Third Cinema

By: kuxa kanema

What is Third Cinema?

Third Cinema is an aesthetic and political project whose principles have guided filmmakers throughout the regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. While its principles were originally defined and used to rally filmmakers in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Third Cinema still influences filmmaking strategies and projects today. Third Cinema continues to evolve as political, social, and cultural climates change throughout the world; the tone of a Third Cinema film can reflect a revolutionary atmosphere and deliver its message with confidence, convey the disillusionment of failed or coopted revolutions, or express frustration with class, racial, or gender oppression continued colonial impulses from First World nations. For this reason, Third Cinema’s importance in filmmaking history and its power to deliver social commentary with the aim of inspiring change cannot be understated.

The term “Third Cinema” reflects its origins in the so-called Third World, which generally refers to those nations located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America where historical encounters with colonial and imperial forces have shaped their economic and political power structures. The term also illustrates a response to the dominant cinematic forms of First World nations and commercial national film industries. Where First Cinema conjures images of Hollywood movies, consumption, and bourgeois values, and Second Cinema refers to European art house films demonstrating aesthetic, but not always political, innovation, Third Cinema takes a different approach to filmmaking, by subverting cinematic codes, embracing revolutionary ideals, and combating the passive film-watching experience of commerical cinema.

In its earliest stages, as articulated by the classic manifestoes and theories of the 1960s and 1970s, Third Cinema was a militant practice parallel with revolutionary struggles of this period, produced with the intention of provoking discussion with and amongst its viewers and proposing alternative visions of the past, present, and future. While some of this militancy has faded as revolutionary struggles have changed or failed and new issues have arisen, Third Cinema has evolved to address problems in nation-building projects, to express disillusionment and impotence, to respond to new forms of cultural oppression. In general, Third Cinema’s aesthetic innovations involve the mixing of different genres and visual styles to situate both cultural and political critiques, rather than aiming solely for artistic excellence and expression. In this way, the filmmakers of Third Cinema select their visual elements and compositional structures to suit their message, which is why the films of Third Cinema are so diverse in their styles and forms. Though they range from newsreel shorts, to realist epics, to pseudo-documentaries, to avant-gardist pieces, Third Cinema films maintain their connection to the principles of questioning and challenging the structures of power and oppression and educating those who live under and must struggle against its domination.

What are the goals of Third Cinema? What does it address?

While the content and message of Third Cinema films vary depending on the filmmaker, the country of origin, the resources available, and the political and social climate, these films are part of the Third Cinema project because they address certain topics and adhere to particular guiding principles. Third Cinema films generally engage the following issues and address the following questions:

Above all, Third Cinema questions structures of power, particularly colonialism and its legacies.

Third Cinema aims for liberation of the oppressed, whether this oppression is based on gender, class, race, religion, or ethnicity.

Third Cinema engages questions of identity and community within nations and diaspora populations who have left their home countries because of exile, persecution, or economic migration.

Third Cinema opens a dialogue with history to challenge previously held conceptions of the past, to demonstrate their legacies on the present, and to reveal the “hidden” struggles of women, impoverished classes, indigenous groups, and minorities.

Third Cinema challenges viewers to reflect on by the experience of poverty and subordination by showing how it is lived, not how it is imagined.

Third Cinema facilitates interaction among intellectuals and the masses by using film for education and dialogue.

Third Cinema strives to recover and rearticulate the nation, using politics of inclusion and the ideas of the people to imagine new models and new possibilities.

By incorporating cultural and political critiques and challenging viewers with new compositional structures and genre juxtaposition, Third Cinema harnesses the power of film to increase social consciousness about issues of power, nationhood, identity, and oppression around the world. For audiences within these regions, particularly those facing cultural and political subordination, Third Cinema aims to illustrate the historical and social processes that have brought about their oppression and to indicate where transformation is required. For viewers outside these regions, Third Cinema presents the realities of Third World nations as they are, avoiding sensationalism or romanticism, in order to educate the viewing public and to encourage dialogue about alternative visions of the past, present, and future. As Third Cinema principles continue to guide filmmakers from the Third World or Third World diaspora with access to media and film resources in the First World, these messages will hopefully become more prevalent and make social change more possible.

