by ingrid romero
Credit: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex Conference April 30-May 1, 2004, UC Santa Barbara INCITE! Feminists of Color Against Violence Panel 3: Alternatives to the Non-Profit Model
Why does Third Cinema matter to me? [just a beginning…]
Film has been integral to grassroots organizing in New York City, since we started seeing the moving image used within the Black and Puerto Rican liberation movements, militant union organizing, and queer/feminist collectives of the 20th century to now. There is much to say about the role and purpose of film in developing critical consciousness, informing communities about a range of struggles, and inspiring everyday people to take up media tools to document the issues, realities, and dreams rooted in our own neighborhoods. Personally, I am deeply thankful for the lineages of media makers, organizers, and popular educators who have supported my own growth and political development since I was very young. In this research, I will share reflections on, and give credit to, the people and places that are part of this wider tradition of Third Cinema. New York City exists within the empire of the United States, and many of us are diasporic children, no longer living on the lands of our ancestors, but across the many neighborhoods of the five boroughs. This blog post reflects that perspective amidst an exploration of what Third Cinema looks like in practice here and now, through an active dialogue between past and present collectives, third spaces, independent media hubs, and long-time organizers deeply connected to this city.
On the wall of my tiny bedroom in one of my childhood railroad apartments in Bushwick, I had a flyer from a local group of Black and brown women called Sista II Sista. I cannot remember exactly how I came across it, but this was late-1990s to early-2000s Bushwick, when outreach largely happened through flyering in the streets and word of mouth. At the time, I was participating (against my will) in a youth group at my local church, St. Brigid’s. It was your standard Catholic neighborhood church, but on Mondays there was “youth group”, a space for teens and young adults from the neighborhood to gather and have group discussions amongst a myriad of topics and issues. It was there that I first began to understand what it meant to be in community with others and to show up for one another in ways I would later recognize as mutual aid.
So when I found the Sista II Sista flyer, I was intrigued by its specificity: a space for and by young women of color, particularly Black and Latine women and girls. They were local, at a time when many people avoided Bushwick, and I was entering adolescence — a difficult period shaped by navigating my sexuality, experiences of abuse, my family’s undocumented status, and the pressures of growing up in a poor, working-class household trying to survive in this city. Years later, I encountered Sista II Sista again in the anthology The Revolution Will Not Be Funded by INCITE!. In it, members of Sista II Sista discuss their organizing outside of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC), their grassroots work against police and state violence, and their commitment to centering young women of color within movement spaces. These threads would later shape my own practice as well. What their work reflects so powerfully is not only the political conditions we inherit, but also the healing and collective transformation necessary to sharpen our analysis and sustain a commitment to revolutionary change. I will be attaching their essay, “On Our Own Terms: Ten Years of Radical Community Building with Sista II Sista”, to this post for folks to check out. In it, they trace the origins of the organization and explain why rejecting the NPIC was essential to maintaining the integrity and accountability of their work to the communities they served. In addition I want to share several thoughts from a long-time friend and collaborator in the media-making and organizing worlds I come from, Chrystian Rodriguez, who is also from Bushwick. Chrystian came through youth-centered community media spaces as both a participant and educator, including the former nonprofit Global Action Project, and has spent nearly a decade as Lead Instructor at Third World Newsreel, continuing a lineage of political education through film and media practice. These two sources are part of a larger dialogue around the continuation of Third Cinema practices in our own communities from people of the third world. I am curious to hear/see/feel what emanates from this space that is constantly unraveling upward and outward to awaken the creative and rebel spirits within us, as revolution is non a one-time event; it’s an on-going commitment in the everyday and how we nurture our beliefs that another world is possible.
