THIRD CINEMA THEORY: NEW PERSPECTIVES
Synopsis
This article
tries to address established notions of Third Cinema theory and its film makers
from developing and postcolonial nations. The 'Third Cinema' movement called
for a politicised film-making practice in Africa, Asia and Latin America, since
its first appearance during the 60s and 70s taking on board issues of race,
class, religion, and national integrity. The films investigated in this paper,
from directors such as Sembene, Getino, Solanas and Guzman, are amongst the
most culturally significant and politically sophisticated from this movement
and which denote the adoption of an independent, often oppositional stance
towards commercial genre emanating from the more developed capitalist world.
However, despite the contemporary popularity and critical attention enjoyed by
films from Asia and Latin America in particular, Third Cinema appears to have
lost its momentum. This article wants to bring Third Cinema back to attention.
There are difficult and challenging questions Third Cinema posed and continues
to pose. This article seeks to suggest new methodologies and redirections of
existing ones, but also reread the entire phenomenon of film-making in a
fast-vanishing 'Third World', with case studies of the cinemas of Argentina,
Chile, Senegal as well as from European Third Cinema movements.
Overview
There is an
endless debate about Third Cinema and its strategies in offering valuable tools
of documenting social reality. From the 70s to recent days, appreciation of its
value and aesthetics was unfolded through controversial approaches and
different views on this 'radical' form of cinema. The idea of Third Cinema was
raised in the 1960s as a set of radical manifestos and low-budget experimental
movies by a group of Latin American filmmakers, who defined a cinema of
opposition to Hollywood and European models. Possibly this new form of
expression was coming from three different areas of the world: Asia, Africa and
Latin America. At the time these three zones were labelled 'Third World (in
some parts and sometimes they still are). Even though scholars such as Willemen
explained how the notion of Third Cinema was most emphatically not Third World
Cinema, these two concepts have often been confused either voluntarily or
accidentally.
As an idea, the roots of Third Cinema came from the Cuban
Revolution (1959) and the figure who supported this revolution - Che Guevara.
The Brazilian Cinema Novo, where Glauber Rocha provided an uproar with his
polemic manifesto titled The Aesthetics of Hunger (July 1965), was part and
element of this new wave. It shared roots with certain aesthetics of Italian
neo-realism and Grierson's notion of social documentary and ultimately
influenced by some Marxist aesthetics. Filmmakers influenced by Latin American
documentary include figures such as Fernando Birri, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, and
Julio Garcia Espinosa.
The term Third Cinema was invented by the Argentinean film
makers, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino who had produced and directed the
most important documentary for the Third Cinema in the 60's La Hora de los
Hornos (The Hour of Furnaces, 1968). At the same time, they wrote an important
essay sustaining the radical ideas of Third Cinema: Towards a Third Cinema
(1969). The principle characteristics of Third Cinema is really not so much
where it is made, or even who makes it, but, rather, the ideology it espouses
and the consciousness it displays. In one word we might not be far from the
truth when we claim the Third Cinema as the cinema of the Third World which
stands opposed to imperialism and class oppression in all their ramifications
and manifestations.
The Third Cinema has offered a significant means of
documenting social reality through the analysis of documentaries from Argentina,
Chile and Algeria and, on the other side of the Ocean, also from Black
Independents documentaries for what concerns the British context.
Self-conscious ideological opposition to Hollywood was the
first marker of Third Cinema, while identification with national liberation was
the next most common theme, at least in the early writings on the subject. The
idea of the nation in this discourse, however, always rubs up against
globalized Third World identification. On the one hand, the tri-continental
definition of radical film aesthetics defies national boundaries. On the other
hand, if any cinema is determinedly 'national' even 'regional' in its address
and aspirations, it is Third Cinema.
The political-cultural trends of the 80s and 90s have demonstrated
the need for a definitive reappraisal of the terms in which a radical practice
like Third Cinema had been conceived in the 70s: questions of gender and of
cultural identity received new inflections, and traditional notions of class
determined identity were soon to be seen as a tool inadequate as the forms of
struggle that corresponded to them.
The importance of
Solanas and Getino is due to both their manifesto about Third Cinema and the
striking documentary of 1968, La hora de los hornos. This documentary has a
more important place within revolutionary films in pushing the audience into
action to subvert imperialism politics through the dynamism of its style and
the radical and systematic way that it frames political and ideological issues.