Finally, it is important to note the distinction between Third Cinema and Third World Cinema. As indicated above, Third Cinema is an aesthetic and political project which is guided by certain principles in order to challenge power structures. Third Cinema films are generally produced by filmmakers located within the Third World regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and intended for audiences in these regions. However, Third Cinema can also include films made by filmmakers located in the so-called First or Second Worlds as long as they adhere to the guiding principles and are made in support of the Third World perspective. (The Battle of Algiers by the Italian Gillo Pontecorvo is a classic example.) This project is sometimes referred to by other names, including Third World Cinema, but Third World Cinema, or world cinema, is a much broader category which generally includes commercial or arthouse films produced in Third World countries as well as films with social and political commentary made before (or after) the advent of the Third Cinema movement. Though some view Third Cinema as a project of a particular revolutionary period which has now ended, its legacy is visible in films being produced today in the Third World as well as by Third World diaspora populations now located within the First World and in organizations using the power of media for social justice. In short, Third Cinema is still alive—and just as powerful. – Kim Dodge

Classic Texts and Theories

The Third Cinema project developed out of the period of the 1960s and 1970s inspired by the revolutionary and political struggles in nations throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Many filmmakers were inspired by classic texts of the period, and some even wrote film manifestoes to explain and clarify the intentions and innovations of their films and to rally others to their cause. Below please find short descriptions of some of these major texts. While it may be difficult to obtain some of the films of Third Cinema, the texts and theories that inspired them are still generally accessible. Moreover, film and cultural theorists have also published various works outlining the history of Third Cinema, describing its impact, and analyzing its legacy. Some of the most useful are also listed below.

Frantz Fanon • Martinique • The Wretched of the Earth • first published in 1961 •

The Wretched of the Earth examines the psychological impact of colonialization and the challenges of the process of decolonization on creating a new national consciousness. Fanon cautions against maintaining colonial legacies through economic dependence, creating new struggles and conflicts among Africans from other nations, and forgetting the reasons for and the importance of the liberation struggle. Most significantly for Third Cinema, Fanon outlines the advocates the creation of a national culture which reflects the revolutionary struggle to free oneself from the legacy of colonialism and the true beliefs and ideals of a nation.

Paulo Freire • Brazil • Pedagogy of the Oppressed • first published in 1968 •

Pedagogy of the Oppressed highlights the need for the oppressed to educate themselves about their oppression in order to free themselves from the image of oppression that they have internalized from the oppresors. By viewing their subordination as a situation that can be transformed, they can commit to their own liberation. Freire indicates that the model of “problem-posing education”, or education where people ask critical questions of their world, their reality, their environment, and their relationship with the world, is necessary for transcending oppression through revolution.

Julio García Espinosa • Cuba • For an Imperfect Cinema • first published in 1969 •

“For an Imperfect Cinema” argues for the importance of cinema to commit to the revolutionary struggle so that its audience can understand that they live in a world they can transform. Instead of focusing solely on artistic excellence and the finished project, Imperfect Cinema focuses on illustrating the problems of the world and the process by which they were created and encouraging the audience to analyze it and come to its own conclusions.

Glauber Rocha • Brazil • Aesthetic of Hunger • first published in 1965 •

“Aesthetic of Hunger” explains the goals of Cinema Novo and the importance of representing hunger and misery so that it can be intellectually understood by those who experience it.

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino • Argentina • Towards a Third Cinema • first published in 1969 •

“Towards a Third Cinema” coins the term Third Cinema to describe films that attempt to provide alternatives to mainstream, commercial cinema espousing bourgois values as well as auteur cinema which relies on funding and distribution from capitalist sources. For Solanas and Getino, Third Cinema includes films that break free of these dominant molds and subvert the system in order to fight against it. At its best, this subversion of cinematic codes and messages will move the audience to action, becoming mobilized and politicized through the education provided by the films

Ella Shohat and Robert Stam • Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media •

Includes useful analyses of the development of the term “Third World” and the history and goals of Third Cinema, as well as critical studies of racial stereotyping and biases in films from various genres and regions.

Michael T. Martin, ed. • New Latin American Cinema: Theory, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations •

Contains the manifestoes mentioned above, as well as several other important texts theorizing Third Cinema and its legacy.

