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Towards A Third Cinema
25 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1969
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April 12, 2021
‘The man of the third cinema, be it guerrilla cinema or a film act, with the infinite categories that they contain (film letter, film poem, film essay, film pamphlet, film report, etc.), above all counters the film industry of a cinema of characters with one of themes, that of individuals with that of masses, that of the author with that of the operative group, one of neocolonial misinformation with one of information, one of escape with one that recaptures the truth, that of passivity with that of aggressions. To an institutionalised cinema, it counterposes a guerrilla cinema ; to movies as shows, it opposes a film act or action ; to a cinema of destruction, one that is both destructive and constructive ; to a cinema made for the old kind of human being, for them, it opposes a cinema fit for a new kind of human being,for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming.’
June 10, 2022
“I make the revolution; therefore I exist” (390). So goes Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s “Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World.” Here I use the subtitle because Solanas and Getino maintain throughout the manifesto of Third Cinema that these are only provisional hypotheses, blueprints, and groundwork for a revolutionary cinema to come. A revolutionary cinema that they were experiencing firsthand at being made, and they themselves made in 1968’s The Hour of the Furnace. This is the theoretical work that underpins that film here being put together in the notes towards what a cinema of liberation cld and, they do assert, should look like. Most importantly this cinema is a cinema of decolonisation, a cinema based upon decolonial struggle.
As the two assert, in very powerful prose, “the cinema of the revolution is at the same time one of destruction and construction” (390). They outline both the negative and positive aspects of Third Cinema, it will at once destroy the colonising and racist image that cinema was built upon, but also reconstruct this image in a new image of decolonisation, to subvert and recapture the image of national struggle that has so long been veiled by the distortions of the colonial image. They identify this colonial image as a “framework of mirages that is difficult to take apart” (382) an image that blurs the lines between national culture and the forced culture of the ruling-class and colonial bourgeoisie. It is through the systems of mass communication, and the cinema which is their primary focus as filmmakers, that “Imperialism and capitalism…. veil everything behind a screen of images and appearances” (389). Imperialism and capitalism enshroud everything within its consumerist and colonising ideologies that abstract and universalise the national culture and detach the colonised from their own immediate identities. This is where they assert that “the image of reality is more important than reality itself” (389). Through ideology, imperialism and capitalism can provide these phantasms and fantasies within a world of images will take control of people’s lives. This veiling of images and appearances is why the Third Cinema must have such a destructive aspect, it must be a “destruction of the image that neocolonialism has created of itself and of us” (390). And in this taking control of the image of reality, in its positive aspect, it must make a “construction of a throbbing, living reality which recaptures truth in any of its expressions” (390).
With this idea of truth that Solanas and Getino put out, it’s important to think of the theorisation also of Third Cinema as “a cinema of subversion” (380). With the national culture being identified as “an impulse lards emancipation” (380) it remains important to subvert the ruling-class culture and ideologies through the Third Cinema. It is to liberate the veiled image of reality created by the colonising bourgeoisie. On page (at least in my version!) 382 it is where they assert which seems to be an overarching thesis of what this cinema of liberation is supposed to do. They say “Third cinema is, in our opinion, the cinema that recognises in that [anti-imperialist] struggle the most gigantic cultural, scientific, and artistic manifestations of our time, the great possibility of constructing a liberated personality with each people as the starting point - in a word the decolonisation of culture” (382). It is both the subversion of colonial ideology and the decolonisation of national culture that Third cinema wishes to liberate. It is focused on liberating the image of reality.
