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Wherever there is a filmmaker, of any age or background, ready to place his cinema and his profession at the service of the great causes of his time, there will be the living spirit of New Cinema. This is the correct definition which sets New Cinema apart from the commercial industry because the commitment of industrial cinema is to untruth and exploitation.- The Aesthetics of Hunger, by Glauber Rocha . This essay is, therefore, divided into two parts and focuses on those essential qualities Third World films possess rather than those they may seem to lack. The first part lays the formulation for Third World film culture and filmic institutions based on a critical and theoretical matrix applicable to Third World needs. The second part is an attempt to give material substance to the analytic constructs discussed previously. Just as they have moved aggressively towards independence, so has the evolution of Third World film culture followed a path from 'domination' to 'liberation.' This genealogy of Third World film culture moves from the First Phase in which foreign images are impressed in an alienating fashion on the audience, to the Second and Third Phases in which recognition of 'consciousness of oneself' serves as the essential antecedent for national and, more significantly, international con. There are, therefore, three phases in this methodological device. It's amazing to see how far we've come with CG (Computer Generated) photograph and film as you can see in this new Audrey Hepburn commercial for Galaxy.The link is made as obvious as possible and even the names of the companies proclaim their origin. For instance, the Nigerian film com. Most of the feature films of the Third World in this phase sensationalize adventure for its own sake and concern themselves with escapist themes of romance, musicals, comedies, etc. The sole purpose of such industries is to turn out entertainment products which will gener. The scope and persistence of this kind of industry in the Third World lies in its ability to provide reinvestable funds and this quadruples their staying power. Therefore, in cases where a counter- cinematic movement has occurred the existing national industry has been able to ingest it. A good example is in the incorporation of the cinema nuovo movement in the Brazilian Embrafilme. Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of replacing dietary saturated fat with omega 6 linoleic acid, for the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death. See also Romantic Drama. Style: The emphasis on formal properties of cinema, technical brilliance and visual wizardry, overrides subject matter. The aim here is simply to create a 'spectacle.' Aping Hollywood stylistically, more often than not, runs counter to Third World needs for a serious social art. Many Third World film production companies are in this stage. The movement for a social institution of cinema in the Third World such as 'cinema moudjahid' in Algeria, 'new wave' in India and 'engage or committed cinema' in Senegal and Mozambique exemplifies this phase. The theme: Return of the exile to the Third World's source of strength, i. The predominance of filmic themes such as the clash between rural and urban life, traditional versus modern value systems, folklore and mythology, identifies this level. Sembene Ousmane's early film Mandabi about a humble traditional man outstripped by modern ways characterizes this stage. Barravento ('The Turning Wind'), a poetic Brazilian film about a member of a fishermen's village who returns from exile in the city, is a folkloric study of mysticism. The film from Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), Wend Kuuni ('God's Gift'), attempts to preserve the spirit of folklore in a brilliant recreation of an old tale of a woman who is declared a witch because of her conflicts with custom, when she refused to marry after the disappearance of her husband. While the most positive aspect of this phase is its break with the concepts and propositions of Phase I, the primary danger here is the uncritical acceptance or undue romanticization of ways of the past. To accept totally the values of Third World traditional cultures without simultaneously stamping out the regressive elements can only lead to 'a blind alley,' as Fanon puts it, and falsifica. Therefore, unless this phase, which predominates in Third World film practices today, is seen as a process, a moving towards the next stage, it could develop into opportunistic endeavors and create cultural confu. This has been brilliantly pointed out by Luis Ospina of Colombia in his self- reflexive film Picking on the People, in which he criticizes the exploitative nature of some Third World filmmakers who peddle Third World poverty and misery at festival sites in Europe and North America and who do not approach their craft as a tool of social transformation. An excellent case in point is the internationally acclaimed film Pixote by Hector Babenco. According to a Los Angeles Times