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I was putting together my portfolio for class, and I realized that I never actually posted about any of the outside events I went to, so I'm going to do so now. Better late than never, right? 

I went to Sherry Ortner's talk about indie documentaries, I think it was. It was interesting, but it was directly related to gender and sexuality. She mentioned that idependent producers are criticial to indie films, and that most are from the PMC (professor managerial class), unlike the more directors and filmmakers. She said that everyone knows the educational backgrounds of everyone, and indie producers give cultural capital to a film.

Looking back, this sort of reminds me of Felice Picano's conception of education as social class. From what Ortner said, education and class seem very tied together. The indie producers generally have good educations and are from the PMC class, and the cultural capital they give to a film seems related to class as well. Also, Ortner said that the professional managerial class typically supports indie films (the actual people, not just PMC producers). It seems to be a bit of a cycle, PMC producers making films for PMC people to watch. What is particularly interesting is that Ortner said that indie films have an emphasis on destabilizing and disturbing class. I find this interesting because it seems to be people of one (rather privileged) class creating movies for people of their own class, and I think that that might sometimes lead to just further solidifying those classes.