The Legacy of Third Cinema
Third Cinema has served a crucial role in consolidating a tradition of political and militant cinema, especially during its first wave in Latin America, and remains important in decolonization history. The original writings from the authors Solanas and Getino manifest their intention of not limiting the debate of cinema specifically to the aesthetic discussion but to extend the horizon to think in ways to use cinema as a tool for liberation. This article reflects on the importance of the dialectic quality that the name Third Cinema proposes as well as map two examples in which filmmakers, communities and institutions in Latin America collaborate and use the cinematic apparatus in attempts to decolonize the device along with audiences.
The naming of Third Cinema (from Solanas’ and Getino’s original manifesto Towards a Third Cinema in 1969) not only signals its historic context from Cold War geopolitics, where non-aligned nations positioned themselves outside the capitalist (First World) and communist (Second World) blocs. It also coincided with decolonization movements and thinkers like Fanon, whose dialectical logic rejected colonial cultural impositions in favor of emergent national cultures. Fanon wrote that there is a dominant culture held by elites that are interested in reproducing neocolonial dynamics, and a true national culture can only emerge through the struggle of liberation from these dynamics. Similarly Third Cinema proposes a third way to make cinema a tool for liberation. The name evolved along with the geopolitical context and can seem to reference a hierarchical stance in terms of developed and underdeveloped nations (The Third World), but the name has an important significance in pointing out the dialectic approach of this practice. If First cinema refers to the hegemonic Hollywood cinema, and Second Cinema refers to European auteur cinema, then a Third Cinema will be the cinema that is born through the process of opposition to both. Del Valle explains the dialectic like this:
“To a proposition (A) that is contaposed by another (B), a third proposition (C) reveals that the opposition of (A) and (B) is insufficient or wrong and opposes both…to Fanon culture cannot be the copy of the culture of the settler (A); but the rescue of a stalled vernacular tradition (B) is insufficient as a reaction to the mimetic attitude; true national culture surges in and for the struggle for liberation” (personal translation; read in Spanish at Del Valle, 2021)
The Towards a Third Cinema Manifesto emerged alongside efforts to build Latin American film industries to counter Hollywood’s hegemony in film markets and cultural fields. Yet, even during its first wave, Third Cinema lacked unity in Latin America, relying heavily on European distribution. There is to consider, that to these European distribution efforts there are also prior efforts from U.S. policy to establish a firm grip on Latin American markets and audiences through policies such as the Good Neighbour policy that stem from the 1930s to the 1950s. This not only allowed for the consolidation of the exhibition spaces in Latin America but also appropriation of the distribution networks and the formation of audiences that participate and sustain the narratives that are held in these spaces.
The process of filmmaking – Cinematic Apparatus
Filmmaking is a collective practice and it involves complex processes that require many agents. The camera itself is a device born and involved in the process of colonization and the many processes that are involved in filmmaking are intertwined with these dynamics. The diagram of the traditional commercial film value chains (Figure 1) shows the multiple processes that a film project goes through in order to be consumed or experienced by audiences. Every part of this process requires technical, economic and human resources.
One of the essential steps of this process is distribution or the nexus between the exhibition windows and the producers of the film. The production of a film is one big achievement, but being able to find distribution, an exhibition window and an audience for the film is a whole other process.
The digital era has transformed the film value chain, collapsing traditional stages (production, distribution, exhibition) into a streamlined producer-platform-consumer model. While this democratizes access in some ways, it also creates new obstacles to the democratization of the film experience. Distribution isn’t a neutral act: it dictates how films are seen, under what conditions, and by whom. Flooding the exhibition spaces with hegemonic narratives shapes subjectivities beyond the screen.
The Latin America film market is completely obfuscated for local production. Film theaters are flooded with hegemonic productions, these are the most safe inversion because there is already a public formed and looking for these narratives. This is because sustaining the whole film value chain is a lengthy and resource intensive process.
To reimagine Third Cinema today is to fight on multiple fronts. André Parente’s concept of cinema as an apparatus (influenced by Jean-Louis Baudry and the broader tradition of apparatus theory) provides a framework to look at cinema not just as a technical tool but as an entire system of meaning-production. This approach helps to look at the bigger schemes and systems that make up the film industry to look for the fissures. Both Baudry and Parente write about cinema not only as the hardware (cameras, projectors and screen) but also the architecture of the cinemas, the cultural fields that films inhabit and the experience and interaction it has with audiences. All these variables allow agency for Third Cinema creators and spectators to interact and interrupt these dynamics.
