THIRD WORLD FEMINIST

CINEMA CLUB

Why new Black cinema? …To be entrapped in other people’s fictions puts us under arrest. To be entrapped, to be submissively so, without countering, without challenging, without raising the voice and offering alternative truths renders us available for servitude. In which case, our ways, our beliefs, our values, our style are repeatedly ransacked so that the power of our culture can be used- to sell liquor, soda, pieces of entertainment, and the real deal: to sell ideas. The idea of inferiority. The idea of hierarchy. The idea of stasis: that nothing will ever change. These ideas or ideological imperatives, are the real products of the so called entertainment industry.

-Toni Cade Bambara, Why Black Cinema (1987)

“In an alienated world, culture -obviously - is a deformed and deforming product. To overcome this it is necessary to have a culture of and for the revolution, a subversive culture capable of contributing to the downfall of capitalist society. In the specific case of the cinema - art of the masses par excellence - its transformation from mere entertainment into an active means of dealienation becomes imperative. Its role in the battle for the complete liberation of man is of primary importance. The camera then becomes a gun, and the cinema must be a guerrilla cinema.”

- Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Towards a Third Cinema (1970-71)

With respect and understanding for the ways that radical filmmaking can help educate and politicize us, we have curated films to go alongside each class session for Third World Feminist School.

Watch films here: Film Syllabus

Readings:

• Towards a Third Cinema, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino

• Why Black Cinema, Toni Cade Bambara

Screenings:

• April 4, 2023: A Third World Dialectic: Two Films by Sara Gomez