Towards a Third Cinema by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino

“…we must discuss, we must invent…” —Frantz Fanon

Just a short time ago it would have seemed like a Quixotic adventure in the colonised, neocolonised, or even the imperialist nations themselves to make any attempt to create films of decolonisation that turned their back on or actively opposed the System. Until recently, film had been synonymous with spectacle or entertainment: in a word, it was one more consumer good. At best, films succeeded in bearing witness to the decay of bourgeois values and testifying to social injustice. As a rule, films only dealt with effect, never with cause; it was cinema of mystification or anti-historicism. It was surplus value cinema. Caught up in these conditions, films, the most valuable tool of communication of our times, were destined to satisfy only the ideological and economic interests of the owners of the film industry, the lords of the world film market, the great majority of whom were from the United States.

Was it possible to overcome this situation? How could the problem of turning out liberating films be approached when costs came to several thousand dollars and the distribution and exhibition channels were in the hands of the enemy? How could the continuity of work be guaranteed? How could the public be reached? How could System-imposed repression and censorship be vanquished? These questions, which could be multiplied in all directions, led and still lead many people to scepticism or rationalisation: ‘revolutionary cinema cannot exist before the revolution’; ‘revolutionary films have been possible only in the liberated countries’; ‘without the support of revolutionary political power, revolutionary cinema or art is impossible.’ The mistake was due to taking the same approach to reality and films as did the bourgeoisie. The models of production, distribution, and exhibition continued to be those of Hollywood precisely because, in ideology and politics, films had not yet become the vehicle for a clearly drawn differentiation between bourgeois ideology and politics. A reformist policy, as manifested in dialogue with the adversary, in coexistence, and in the relegation of national contradictions to those between two supposedly unique blocs – the USSR and the USA – was and is unable to produce anything but a cinema within the System itself. At best, it can be the ‘progressive’ wing of Establishment cinema. When all is said and done, such cinema was doomed to wait until the world conflict was resolved peacefully in favour of socialism in order to change qualitatively. The most daring attempts of those film-makers who strove to conquer the fortress of official cinema ended, as Jean-Luc Godard eloquently put it, with the filmmakers themselves ‘trapped inside the fortress.’

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To place Third Cinema within a more contemporary environment I would suggest films by Alan Clarke and Michael Haneke as examples of Third Cinema over the past 20 years. In particular I believe that Clarke’’s film Elephant, and Haneke’s Funny Games are the two finest examples of a Third Cinema response to screen violence. Both films challenge the viewer to look beyond First Cinema’s formal cinematic structures and question oneself, and both films challenge society itself; Elephant the culture of killing in Northern Ireland, Funny Games the audience’s acceptance of violence on screen. – Thomas Leach

TWENTY FIVE KEY FILMS
1. Hour of the Furnaces, Fernanado Solanas, Octavio Getino, Argentina, 1970
2. Battle of Chile, Patrcio Guzman, Chile, 1978

3. Black God, White Devil, Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1964
4. Macunaima, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Brazil, 1969
5. Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1968
6. Araya, Margot Benacerraf, Venezuela, 1959
7. Blood of the Condor, Jorge Sanjines, Bolivia, 1969
8. Three Sad Tigers, Raul Ruiz, Chile, 1968
9. Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett, United States, 1981

10. Sambizanga, Sarah Maldoror, Angola, 1973
11.Kuxa Kanema Newsreels, Various, Mozambique, 1970’s
12. Touki Bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1973

13. Den Muso, Souleymane Cisse, Mali, 1975
14. Harvest 3,000 Years, Haile Gerima, Ethiopia, 1976
15. Africa I Will Fleece You, Jean Marie Teno, Cameroon, 1993
16. The Treasure, Lester James Peries, Sri Lanka, 1973
17. Cloud Capped Star, Ritwak Ghatak, India, 1960

18. The Cow, Dariush Mehrjui, Iran, 1969,
19. The Dupes, Tewfik Saleh, Syria, 1973
20. The Sparrow, Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1972
21.Lucia, Humberto Solas, Cuba, 1968
22. Ten, Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1997

23. Manila: In the Claws of Darkness, Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1975
24. Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria, 1966
25. Mapantsula, Oliver Schmitz, South Africa, 1988