Third World Cinema

The ranks of Third World cinema are mainly comprised of former colonies of 19th century European empires. As these nations emerge from centuries of underdevelopment, social, cultural and intellectual repression, their struggle for national and individual identity, as well as for economic self-sufficiency, has produced exciting cinematic impulses. In fact, one of the most important historical developments since the seventies has been the emergence of Third World cinema, often referred to as "Third Cinema" (Willemen, Third Cinema, The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections 5).

Despite ethnic and political diversity, Third Cinema films from different regions have many common characteristics identifying them as part of a cohesive international movement. From Latin America to Africa, the universality of Third Cinema is not confined by language or geographical barriers (Willemen 8).

Unlike Western Cinema which represents a pas des twoi of art, entertainment, and commerce (with particular emphasis on commerce and entertainment), Third Cinema filmmakers constantly struggling to prevent Hollywood from overwhelming their local film industries, see the filmic medium as primarily mass persuasion, cultural consolidation, and consciousness-raising.

Third Cinema is also distinctly unconventional in its production modes. Collective production, underground production, on-location shooting of guerilla warfare, and non-Western funding are often an integral part of the develop

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t challenges to the sa:mska:ra, or Indian psyche. It must be noted that national identity is not only a matter of bureaucratic state control or ideological imposition, but also addresses emotional or intellectual affiliation (Chakravarty 20). Films like Mother India depict an Indian populace engaged in the process of nation building where the concept of Mother as Divine looms large in that effort (Chakravarty 152). Casting off the realism, myth, and historical drama that characterized film of the late forties and fifties, in such genres as the romance and the courtesan film, Indian cinema from the sixties until now has concerned itself with major genres that inhabit, explore, and even bend contemporary structures of feeling (Chakravarty 309). Indian commercial cinema has come to symbolize an order of psychic investment for immigrants of Indian origin all over the world. As the work of Satyajit Ray demonstrates, Indian cinema in a fundamental sense, evokes the problematic scenario of original desire: the desire for origins (with the accompanying discomfort, pain, and guilt). Such desire lies at the very heart at attempts to forge new identities for a culturally displaced people (Chakravarty 3). What has ensued is what Sum

Category: Film - T