From several authors this kind of cinema has been labelled as 'Guerrilla
cinema' or 'cinema like a gun' because of the force of their images and of the
violence with which the film makers addressed the social and political issues
of Latin America. In this work the montage divided the whole documentary into
thirteen chapters and three sections. Each chapter is supported by statements,
quotations and slogans. At that time La hora de los hornostried to unfold
episodes and characters that as stated by Gabriel aimed to "raise the
consciousness of its audience".
La hora de los hornos represents a multi layered form of
documentary. The work is a combination of two or more modes of facing social
reality. Usually the documentary modes can be ranged within four categories
such as expository, observational, interactive and reflexive. Even though
lacking in impartiality and so consequently observational mode is absent, the
Solanas and Getino film encompasses defiantly expository, interactive and
reflexive modes of documentary.
La hora de los hornos is divided into three sections: the
first 'Neo-colonialism and Violence' relates Argentina to the European
influences; the second section 'An Act for Liberation' explains the opposition
struggle during Peron's exile; in the third section 'Violence and Liberation'
we can alternately appreciate documents, interviews and quotations framing the
path to a revolutionary future for the people of Latin America. That was the
period of the tri-continental revolution supported by figures such as Frantz
Fanon, Ernesto Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.
The use of spoken and written commentary directly addressed
to the audience definitely embraced the notion of 'Guerrilla Cinema', where the
spectator is called to act against Imperialism.
From an editing point of view, recorded noise and distortive
music play a discursive and demystifying role. Minimalistic avant-garde
aesthetics not only is appropriate to the exigencies of film production in that
particular context but also reflects artistic strategies.
The Third Cinema was trying to develop a new web of
production and distribution away from the mainstream channels. In this
direction La hora de los hornos worked in finding a way out from censorship
with a creation of an underground system of distribution. Sometimes the
screenings of Solanas and Getino had to be protected by militant armed guards
to avoid the risk of government retaliation.
La hora de los hornos has an undoubtedly timeless value
since its release because of its attempt to frame an ideological-political
argument. The politics used by US strategies in the 60s, 70s and 80s as
described by the documentary of the two Argentinean filmmakers indeed is not
too different from the strategies raised up by the same US administration in
the last few years of post-colonialism and savage wars under Bush's reign. With
no surprise, La hora de los hornos could be screened to denounce the crisis
that affected Argentina in 2000, due to economical struggles provoked by IMF
and its 'bizarre' financial strategies without losing its force.
Solanas and Getino contributed greatly in building one of
the most important columns and reason of debate within Third Cinema such as the
notion of national culture and identities. Enhanced by this concept of specific
national roots that comes from African, Asian and Latin American Third Cinema,
La hora de los hornos has mirrored the pursuit in avoiding the
industrial-political domination of Hollywood.
La hora de los hornos is probably the most influential
documentary ever released in Latin America, because it is not only useful as a
device to understand the culture and political discourses of the late 60s but
it is still meaningful to decipher the actual social problems in the Latin
America continent.
In the manifesto 'Towards a Third Cinema', Solanas and
Getino stated their idea of goals to be achieved through Third Cinema:
"The anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of the Third World and of
their equivalents inside the imperialist countries constitutes today the axis
of the world revolution. Third cinema is, in our opinion, the cinema that
recognises in that struggle the most gigantic cultural, scientific, and
artistic manifestation of our time, the great possibility of constructing a
liberated personality with each person as the starting point - in a word, the
decolonisation of culture."
Years later (2004) in Latin America another important
documentary was released by Patricio Guzman -Salvador Allende, a documentary
which tells us about the life and death of the socialist president of Chile,
who in 1973 was killed or pushed to commit suicide (still a lot of controversy
on this point, although the latter seems the most accepted version) by both
Pinochet and CIA in a coup d'etat.
As Guzman did in 1977 with The Battle of Chile, a three-part
documentary about Chilean socio-political life in the early 70s, Salvador
Allende has a particular mode of production that creates an epic work poised
between direct and dramatized, immediate and mediated modes of describing
historical and dramatic events.
Both movies through the use of a voice-over mark the
differences between these features and those concepts ofdirect cinema.