There really is so much great stuff within the work, and again I love that it is moreso a provisional sketch than a direct manifesto of what revolutionary films must be. They certainly go a negative way and assert what a revolutionary film cannot be, and that is a film made within the System (here I think while this can be directed towards capitalist culture as a whole they are focusing very much on Hollywood filmmaking and it’s general monopoly on the filmic means of production and the filmmaking imagination) cannot be a revolutionary one. A film made in the System, even if it is attempting to subvert it is “at best, it can be the ‘progressive’ wing of Establishment cinema” (379). They do identify Godard as the kind of “second cinema” director who tried his best to subvert the System but still remained trapped within its impenetrable fortress. (Interesting enough given that this was made in 1970, before Godard’s Dziga Vertov Group and going underground, I wld almost say it’s safe to say he did begin making films entirely outside the System, creating and discoursing on an entirely new political film language that, to me, has remained extremely underrated within film circles. Of course, I wouldn’t put these experiments over the ones of Third cinema or the LA Rebellion but dang it Godard fanboys need to focus more on his angry commie work than his boring old romantic films!) They put two requirements that a revolutionary film must abide by. One the filmmaker must “[make] films that the System cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs” (387). They bring up the issue of assimilation tactics in capitalism earlier in the essay when they discuss how capitalism sure does love to have some controlled violence and rebellion. Many of those professed individual rebellious types, certain forms of avant-garde art, action without political backing can be subsumed right back into the System, it can easily recuperate and depoliticise those things made within the System that appear as progressive. (An interesting comparison here is perhaps Shaft and the emerging Blaxploitation genre, which took any of the progressive and subversive elements of Shaft, immediately depoliticised them and made Black Hollywood action films that missed the point in films like Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song.) A revolutionary film must be made outside of the System, craft its own new filmic languages and syntax, it must experiment with new forms and contents that cannot go by the old traditions of cinema, the cinema that is built upon colonial and racist lies, the cinema of Hollywood. The other requirement is to “[make] films that directly and explicitly set out to fight the System” (387). A film still made outside of the System that mounts a direct attack on the System, maybe say a film that directly attacks the hypocrisy and lies of Hollywood. However, with these two principles in place Solanas and Getino don’t necessarily say what form these films must fulfil. They do say that “the cinema known as documentary… is perhaps the main basis of revolutionary filmmaking (390). But later they do say that there is “infinite categories” listing such forms as “film letter, film poem, film essay, film pamphlet, film report, etc.” (399). It is only that “the man of the third cinema, be it guerrilla cinema or a film act… above all counters the film industry of… cinema” (399). They are entirely against the film as entertainment, the film that treats the audience as passive receptors of consumption and entertainment. Rather the films of Third cinema are active processes that require the agitation and politicisation of the audience through the film act.
The essay is just fantastic and rings such a powerful resonance in today’s culture. We need more indie political filmmakers who will take on the machine of Hollywood (Imma be that person too), that take on the machine of Marvel filmmaking that maintains such a strong grasp on the cinema and cinematic imagination. Part of this fight has to do with a similar fight that Jonas Mekas waged on this massive cinema, we need smaller films, more personal films, films that do away with the need for massive budgets and are large and grand in scale, those films that are the exact propaganda of bourgeois social ideology. And this is where the premises of the Third cinema resonate so clearly today. We need revolutionary films! We need this destructive and construction cinema to mangle and rearrange the cinematic senses! A cinema “fit for a new kind of human being, for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming” (400). Given the provisional sketches of a revolutionary cinema to come given here, it is a call that is needed more today than ever.
Also as an aside thing, I’ve recently been in love with and delving into the cinema of the LA Rebellion. Haile Gerima talks a lot about how their biggest influences was from the Third cinema. And in reading this essay it really all fits together. Whether Gerima’s Child of Resistance and Bush Mama or Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and My Brother’s Wedding, this essay does so much contextualising work for their films and the way they were made, the problems the filmmakers were working with. It really feels just how anti-Hollywood and radical the LA Rebellion was in working to craft an entirely new and fully Black cinematic language. But also as Haile says in an interview just how it opened up the way to a multiculturalism of film, where it opened the way for new languages and syntaxes of film that didn’t have to go through the traditional ways of Hollywood. The essay is really inspiring in opening the methods and ways in creating a cinema that can fight against the machine of Hollywood and commercial cinema.
[Its great too how they wish to steer away from the idea of the auteur in film. I’ve always had a dislike for auteurship as it presents itself as such a highly individualistic thing. The director is like the conduit through which everything in the film goes, as if they are God on the set by which everything comes together through their work and direction. Film, as I’ve envisioned it at least, is a highly communal process and I really imagine a lot of director’s wouldn’t have gotten to where they are without the help of other creative artists who worked the camera, actors, etc. I understand the context it grew out of, trying to go against the mass produced Hollywood film and asset film as an art in its own right, with “authors” of its own. But, I’m glad they go against this strain of thinking into a collective creation of film, I think more experiments need to be done in radical and collective filmmaking.]
