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  • Essay / The Third Cinema Revolutionary Cinema Movement

    The revolutionary cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the "Third Cinema", developed in response to the realities of Latin America (and other former European colonies) of time, whether economic, social or political. It challenged the very notion of cinema that had taken the cinema world by storm; opposing capitalist and commercial Hollywood as well as art-house European cinema, in order to focus on the cultural decolonization of their nations and the oppression they still face. Three directors who participated in the movement were: Ousmane Sembene; who was in Senegal, Yamina Bachir; from Algeria, and Jorge Sanjines; from Bolivia. The goals of the movement were multiple, the main one being to expose oppression, but other aspects also include: Expressing the experiences of the masses, raising the political consciousness of the viewer, and inspiring viewers to take action and seek change. . These facets can be seen in the films of the three aforementioned directors in their films Ceddo (1977), Rachida (2002) and Blood of the Condor (1969).Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay Ousmane Sembene's film Ceddo takes place in an unspecified time in a Wolof-speaking African village; in a time of religious unrest. Their king has just converted to Islam and the Ceddo, or commoners, refuse to follow him. They kidnap his daughter to protest against the attacks of Islam and Christianity; as the villagers try to preserve their own traditional culture. Although the film does not have a specific date on which the events take place, from a historical point of view; As the conversion to Islam began in the 18th century and was cemented in the 19th by French attacks on their kingdoms, it can be assumed that it occurred during these two centuries. During this period of conflict, Sembene chose to use the small village seen in the film as a microcosm for the whole of West African society as he was forced into this transition by external foreign powers as an act of challenge and a successful attempt to show the history of Africa from the point of view of the oppressed class rather than that of the oppressor. In Towards a Third Cinema by Solanas and Getino, they write: “The great themes – the history of the country, the love and disenchantment between the combatants, the efforts of a people who are awakening – all of this is reborn before the 'objective. » Exploring the experiences of the population is one of the key points of Third Cinema, as mentioned earlier, and as a cinema that attempts to revolutionize its audience, it could be said that producing films that correct the history of a nation compared to that of the colonizer The constructions constitute the first step towards independence and decolonization. It's a stepping stone to something bigger, a way to open the eyes of the masses, to remind them that they haven't always been oppressed or humiliated because of their own beliefs. But in Ceddo's context, film is a way of uniting the masses in their shared experiences, what Solanas and Getino call the cinema of the masses. According to Teshome Gabriel, there are several phases on the path to the Third Cinema and within the third phase, that of the combative phase, he writes: “Cinema is a public service institution; while industry in this phase is owned by the nation and/or government, it is managed and operated for and by the people.” Sembene is known for creating somewhat controversial films, a number of which, including Ceddo, have beenbanned in Senegal for political and ethical reasons. In the case of this film, this led the Senegalese government to ban the film because "Islamic brotherhoods still wielded considerable power within their government" (Kindem and Steele), which sheds light on why the Third Cinema exists, to fight the bourgeois and oppressive factors, whether a militarized nation hoping to colonize, or its own government. Sharing the experiences of the masses is only one aspect of Third Cinema, and for a film to be considered revolutionary, it must be multi-faceted. Producing a film that one hopes to be revolutionary fails to become so when the spectators are unaware of the truth of their situation, so for a film to be considered within the sphere of Third Cinema, the audience must be educated about the crisis and ultimately raising political consciousness among the masses. Solanas and Getino compare the political knowledge of the masses to the teaching of firearms, writing: "Teaching firearms can be revolutionary where there are potentially or explicitly viable leaders ready to embark on the struggle for take power, but ceases to be revolutionary where the masses are not yet sufficiently aware of their situation or where they have already learned to handle weapons. A film cannot be revolutionary and awaken any consciousness in a viewer who already has the knowledge presented to them and simply chooses to ignore any use of that knowledge. Yamina Bachir's Rachida, despite being a more recent film, still adheres to the vague guidelines of Third Cinema. The film follows a young teacher, Rachida, in Algiers who, like the rest of the women in her neighborhood and throughout the country, does not believe that the current terrorism ravaging her home has anything to do with her. This opinion changes quite quickly when she is shot by a group of terrorists and forced to be transferred to another village to work so that they will not recognize her. The film ends on a meta note, with Rachida crying while looking at the camera as she begins "today's lesson" for her students, who had just witnessed their own terrorist attack the day before. In the film, Rachida's character acts as a stand-in for the audience watching him, as the director assumes he has no knowledge of the conflicts engulfing his state and hopes to inform them enough about their situation to inspire the call to arms, which will be discussed later. The third cinema revolution ultimately means nothing if viewers absorb the meaning of the film or internalize the intention behind it but do nothing to change their environment or conditions. With Solanas and Getino’s film, La hora de los hornos, watching the film itself was an act of defiance. They explain that "each comrade who attended such demonstrations did so in full awareness that he was breaking the laws and endangering his personal safety", and that once they actively opposed the society and to the oppressive influence that the government exercises over it, they have ceased to be simple comrades. from a spectator, he becomes “an actor, a protagonist more important than those who appeared in the film” because even though the film imitates the lives and struggles of real people, it was not real – the people who made it watched were and faced real consequences. To create a film that calls the masses to arms, the creator must come from the society he is trying to transform because "the filmmaker's link with reality makes him more integral to his.