Although the sequence shots and the mobile framing,
reframing, focus shifts, and movements within the image could code the film as
"direct", the voice-over reinscribes the filmic discourse as an
authored discourse.
Third Cinema in Africa: past and present
In a continent
like Africa, due to the long-term difficult situation of the cinema industry,
the first point on a filmmaker's agenda is looking for funds, and this need
shows how the Third Cinema's struggle for survival is still harsh. I will take
into account specifically the period in which Third Cinema was born in Africa
and specifically with works by Ousmane Sembene such as Ceddo, Emitai and Xala.
"When one creates one does not think of the world; one
thinks of his own country. It is, after all, the African who will ultimately
bring change to Africa." (Sembene)
It is in this quote that is embedded most of the philosophy
with which Ousmane Sembene realised and supported, in Senegal, the project of
Third Cinema in Africa.
He encountered several troubles with Senegal censorship;
usually his works have been either delayed or forbidden. Sembene often
portrayed Africa as a land peopled with oppositional groups, who fight for
their independence and for their cultural identity. His work, Ceddo (1977)
represented one of the most important pieces of Third Cinema in Africa. The
title itself was quite critical of the colonization process, in fact the
translation in English means 'outsider'. This word wanted to portray African
struggles in resisting the conversion to Islam, and to a certain extent also
Christianity. In Sembene words "The Ceddo is a lively mind or spirit, rich
in the double meaning of words and knows the forbidden meanings. The Ceddo is
innocent of sin and transgression. The Ceddo is jealous of his/her absolute
liberty" (Sembene).
The film is set in a traditional African village during the
period when North African Arabs were building Islamic colonies all over Africa.
In the feature, the village included three symbols of 'foreignness' which
invades African spirituality: a European trader, a Catholic priest and an Arab
Moslem. The movie shows the desire of colonization of African culture by these
three different icons, faced by the local 'outsiders' and just among these
'outsiders' we find 'Ceddo'. The feature is dominated by icons which represent
the opposing cultures that struggle to survive.
For a long time African Third Cinema was also the 'cinema of
silence' whereby the silence witnessed the African spirituality to be protected
and filmed without any form of invasion. Even though the first part of
Sembene's career was characterised by this element of silence as, for example,
featured in Emitai, Ceddo lost this cinematic approach to the African culture.
The silence in Third Cinema produced in Africa and
specifically by Sembene seems to have two levels of reading: firstly, tradition
is instinctual and articulation is not necessary for active opposition to the
external religions; secondly, the silence echoes the reverence for traditional
culture which in spite of attempts of imperialism remains bound deeply to
African identity.
Recently, a new form of Third Cinema coming from the African
continent is that of video-film features. According to Ukadike, it's useful to
underline how almost all the video-films showing Ghanaian and Nigerian
contemporary living are painted with "ostentatious allure". It seems
the representation of African culture seen through naked breasts of village
women have ended; instead today we see high-profile upper class, especially
businessmen and women.
Even though this new form of cinematic expression embraces a
certain wealthy life style, at the same time these new video-films are filled
by national heroes, local and famous songs, in MTV style, and an iconography of
identity that is hardly fairly portrayed either by mainstream Hollywood cinema
or European cinema. Thus these new forms embrace Third Cinema strategies of
analysis, whereby images, sounds and music function as frames to channel the
struggle against past and contemporary forms of post-colonialism.
The debate among African filmmakers nowadays seems to be
about the uniqueness of their cinema and to find ways of differentiation from
Euro-American cinematic modes of expression. The aim pursued today by most of
Third Cinema African filmmakers lies in fighting against all the obstacles that
are retarding the development for this continent, trying to find a common
thread between post-colonialism, film and local identities.
Third Cinema within a European border: Black Independents
Third Cinema
includes an infinity of subjects and styles so this form of cinema can be
practised anywhere, opening the way towards new formulations of Third Cinema
also within Europe. From this point view and from the diasporas' element in it,
we can analyse the importance of the Black Independents operating in the UK
which helped to create a new notion of Third Cinema.
The importance of Third Cinema as a medium produced also
within European boundaries is raised by the position of the Black Audio Film
Collective formed in the 80s within UK borders. Their struggles in finding a
new form of expression under Thatcherism, Black Audio Film Collective assumed a
fundamental role in the presence of Third Cinema in a reality of globalization
just like nowadays. Thus talking about Third Cinema as cinematic expression
coming only from the three areas of Latin America, Africa and Asia means to
dismiss the powerful impact on the European boarders of this cinematic reality.
Black diaspora expressed in the last few years new groups of ethnicity all over
Europe such as Paris, London, Madrid and it would not be fair to not consider
those realities as potential expression of the same thematic and aesthetics
raised in the past by the three different areas previously mentioned.
As reminded to us by Reece Auguiste, an interpreter of the
Black Audio Film Collective, Third Cinema in Britain through this group needed
to find its own distinctiveness. Even though the filmmakers who represented
Black Audio Film Collective are working now as individual artists rather than
members of that group project, the importance of a new alternative visual
grammar is fundamental to address the needs of this new diasporas generation
which deal with the same issues of demarginalization as their parents once did
in their old lands.
It's also by supporting groups of filmmakers such as those
coming from Black Audio Film Collective's experience that it will be possible
to redefine the boarders and the tools of Third Cinema in these years of
migration, globalization and in one word Diaspora. The multiplicity of
identities and histories needs to be displayed through subjects able to read a
dialogue between new technologies, class gender and a mix of languages.
Third Cinema as 'third space' Third Cinema may relevantly result as
third, the 'third space' which displaces the histories and needs that
constitute it and sets up new structures of identity, new political
initiatives, which are inadequately understood through the actual mainstream
channels of production and distribution.
Due to the changing multiracial and multicultural world
reality, Third Cinema must reinvent itself in terms of gender, class and
geographical identity and consequently in terms of narrative structure and
aesthetics.
The challenge between those cosmopolitan images and the
struggle of local identity continues to move film authors looking for new ways
to co-produce new Latin American, African and Asian cultural identities through
collaborative practices that have as their ultimate aim not the removal of the
local but a meaningful relocation of it in the global community.
As happened also for Solanas, the Third Cinema needs to
configure itself as authorial icons representing their respective national
culture within the global market, without losing their status of oppositional
figures to the mainstream cinema, without losing the local identities either
coming from the Third World area or from a European context.
These concerns to define a necessary and new form of Third
Cinema must not leave behind the primary concerns in the production of
'revolutionary films'. The need of Third Cinema is undoubtedly a call for
social and cultural transformation. Even though historical contexts and
aesthetic responses may change, its mandate to face post-colonialism and to protect
local identities still holds. Obviously the present aim of Third Cinema,
ignoring geographical borders, is to continue in seeking its own place in a
global context. Third Cinema is not the cinema of the Third World but is the
cinematic expression of the desire to express ourselves and our identities,
although a general tendency of politics and culture is pushing towards a way of
homologation and annulment.
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o Filmography
Los Olvidados (Mexico, 1950)
Ultramar Films
Producer: Óscar Dancigers, Sergio Kogan, Jaime A. Menasce
Director: Luis Buñuel
B/W, 85 min.
Terra em transe (Brazil, 1967)
Mapa Filmes
Producer: Glauber Rocha
Director: Glauber Rocha
B/W, 106 min.
La hora de los hornos (Argentina, 1968)
Grupo Cine Liberacion, Solanas Productions
Producer: Fernando Solanas, Edgardo Tallero
Director: Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino
B/W, 260 min.
Barravento (Brazil, 1969)
Iglu Filmes
Producer: Rex Schindler
Director: Glauber Rocha
B/W, 78 min.
Emitai (Senegal, 1971)
Filmi Domirev
Producer: Ousmane Sembene
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Colour, 103 min.
Xala (Senegal, 1974)
Films Domireew, Ste. Me. Production du Senegal
Producer: Paulin Vieyra
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Colour, 123 min.
The Battle of Chile (Chile, 1977)
Equipe Tercer Ano Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industrias
Cinematográficos
(ICAIC)
Producer: Chris Marker
Director: Patricio Guzman
B/W, 300 min.
Ceddo (Senegal, 1977)
Ousmane Sembene
Producer: Ousmane Sembene
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Colour, 120 min.
Handsworth Songs (UK, 1986)
Black Audio Film Collective
Producer: Lina Gopaul
Director: John Akomfrah
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