As the two assert, in very powerful prose, “the cinema of the revolution is at the same time one of destruction and construction” (390). They outline both the negative and positive aspects of Third Cinema, it will at once destroy the colonising and racist image that cinema was built upon, but also reconstruct this image in a new image of decolonisation, to subvert and recapture the image of national struggle that has so long been veiled by the distortions of the colonial image. They identify this colonial image as a “framework of mirages that is difficult to take apart” (382) an image that blurs the lines between national culture and the forced culture of the ruling-class and colonial bourgeoisie. It is through the systems of mass communication, and the cinema which is their primary focus as filmmakers, that “Imperialism and capitalism…. veil everything behind a screen of images and appearances” (389). Imperialism and capitalism enshroud everything within its consumerist and colonising ideologies that abstract and universalise the national culture and detach the colonised from their own immediate identities. This is where they assert that “the image of reality is more important than reality itself” (389). Through ideology, imperialism and capitalism can provide these phantasms and fantasies within a world of images will take control of people’s lives. This veiling of images and appearances is why the Third Cinema must have such a destructive aspect, it must be a “destruction of the image that neocolonialism has created of itself and of us” (390). And in this taking control of the image of reality, in its positive aspect, it must make a “construction of a throbbing, living reality which recaptures truth in any of its expressions” (390).
With this idea of truth that Solanas and Getino put out, it’s important to think of the theorisation also of Third Cinema as “a cinema of subversion” (380). With the national culture being identified as “an impulse lards emancipation” (380) it remains important to subvert the ruling-class culture and ideologies through the Third Cinema. It is to liberate the veiled image of reality created by the colonising bourgeoisie. On page (at least in my version!) 382 it is where they assert which seems to be an overarching thesis of what this cinema of liberation is supposed to do. They say “Third cinema is, in our opinion, the cinema that recognises in that [anti-imperialist] struggle the most gigantic cultural, scientific, and artistic manifestations of our time, the great possibility of constructing a liberated personality with each people as the starting point - in a word the decolonisation of culture” (382). It is both the subversion of colonial ideology and the decolonisation of national culture that Third cinema wishes to liberate. It is focused on liberating the image of reality.
There really is so much great stuff within the work, and again I love that it is moreso a provisional sketch than a direct manifesto of what revolutionary films must be. They certainly go a negative way and assert what a revolutionary film cannot be, and that is a film made within the System (here I think while this can be directed towards capitalist culture as a whole they are focusing very much on Hollywood filmmaking and it’s general monopoly on the filmic means of production and the filmmaking imagination) cannot be a revolutionary one. A film made in the System, even if it is attempting to subvert it is “at best, it can be the ‘progressive’ wing of Establishment cinema” (379). They do identify Godard as the kind of “second cinema” director who tried his best to subvert the System but still remained trapped within its impenetrable fortress. (Interesting enough given that this was made in 1970, before Godard’s Dziga Vertov Group and going underground, I wld almost say it’s safe to say he did begin making films entirely outside the System, creating and discoursing on an entirely new political film language that, to me, has remained extremely underrated within film circles. Of course, I wouldn’t put these experiments over the ones of Third cinema or the LA Rebellion but dang it Godard fanboys need to focus more on his angry commie work than his boring old romantic films!) They put two requirements that a revolutionary film must abide by. One the filmmaker must “[make] films that the System cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs” (387). They bring up the issue of assimilation tactics in capitalism earlier in the essay when they discuss how capitalism sure does love to have some controlled violence and rebellion. Many of those professed individual rebellious types, certain forms of avant-garde art, action without political backing can be subsumed right back into the System, it can easily recuperate and depoliticise those things made within the System that appear as progressive. (An interesting comparison here is perhaps Shaft and the emerging Blaxploitation genre, which took any of the progressive and subversive elements of Shaft, immediately depoliticised them and made Black Hollywood action films that missed the point in films like Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song.) A revolutionary film must be made outside of the System, craft its own new filmic languages and syntax, it must experiment with new forms and contents that cannot go by the old traditions of cinema, the cinema that is built upon colonial and racist lies, the cinema of Hollywood. The other requirement is to “[make] films that directly and explicitly set out to fight the System” (387). A film still made outside of the System that mounts a direct attack on the System, maybe say a film that directly attacks the hypocrisy and lies of Hollywood. However, with these two principles in place Solanas and Getino don’t necessarily say what form these films must fulfil. They do say that “the cinema known as documentary… is perhaps the main basis of revolutionary filmmaking (390). But later they do say that there is “infinite categories” listing such forms as “film letter, film poem, film essay, film pamphlet, film report, etc.” (399). It is only that “the man of the third cinema, be it guerrilla cinema or a film act… above all counters the film industry of… cinema” (399). They are entirely against the film as entertainment, the film that treats the audience as passive receptors of consumption and entertainment. Rather the films of Third cinema are active processes that require the agitation and politicisation of the audience through the film act.
