Third Cinema

Filmmakers in Latin America and Africa make cinema neither for Hollywood's market nor for the art house, but as a tool of liberation.

When: 1965–1980
Where: Argentina, Algeria
Films: 7 · 4 guided
Named by: 3 guides

Where it sits

Soviet Montage · Italian NeorealismThird CinemaL.A. Rebellion

Context

What was happening

The sixties: empires are ending. Cuba's revolution of 1959 is young, Algeria wins independence in 1962, and across Latin America and Africa people argue about dependence on foreign powers. Local screens mostly show Hollywood and European films, and few people at home have the means to make their own.

Cinema already offered tools. Italian neorealism had shown how to film the poor, on real streets, with non-actors, and Soviet montage how to make images argue. In 1965 Brazil's Cinema Novo published its Aesthetics of Hunger; in 1969 Solanas and Getino wrote Towards a Third Cinema.

The signature

What you see on screen

1Real placesStreets, villages and factories, with non-professional actors instead of stars.
2Agitational montageNewsreel, statistics and text cut together to argue, not to soothe.
3The colonised viewThe story told from the side of the colonised, not the colonisers.
4Urgent and cheapRough, grainy images, small crews, sometimes shot or shown in secret.

The people

Who made it

FSFernando SolanasArgentine director and co-author of the manifesto. The Hour of the Furnaces.
OGOctavio GetinoCo-author of Towards a Third Cinema and co-director of The Hour of the Furnaces.
OSOusmane SembèneSenegalese novelist who turned to film. Black Girl.
GPGillo PontecorvoItalian director who restaged the Algerian war as a newsreel. The Battle of Algiers.
TGTomás Gutiérrez AleaCuban director. Memories of Underdevelopment, a revolution seen by a doubter.

The films

Defining films, in order

1STARTThe Battle of Algiers1966
Black Girl
2STARTBlack Girl1966 · not on Cinespective yet
The Hour of the Furnaces
3The Hour of the Furnaces1968 · not on Cinespective yet
Memories of Underdevelopment
4STARTMemories of Underdevelopment1968 · not on Cinespective yet
5Chronicle of the Years of Fire1975

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Came from

Soviet Montage Italian NeorealismCinema Novo

Led to

L.A. Rebellion

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

You can see it wherever filmmakers work outside the big commercial systems and treat a film as part of a political argument: in African cinema, in Latin American documentary, in collective filmmaking. It led directly to the L.A. Rebellion, the young Black filmmakers at UCLA who read the manifestos and filmed Los Angeles as a colonised place.

Ask the Cine Guide about Third Cinema