One example of academic and community collaboration in Brazil is UNILA’s Cineclube Cinelatino, which acts as an intermediary between distributors and a local movie theater in Foz do Iguaçu. This initiative provides access to Latin American cinema for the town’s population, securing a cinematic space for marginalized narratives at a low cost. Their mission statement is:
“The goal is to form a film club audience and expand knowledge and debate about Latin American and Caribbean productions, with themed exhibitions and screenings of independent and alternative films that do not usually premiere in commercial cinemas in the interior. In partnership with CineCataratas, Cinelatino sessions take place every month at affordable prices, aiming to form an audience and encourage culture.” Cineclube Cinelatino Website.
Cinetube Cinelatino is a academic initiative, it involves actors such as the Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA) and alliances with Latin American distributing companies like Embauba Filmes or Vitrine Filmes in order to exhibit Latin American Films at the local theater for an audience outside of big cities. This is done by also securing a partnership with the local commercial movie theater at Foz do Iguaçu, a border city that allows people from Paraguay and Argentina, from inside or outside the university, to also join. After the exhibitions there are always debates at a nearby bar where the attendants reflect and share their impressions of the film. Some of these debates and the reflections about the process of developing a project like this can be found in the Epistemologias do Sul, a scientific journal which dedicated a full edition about this project, showing that the process of filmmaking and cinema as an apparatus is one that produces knowledge.
Cineclube Cinelatino allows for the creation of audiences, by developing an effort to secure alliances and use the same exhibition space as mainstream narratives. This is a process of audience building. Since most of our desire is mimetic, our desire for narratives is also mimetic and corresponds to what we currently see and are offered. It can be thought of as a feedback loop in which what we see is repeated and intensified, but we cannot forget how this loop is reinforced by other forces, such as markets, public policy community decisions. Showing narratives outside of the mainstream in these spaces is a political act, the screening room is not just an economic entertainment site but an architectural space of dreams. The black box can be a space for subconscious reconfiguration. Making it accessible, especially for working-class audiences, is crucial for a cinema that works for liberation. Film Clubs represent an important space for engaging with other types of narratives and thus desire other narratives. The discussions that occur in the cinema or outside a session are an important element to the configuration of individual and collective consciousness. While Cineclube Cinelatino represents a Third Cinema approach by occupying mainstream spaces, guerrilla exhibition practices also play a vital role in audience-building. Both strategies are necessary in the fight against colonial subjectivity.
Another different example, that pertains more to the production process, is Kolectivo San Jacinto, a Salvadoran film collective run by young people. They engage differently with the cinematic apparatus which is intertwined with colonial technologies. Without formal film education and working collectively, they use workshops to develop audiovisual skills while crafting narratives about their own communities. Their work centers marginalized youth, using cinema as a tool for identity construction and self-discovery. Their body of work includes award-winning short films like Prudencia (2016) and Bajo El Estigma (2019).
Their work has participated in Festivals like Panalandia, a festival for “poor cinema”, which displays films “that are inspired by the fantasies, worries, happiness and sadness of the people from the villages, communities and towns. With no big technical or budget requirements…the cinema that is shown at Panalandia is done with low resources, done by hand, ingenious, creative and with the need to tell a story using cinema as an expressive medium” (personal translation. Source: Panalandia Filmfreeway website). Having festivals like Panalandia allows for an ecosystem of different types of media to circulate, alleviating the blockade that the mainstream markets and cultural fields impose on narratives that do not fit their molds and allowing a formation of an audience for these narratives.
Conclusion
The architectural space for film is also a space for resignification. From many trenches and in the spirit of Third Cinema, communities and allies can collaborate using cinema as an apparatus for resignifying, communicating and debating cultural problems and as a tool for the production of collective knowledge, reflection and transformation. These examples are using cinema as an apparatus to subvert it in the same dialectical way as anthropophagy, to use it as a tool for resignification and self determination. As a means for communities and peoples to communicate their narratives and do it in a media ecosystem that holds their narratives and audiences in a sustained and expressive dialogue.
Sources:
Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Del Valle-Dávila, Ignacio. 2021. “¿Hacia qué tercer cine? Un análisis de la evolución de la teoría del tercer cine a partir de los trabajos de Fernando Solanas y Octavio Getino.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.85848.
Vitkauskaitė, Ieva. 2020. “Types of Film Production Business Models and Their Interrelationship.” Information & Media 89: 43–54. https://www.zurnalai.vu.lt/IM/article/view/18200/17393.
EGEDA (Entidad de Gestión de Derechos de los Productores Audiovisuales). 2024. Panorama Audiovisual Iberoamericano 2024. Madrid: EGEDA. https://www.egeda.com/ecom_conoceegeda_LibrosPanoramaIberoamericano2024.aspx.