What is the "Third Cinema" project?

According to the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema, written in the late 1960s by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino:

“Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring aggressive activity”

Third Cinema is a relative new and original idea based on the conception of cinema as aesthetically and politically revolutionary practice, for facilitating social and political change. We can categorize it as a militant cinema which aim is to enable expression for dissident voices. Following with this idea we have initiate ourselves on the reflection about the subaltern, a concept to explore cultural dimensions of power and subjugation. “Can the subaltern speak?” The subaltern often is destined to keep a marginalize position in society. This means that they seem not to appear in mass media, or, if they do, they are usually represented under the wrong values – for instance, as promoters of violent situations-, what negatively influences their image in social imagination. So, the aim of Third Cinema is to use technology to give a voice to those marginalized groups who don´t have it.

This Third Cinema is different from Second and First cinema in many features. There is a constant process of experimentation in the way of producing this films, they can be recognized just for their technical appearance. Cinema is not conceived as spectacle – as it is the case for First Cinema-, and the action is not structured around the hero; main characters in this kind of cinema are inspired by those anonymous groups suffering from poverty and social prejudice. However, Second Cinema is experimental and potentially revolutionary, what makes it closer to Third Cinema, the main difference between them is that Second Cinema doesn´t take the same kind of risk about film making-process and argument.

First, Second and Third Cinema do not correspond to geographical areas – there is Third Cinema in the first world and First Cinema in the third world -. And Third Cinema is not simply opposite to the others two Cinemas, but it bets for a collaboration among these different methods for making films. There is a characteristic group of audience for each one, and, paradoxically, First Cinema seems to be the most democratic between them in the sense that while Third Cinema is demanded by an intellectual elite, First Cinema is popular around the world without regarding gender or social status.

According with M. Wayne, four key markers of Third Cinema are: historicity – changes and conflicts that constitute history-, politicization – raising awareness among the oppressed and the exploited-, critical commitment – to political and cultural change-, cultural specificity – Third Cinema´s “ intimacy and familiarity with culture...as a site of political struggle”-.

· In conclusion...

This new film- making method based on revolutionaries audiovisual techniques and non lineal scripts, aims to be critical with the current society by telling stories about marginalized social groups. These kind of films are not stared by famous and successful actors because audience must be focus on the critical approach that the story contains. I consider Third Cinema as an original way to join social activism and art.  

More information about Third Cinema :

http://thirdcinema.blueskylimit.com/thirdcinema.html