Chrystian’s Reflections on Third Cinema:
Third Cinema was meant to be more than a film movement or aesthetic tradition. It was built as part of revolutionary practice, a way to fight oppression, bring people into collective understanding, and move communities toward liberation. That is the part that matters most to me. It reminds us that cinema can do more than represent people’s pain or document the conditions they are living through. It can help communities name what they are up against, understand their power, and move together toward action.What inspires me about Third Cinema is the intentionality behind it. The film is not treated as the final product or the end goal. It is part of a larger process of gathering people, opening up dialogue, and creating space for communities to make meaning together. Visibility matters, but Third Cinema pushes beyond visibility. It asks what a film can make possible when it is rooted in people’s lived experiences and connected to the work of liberation. That collective piece is really important. These films are not just made to be watched or consumed. There is care and strategy behind who the film is shared with, why it is shared, and what kind of conversation it is meant to spark. The film becomes part of a bigger practice of bringing people into dialogue, making room for grief and imagination, and moving toward organizing.I also think about Third Cinema as both deeply place-based and capable of reaching beyond place. Its power comes from being rooted in the specific conditions people are living through, the land, the history, the violence, the organizing, the language, the culture, and the community. But when a film is made in service of liberation, it can also build bridges across borders and help people recognize that their struggles are not isolated. That is part of what I see in films like Santiago Álvarez’s Now! The film speaks to the struggle against anti-Black racism and state violence in the United States, but it does so from Cuba, through an anti-imperialist lens. The purpose is not to flatten different struggles into one story. It is to build solidarity. It helps people see the connections between what they are living through and what others are fighting against elsewhere.So when I think about Third Cinema, I think about film in service of people and movements. I think about telling the story of our struggle, but also our power. I think about building shared understanding, creating space for imagination, and asking what we are willing to do together with what we now understand.
How does this film lineage continue in NYC?
I see the lineage of Third Cinema continuing in New York City through community-based media practices that use film not simply to tell stories, but to build political consciousness, collective power, and movement. At its best, this work is not about representation alone. It is about helping people understand the systems shaping their lives and use media to push back, organize, and imagine something different. That was a big part of what shaped me at places like Global Action Project. The work was never just, “Here, give a young person a camera and let them tell their story.” That can become tokenizing quickly, especially when institutions want the stories of Black, brown, immigrant, queer, working-class, or system-impacted young people without actually investing in their power. The deeper work is helping young people think critically about the world around them, the stories being told about them, and the stories they want to challenge or create.
I also see this lineage through Third World Newsreel, which comes out of the Newsreel collective, Black Power movement, anti-war organizing, and Third World liberation struggles. That history matters because it reminds us that film has long been used in New York City as part of organizing work, not just as art or documentation. It has been used to expose systems of violence, connect struggles, and create spaces for communities to think and act together. A film like Break and Enter / Rompiendo Puertas is a powerful example. It documents Puerto Rican and Dominican families reclaiming vacant housing on the Upper West Side through Operation Move-In. That story still speaks to housing justice and anti-gentrification work today. When organizers screen films like that now, they are not just looking back at history. They are asking what we can learn from people who fought before us and what we are being called to do now.
That is where this lineage feels alive in NYC. It lives in screenings, workshops, community conversations, organizing meetings, cultural spaces, classrooms, and neighborhoods. It also continues through digital media, as people use phones, social media, short videos, online platforms, and community screenings to build a base, open up conversation, and move people into action. For me, that is the continuation of Third Cinema in New York City. It is not only about a specific style of filmmaking. It is about a commitment to using media in relationship with community, struggle, organizing, and liberation.
What is the relationship between film, grassroots organizing, and popular education?
For me, film, grassroots organizing, and popular education are deeply connected because they are all about people making meaning together. They take lived experience seriously and turn it into shared understanding, strategy, and action. It is also important to say that storytelling as resistance did not begin with cinema. Long before Third Cinema was named, Indigenous communities, Black communities, and oppressed people around the world were using story, song, dance, oral history, ceremony, art, and collective memory to survive and resist. Film is one extension of that older practice.Film can help people see the systems behind their experiences. It can help people move from “this happened to me” to “this is happening to us, and there are reasons why.” That is where it connects to popular education. The knowledge does not come from outside experts telling people what their struggle means. It comes from the people most directly connected to the conditions, people who know their own context, understand what is at stake, and can build strategy from that lived knowledge. That is also where film connects to organizing. A film can bring people into a room, give people language, make people feel less alone, and help a community prepare for action. We saw this during the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, where video and digital storytelling helped people understand what was happening, expose state violence, and support organizing beyond traditional media gatekeeping. That kind of media work matters because it is made by the people and for the people, not to explain them to the outside world, but to strengthen the work they are already doing.So the relationship between film, organizing, and popular education is not separate for me. They come together in the practice of gathering people, building shared understanding, shaping strategy from lived experience, and asking what we are willing to do with what we now understand.
Attached is the essay from The Revolution Will Now Be Funded (2007) by INCITE! titled “On Our Own Terms: Ten Years of Radical Community Building with Sista II Sista” by members from Sista ii Sista, along with other media featuring their own voices.
LINK to essay HERE (to be shared widely)
To be continued…