Favourite Academic Texts (Towards a Third Cinema)

Though I have to admit I usually find academic texts truly painful, one has stood out above the rest. Speaking specifically of forced readings required for classes, only one has really stood out to me above the others whilst usually the ones done in research for essays or outside of academia entirely are relatively entertaining (as they’re optional!) – that one text was for Film Studies, specifically for the World Cinema module. That one essay is ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, a cultural and political manifesto by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. For context’s sake, Third Cinema is a mode of filmmaking made in the ‘third world’ as a way to differentiate themselves culturally from their Western colonisers, and this essay speaks about the aims and ideas shown in this type of filmmaking, its political meanings and where the writers hoped the movement would go.

Radically transforming the ideas of cinema as an escapist opiate as Western cinema has often been called into a political weapon, the two describe the camera ‘as our rifle’, the projector a weapon capable of blasting 24 frames per second of ideas directly to an audience. The two have an intense, palpable excitement and determination in their activism, moving away from the imposed cultural voice forced upon many of the countries involved in the movement and re-discovering their own voices by radicalising their cinema and effectively reclaiming their individuality through art. It is an inspiring, moving and fascinating read, carefully and passionately explained in a clear and direct way that makes their perspective beautifully understood. Academic reading has never been so exhilarating before or since, unfortunately, but it was another text among a handful of books and essays I have read outside of academia that have really meant a lot to me and have informed my own ideologies, both generally and towards art/producing art.