Third cinema and Sri Lankan cinema
In this column, I explore the idea ‘third cinema’ and how it would
apply to contemporary Sri Lankan cinema. In modern context, the term
‘Third Cinema’ assumes a broader perspective than merely being
associated with de-colonisation and nation-building. It is a descriptive
as well as a prescriptive concept which goes beyond in practice the
historical emergence of ‘Third Cinema’ in the West, Southeastern, and
Eastern Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific-basis in the
mid-twentieth century. Third Cinema is a highly ideologically charged
and aesthetically meaningful term indicating an espousing of an
independent or rather oppositional ideological stance towards commercial
genre and auteuristic cinema emerging from metropolitan Western centre.
In essence, it is a less geographically definable and more actually
moulded by an ideology of ant-imperialistic counterculture movement that
emerged in the 1960s.
Ideology of cinema
According to the ideology of Third Cinema, it recognises the innate
power of cinema as a modern medium of communication to spearhead
sociopolitical transformation within a nation state and across the
continents. Among other things, Third cinema closely associates with
socialist concerns such as worker’s and other oppressed groups’
emancipation and increasing their democratic access to the media with a
commitment to cultural self-determination and artistic innovation.
Third Cinema enlightens viewers as it critically confronts the
reality while re-interpreting it audiovisual analysis and recognises the
circumstances and aspirations of the viewers in the depiction of others’
struggles. From the perspective of filmmakers and cultural policymakers,
Third cinema is engaged with a continuous search for a sustainable and
socially relevant mode of artistic expression, particularly, in
underdeveloped and politically unstable conditions. At the same time, it
strives to promote solidarity among all people who have experienced and
continue to grapple with (neo) colonialism with its racists,
ethnocentric, classist and sexist underpinnings.
Third Cinema addresses territories of national life often neglected
by official discourse and industrial or commercial cinema and brings
those issues into international limelight. From a broader perspective,
Third Cinema can be produced with or without the assistance of the state
and by amateurs as well as seasoned professionals. It demands the
attention to para-filmic activities and textual content and explores
alternative methods of production, distribution and exhibition. Its
source of aesthetic inspiration is different to that of the conventional
films and virtually redefines the very terms such as ‘professional’,
‘mass’ and ‘Art’ the way in which they relate to cinema.
Origin of third cinema
“ The term "Third Cinema" was coined in an interview with the
Argentine Cine Liberación group, published in the journal Cine Cubano
(March 1969), and was then more fully developed in the manifesto
"Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a
Cinema of Liberation in the Third World," written by Fernando Solanas
(b. 1936) and Octavio Getino (b. 1935), members of that group. Since its
publication in Tricontinenal (Havana, 1969), the essay has been
translated and published in many languages. Solanas and Getino begin
with the premise that in a situation of neocolonialism or
underdevelopment, filmmakers need to begin shaping a practice that
diverges both from "First Cinema," industrial cinema that is
commercially distributed for profit, which can only lead to a sense of
inadequacy and impotence for neocolonised audiences; and from "Second
Cinema," art cinema developed by Glauber Rocha on the set of Barravento
(The Turning Wind, 1962).
Talented individuals, some of whom attempt to contest the status quo,
yet whose work is ultimately recuperated by the "System," if only to
represent the possibility of dissent. Hollywood cinema epitomises the
former, globally hegemonic model, whereas Euro American and even Latin
American auteurist cinemas, taking the form of the French nouvelle vague
(new wave) or Brazilian cinema nôvo , exemplify the second option. In
contrast to these, filmmakers are to side with "national culture"
against the culture "of the rulers" and develop films that the "System
cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs, or … that directly
and explicitly set out to fight the System." (Martin, New Latin American
Cinema , p.42).
A number of core precepts follow from this mission. First, there is
the creation of interdependence between a revolutionary aesthetic and
revolutionary activity, of which the cinema is but one integral
component—something easier said than done. Given the political struggle
of Third filmmakers on two fronts, one where resistance is put up
against neocolonial cultural domination and the other where the masses
become engaged in historical and ideological analysis on the way to
achieving national liberation and class equality, Third Cinema faces two
tasks: the demystification of neocolonial art and media (with their
"universalist" discourse), and the search for a film language that
reflects and advances national concerns.
These tasks require a close, and preferably dialectical, relationship
between film theory and practice. Indeed, Solanas and Getino formulated
the theory of Third Cinema only after they had shot and released the
three-part documentary, La Hora de los Hornos ( Hour of the Furnaces ,
1968), which exhibits the form taken by cinema when it is placed in the
service of the "masses" following a thorough analysis of the
contemporary economic, social, and political conjuncture. It is an essay
film, incorporating documentary footage from a wide range of sources
(including those antagonistic to the filmmakers' project), in which
facts are presented and analysed by way of intertitles and voice-over
narration that often disrupt the spectator's immersion in the diegetic
spaces of the images. According to Solanas and Getino's formulation,
documentary is most instrumental in developing Third Cinema—it lays bare
the lived experience of the majority, counter posing "naked reality" to
"movie-life," or the version of reality the ruling class. ”
Contemporary Sri Lankan cinema
It is highly doubtful whether contemporary Sri Lankan filmmakers make
an attempt to redefine the language of filmmaking investing it with the
concept of Third Cinema. It is increasingly clear that they (filmmakers)
are pre-occupied more with achieving financial objectives than driven by
an ideology for cinema. To a certain extent, Third Cinema would offer an
alternative path for young and up-coming filmmakers and for the veterans
to make truly Sri Lankan cinema which explores issue more relevant to
the masses. |