The essay is just fantastic and rings such a powerful resonance in today’s culture. We need more indie political filmmakers who will take on the machine of Hollywood (Imma be that person too), that take on the machine of Marvel filmmaking that maintains such a strong grasp on the cinema and cinematic imagination. Part of this fight has to do with a similar fight that Jonas Mekas waged on this massive cinema, we need smaller films, more personal films, films that do away with the need for massive budgets and are large and grand in scale, those films that are the exact propaganda of bourgeois social ideology. And this is where the premises of the Third cinema resonate so clearly today. We need revolutionary films! We need this destructive and construction cinema to mangle and rearrange the cinematic senses! A cinema “fit for a new kind of human being, for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming” (400). Given the provisional sketches of a revolutionary cinema to come given here, it is a call that is needed more today than ever.
Also as an aside thing, I’ve recently been in love with and delving into the cinema of the LA Rebellion. Haile Gerima talks a lot about how their biggest influences was from the Third cinema. And in reading this essay it really all fits together. Whether Gerima’s Child of Resistance and Bush Mama or Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and My Brother’s Wedding, this essay does so much contextualising work for their films and the way they were made, the problems the filmmakers were working with. It really feels just how anti-Hollywood and radical the LA Rebellion was in working to craft an entirely new and fully Black cinematic language. But also as Haile says in an interview just how it opened up the way to a multiculturalism of film, where it opened the way for new languages and syntaxes of film that didn’t have to go through the traditional ways of Hollywood. The essay is really inspiring in opening the methods and ways in creating a cinema that can fight against the machine of Hollywood and commercial cinema.
[Its great too how they wish to steer away from the idea of the auteur in film. I’ve always had a dislike for auteurship as it presents itself as such a highly individualistic thing. The director is like the conduit through which everything in the film goes, as if they are God on the set by which everything comes together through their work and direction. Film, as I’ve envisioned it at least, is a highly communal process and I really imagine a lot of director’s wouldn’t have gotten to where they are without the help of other creative artists who worked the camera, actors, etc. I understand the context it grew out of, trying to go against the mass produced Hollywood film and asset film as an art in its own right, with “authors” of its own. But, I’m glad they go against this strain of thinking into a collective creation of film, I think more experiments need to be done in radical and collective filmmaking.]
September 8, 2025
Dit vind ik echt het vetste dat we Ooit voor FLW hebben moeten lezen holy shit zo cool i love cinema
April 21, 2023
"This is the starting point for the disappearance of fantasy and phantom to make way for living human beings. The cinema of the revolution is at the same time one of destruction and construction: destruction of the image that neocolonialism has created of itself and of us, and construction of a throbbing, living reality which recaptures truth in any of its expressions."
An evocative and quite radical revision of what cinema is; and what it is supposed to be.
An evocative and quite radical revision of what cinema is; and what it is supposed to be.
October 10, 2021
'The camera as our rifle (...) the projector, a gun that can shoot at 24 frames per second.'
May 9, 2025
🗣️ yuuuuuup
September 8, 2021
“Iʼm a revolutionary, therefore I exist.”
August 5, 2022
A time when cinema was revolutionary in the true sense
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews