywood’s New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese. Albany, New York: SUNY Press.

Raymond, Marc (2000) Martin Scorsese and American Film Genre. Thesis. Master’s of Arts in Film Studies. Ottawa; Ontario: Carleton University. https://curve.carleton.ca/2e3497c6-e49b-4897-b0d4-4da0b938c865

Raymond Marc (2009) Martin Scorsese and Film Culture Radically Contextualizing the Contemporary Auteur. Thesis. Doctor of Philosophy. Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture: Cultural Mediations. Ottawa, Canada: Carleton University. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9127/02a004a27fc60b19866e20c11e00aa2aa39d.pdf

Sarris, Andrew (1996). The American cinema: Directors and directions 1929-1968. New York: Da Capo Press.

Simens, Dov S-S (2003). From reel to deal: Everything you need to create a successful independent film. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Symons, Alex (2012). Mel Brooks in the cultural industries: Survival and prolonged adaptation. Edinburgh University Press..

Thompson, Don (2015). The supermodel and the Brillo box. Back stories and peculiar economics from the the world of contemporary art. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Turner, Graeme (1999). Film as social practice. London, New York: Routledge.

Wolff, Janet (1981). The social production of art. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hamphire, and London: MacMillan Education LTD.

---------

Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato

Leonidas Zegarra

"Huanchaco", Fernando Alonso Gutiérrez Cassinelli

"María y los niños pobres" (2010)