John bleasdale wrote
> For me, the only hope for a truly "oppositional" cinema lies in the Third
> World. Even then, it is hard to discern a film that challenges the
> conventions of Hollywood from one that is simply applying the same
> principles to an underdeveloped culture.
then Boris Vidovic wrote
> being *third world* doesn'n mean progressive. i can imagine perfectly a
> *third world* film making a point that women shouldn't go to school, or
> that women should be circumsised... it could be done with or without
> *invisible editing*. it can be perfectly inbeded in a non-hollywood,
> non-wester, non-capitalist culture. what would you make out of such a
> film?
ending up with
> all this is an old argument, I know, but seems we are coming back to it
> over and over again.
Boris is right. The argument was first rehearsed at the end of the 1960s by
the Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in their
essay-manifesto 'Towards a Third Cinema'. Getino is only one of several
people who have produced a considerable body of writing on these themes.
Solanas is one of the most outstanding and enjoyable experimental film
makers anywhere in the world today. Sad to say that it all remains beyond
the ken of the Hollywood-centred approach to film studies, a further symptom
of its isolationism.
Michael Chanan
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