Three essays set the agenda for Third World political filmmaking: Rocha’s “Aesthetics of Hunger” (1965), Espinosa’s “For an Imperfect Cinema” (1969), and Solanas and Getino’s “Third Cinema” manifesto (1969). The authors all subsequently reconsidered their ideas. Espinosa explained that he conceived “imperfection” not as clumsiness but as an acknowledgment of the filmmaker’s political position (Julio Garcia Espinosa, “Meditations on Imperfect Cinema. . . Fifteen Years Later,” Screen 26, nos. 3-4 [May-August 1985]: 94). Solanas explained that not all big productions were necessarily First Cinema, just as not all auteur-based films were necessarily Second Cinema. Third Cinema did, however, support anticolonialism and social change (quoted in “L’Influence du ‘Troisieme Cinema’ dans le monde,” Revue tiers monde 20, no. 79 [July-September 1979]: 622). Writing later in the 1970s, Getino noted ruefully that “the force and cohesion of the popular movements in these countries—and in Argentina—were not as strong as we had imagined” (Octavia Getino, “Some Notes on the Concept of a ‘Third Cinema,’” in Tim Barnard, ed., Argentine Cinema [Toronto: Nightwood, 1986], p. 107).
Most expansively, in a 1971 essay, “The Aesthetics of the Dream,” Rocha defined three types of revolutionary art: that useful for immediate political action (e. g., The Hour of the Furnaces), that which opens up political discussion (e. g., most of Cinema Novo), and a revolutionary art based on the people’s dreams, as reflected in magic and myth (quoted in Sylvie Pierre, Glauber Rocha [Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1987], pp. 129-30). This art of the dream had been ignored by the traditional left, Rocha claimed, although he glimpsed it in the 1968 youth revolutions.
As the force of Third World cinema was waning, film scholars began to study the phenomenon extensively. Some took the position that there was a tricontinental Third Cinema, characterized by recurrent political themes and formal conventions. The most extensive argument for this view is set forth in Teshome Gabriel, Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1982). A condensed statement of his position is “Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films,” in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen, eds., Questions of Third Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1989), pp. 30-52. The view is criticized by Julianne Burton in “Marginal Cinemas and Mainstream Critical Theory,” Screen 26, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1985): 2-21. Gabriel replies in “Colonialism and ‘Law and Order’ Criticism,” Screen 27, nos. 3-4 (May-August 1986): 140-47.
FILM STUDIES AND THE NEW FILM THEORY
The era this chapter surveys witnessed the enormous growth of academic film studies in Britain, Europe, and North America. The political movements of the late 1960s influenced many film courses; instructors and students often analyzed the ideological implications of mainstream Hollywood film and considered critical political films as “oppositional” cinema.
Along with these developments went major changes in film theory. Building on semiological ideas of the early 1960s (see “Notes and Queries,” Chapter 20), film theorists in the wake of 1968 sought to explain how cinema functioned politically while providing pleasure. The newly radicalized editors of Cahiers du cinema proposed a taxonomy that distinguished films wholly in the grip of dominant ideology from those that use political critique opportunistically (e. g., Z). The editors left a space for committed works, for modernist efforts, and for those mainstream films that could be read “symptomatically,” as if they were “splitting under an internal tension” (see Jean-Luc Comolli and Paul Narboni, “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” in Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods, vol. 1 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976], p. 27). Another early theoretical effort, drawing upon current psychoanalytic ideas, was Jean-Pierre Baudry’s 1970 essay “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Baudry suggested that the very technology of film—camera shutter, screen, light beam—manifested a bourgeois worldview.
Feminists also posed theoretical questions about film’s role in promoting patriarchal values. Journals like Camera Obscura and frauen und film took as part of their task the elaboration of a feminist film theory. The most influential essay in this direction was Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), which generated a vast range of comment. By the end of the 1970s, not only had film study established itself as a discipline, but women’s cinema found an audience among feminists.
These and other important essays can be found in Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods, vol. 1 (cited above) and vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Philip Rosen, ed., Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Constance Penley, ed., Feminism and Film Theory (London: Routledge, 1988); and Nick Browne, ed., Cahiers du cinema 1969-1972: The Politics ofRepresen-tation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Historical overviews can be found in introductions to the above volumes, as well as in Christine Gledhill, “Recent Developments in Feminist Film Theory,” in Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams, eds., Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Theory (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984), pp. 18-48; and David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 43-104.
REFERENCES
1. See H. Stuart Hughes, Sophisticated Rebels: The Political Culture of European Dissent, 1968-1987 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 3-14.
2. Quoted in Aruna Vasudev, The New Indian Cinema (Delhi: Macmillan, 1986), p. 29.
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), p. 82.
4. Quoted in Jean Franco, “South of Your Border,” in Sohnya Sayres et al., eds., The 60s without Apology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 324.
5. Manuel Puig, “Cinema and the Novel,” in John King, ed., On Modern Latin American Fiction (New York: Noonday, 1987), p. 283. See also Puig’s novel Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, trans. Suzanne Jill Levine (New York: Vintage, 1981).
6. Quoted in Julianne Burton, “Revolutionary Cuban Cinema, First Part: Introduction,” Jump Cut 19
(1978): 18.
7. “Film Makers and the Popular Government: Political Manifesto,” in Michael Chanan, ed., Chilean Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1974), p. 84.
8. Quoted in Sylvie Pierre, Glauber Rocha (Paris: Cahiers du Cinema, 1987), p. 180.
9. Jorge Sanjines and the Ukamau Group, Theory and Practice of a Cinema with the People, trans. Richard Schaaf (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, 1989), p. 43.
10. Quoted in Noureddine Ghali, “An Interview with Sembene Ousmane,” in John D. H. Downing, ed., Film and Politics in the Third World (New York: Autonomedia, 1987), p. 46.
11. Abid Med Hondo, “The Cinema of Exile,” in ibid., p. 71.
12. Quoted in Tomas Mottl, “Interview with Jan Nemec,” in The Banned and the Beautiful: A Survey of Czech Filmmaking, 1963-1990 (New York: Public Theatre, 15 June-5 July 1990), p. 46.
13. Vera Chytilova, “I Want to Work,” Index on Censorship 5, no. 2 (summer 1976): 17-20.
14. Mihailo MarcoviC, quoted in Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 120.
15. Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (London: Faber, 1989), p. 110.
16. Jerry Rubin, Do It! (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 86.
17. Quoted in Alomee Planel, 40 Ans de festival: Cannes, Ie cinema en fete (Paris: Londreys, 1987), p. 142.
18. Quoted in Sylvia Harvey, May ’68 and Film Culture (London: British Film Institute, 1978), p. 123.
19. Quoted in Colin J. Westerbeck, Jr., “Some Out-Takes from Radical Film-Making: Emile De Antonio,” Sight and Sound 39, no. 3 (summer 1970): 143.
20. Quoted in Abraham Segal, “Godard et le groupe Dziga-Vertov,” L’Avant-scene du cinema 171-172 (July-September 1976), p. 50.
21. See Nagisa Oshima, “A propos La Pendaison,” in Ecrits 1956-1978 (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), p. 188.
22. Quoted in John J. Michalczyk, Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction Film (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press,
1984), p. 46.
23. Ruth McCormick, “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t: An Interview with Agnes Varda,” Cineaste 8, no. 3
(1978): 28.
24. Quoted in Jim Leach, A Possible Cinema: The Films of Alain Tanner (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989), pp. 30-31.
25. Quoted in Stuart Liebman, “Why Kluge?” October 46 (fall 1988): 13-14.
26. Quoted in John Sandford, The New German Cinema (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), p. 102.
FURTHER READING
Baddeley, Oriana, and Valerie Fraser. Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America. New York: Verso, 1989.
Browne, Nick, ed. Cahiers du cinema 1969-1972: The Politics of Representation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Burton, Julianne, ed. Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conversations with Filmmakers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Cockburn, Alexander, and Robin Blackburn, eds. Student Power: Problems, Diagnosis, Action. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.
Downing, John H., ed. Film and Politics in the Third World. New York: Autonomedia, 1987.
“The Estates General of the French Cinema.” Screen 13, no. 4 (winter 197211973): 58-88.
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. The Anarchy ofthe Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes. Ed. Michael Toteberg and Leo A. Lensing, trans. Krishna Winston. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Fusco, Coco, ed. Reviewing Histories: Selections from New Latin American Cinema. Buffalo: Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 1987.
Harvey, Sylvia. May ’68 andFilm Culture. London: British Film Institute, 1978.
Kay, Karyn, and Gerald Peary, eds. Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton, 1977.
Lesage, Julia. “Feminist Film Criticism: Theory and Practice.” Women and Film 1, nos. 5-6 (1974): 12-18.
“New German Cinema.” New German Critique 24-25 (fall/winter 198111982).
Olson, Ray. “Gay Film Work (1972-1977).” Jump Cut 20 (May 1979): 9-12.
Phillips, Klaus, ed. New German Filmmakers: From Ober-hausen through the 1970s. New York: Ungar, 1984.
Randall, Vicky. Women and Politics: An International Perspective. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Rayns, Tony. Fassbinder. Rev. ed. London: British Film Institute, 1980.
Sandford, John. The New German Cinema. London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
Vieyra, Paulin Soumanou. Le Cinema africain des origines a 1973. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1975.
Walsh, Martin. The Brechtian Aspect of Radical Cinema. Ed. Keith M. Griffiths. London: British Film Institute, 1981.
“West German Film in the 1970s.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5, no. 2 (spring 1980).
World History