correspondent in Rio de Janeiro, Da Silva, the young boy who played the title role of the film, was paid a mere $3. The correspondent writes: 'In a real- life drama a juvenile Judge in Diadema, a suburb of Sao Paulo, last week released Da Silva, now 1. According to Da Silva's mother, who sells lottery tickets for her living, 'after a trip to Rio when he got no work, he told me, . Although the dominant stylistic conventions of the first phase still predominate here, there appears to be a growing tendency to create a film style appropriate to the changed thematic concerns. In this respect, the growing insistence on spatial representation rather than temporal manipulation typifies the films in this phase. The sense of a spatial orientation in cinema in the Third World arises out of the experience of an 'endless' world of the large Third World mass. This nostalgia for the vastness of nature projects itself into the film form, resulting in long takes and long or wide shots. This is often done to constitute part of an overall symbolization of a Third World thematic orientation, i. The industry in this phase is not only owned by the nation and/or the government, it is also managed, operated and run for and by the people. It can also be called a cinema of mass participation, one enacted by members of communities speaking indigenous languages, one that espouses Julio Garcia Espinosa's polemic of 'An Imperfect Cinema,' that in a developing world, technical and artistic perfection in the production of a film cannot be the aims in themselves. Quite a number of social institutions of cinema in the Third World, some underground like Argentina's 'Cine Liberacion' and some supported by their governments - for instance, 'Chile Films' of Allende's Popular Unity Socialist government - exem. Two industrial institutions that also exemplify this level are the Algerian L'Office National pour le Commerce et I'Industrie Cinematographique (ONCIc) and Cuba's Institute of Film Art and Industry (ICAIC). The theme: Lives and struggles of Third World peoples. This phase signals the maturity of the filmmaker and is distinguishable from either Phase I or Phase II by its insistence on viewing film in its ideological ramifications. A very good example is Miguel Littin's The Promised Land, a quasi- historical mythic account of power and rebellion, which can be seen as referring to events in modern- day Chile. Likewise, his latest film Alsino and the Condor combines realism and fantasy within the context of war- torn Nicaragua. The imagery in One Way or Another by the late Sara G6mez Yara, of an iron ball smashing down the old slums of Havana, not only depicts the issue of women/race in present- day Cuba but also symbolizes the need for a new awareness to replace the old oppressive spirit of machismo which still persists in socialist Cuba. The film Soleil 0, by the Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo, aided by the process of Fanonian theses, comes to the recognition of forgotten heritage in the display of the amalgam of ideological determinants of European 'humanism,' racism and colonialism. The failure of colonialism to convert Africans into 'white- . Here, film is equated or recog. This particular phase also consti. A Phase III filmmaker is one who is perceptive of and knowledgeable about the pulse of the Third World masses. Such a filmmaker is truly in search of a Third World cinema - a cinema that has respect for the Third World peoples. One element of the style in this phase is an ideological point of view instead of that of a character as in dominant Western conventions. Di Cavalcanti by Glauber Rocha, for instance, is a take- off from 'Quarup', a joyous death ritual celebrated by Amazon tribes.' 4 The celebration frees the dead from the hypocritical tragic view modern man has of death. By turning the documentary of the death of the internationally renowned Brazilian painter Di Cavalcanti into a chaotic/celebratory montage of sound and images, Rocha deftly and directly criticized the dominant documentary convention, creating in the process not only an alternative film language but also a challenging discourse on the question of existence itself. Another element of style is the use of flashback - although the reference is to past events, it is not stagnant but dynamic and developmental. In The Promised Land, for instance, the flashback device dips into the past to comment on the future, so that within it a flash- forward is inscribed. Similarly, when a flash- forward is used in Sembene's Ceddo (1. They are enclosed in a dynamic which is dialectical in nature; for example, some Third World filmmakers have taken a contradictory path. Lucia, a Cuban film by Humberto Solas, about the relations between the sexes, belongs to Phase III, yet Solas' latest film, Cecilia, which concerns an ambitious mulatto woman who tries to assimilate into a repressive Spanish aristocracy, is a regression in style (glowing in spectacle) and theme (the tragic mulatto) towards Phase 1.
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