Skip to main content

Search from vocabulary

Content language

Concept information

Preferred term

third world cinema  

Definition

  • Teshome Gabriel has identified three types of films that have emerged from Third World countries: (1) assimilationist films that are closely identified with Hollywood in their focus on entertainment and technical virtuosity and de-emphasizing of local subject matter (e.g., the exoticism of the Amazon region in the Brazilian state-sponsored international hit Bye Bye Brazil [Carlos Diegues, 1979] or the Bollywood entertainment films in India); (2) remembrance films that feature local control of production and local culture and history as their subject matter, but tend to romanticize the past while neglecting social transformation (e.g., the New Indian Cinema films of Satyajit Ray such as PatherPanchali, 1955, with its nostalgia for a disappearing rural life, and Algerian freedom fighter films such as Ahmed Rachedi's Dawn of the Damned, 1965, with its relating of the Algerian war from the perspective of Third World struggles); and (3) combative films that place production in the hands of the people (instead of local elites) and use film as an ideological tool. These combative films have formed what is known as the Third Cinema, taking its name not from its location in Third World countries but as an alternative to both a Hollywood unable to treat local social issues meaningfully because of its preoccupation with spectacle and globalization, and an auteurist European cinema focused mainly on the unique visions of its creators instead of the concerns of the people. [Source: Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice; Third World Cinema]

Belongs to group

URI

https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/third_world_cinema

Download this concept: