Third Cinema

This article was written by Sean Fitzgerald and was originally published on www.unicafemedia.com

It has been an amazing season for the film industry. With the 2016 Academy Awards fast approaching, there is an absolute smorgasbord of quality films to view. Everywhere I go I hear people debating; who should win best actor and actress? Is it Leo’s year, or will he be snubbed again? What should win best film? Should it be Spotlight, The Big Short, perhaps The Revenant?

There are arguments to support all of them; but with all the hype that these big budget films garner, it is easy for the average moviegoer to forget that the film industry dives far deeper than the surface of Hollywood.

The film industry can be divided into four categories; First, Second, Third, and Fourth Cinema. First Cinema is Hollywood, Britain, and big budget Australian films such as Mad Max or Happy Feet. These films are the primary focus of the mainstream audience and media.

Second Cinema refers primarily to European, Bollywood, and Hong Kong film, and focuses more on the aesthetic style of the auteur director, a concept I touched on in another article of mine, Feng Xiaogang: The Face of Modern Chinese Film. While not as popular as films of the First Cinema, these films can still find commercial success, and are even given a nod during awards season in the Foreign Film Category.

This brings us to the focus of this article, Third Cinema. But to understand the importance of the rise of Third Cinema, we have to understand its origins.

The Third Cinema movement, otherwise known as the Cinema of Decolonisation, began with Argentinean directors Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in the 1960’s. Originally the cinema movement was intended to use the camera as a weapon, exposing political injustices, poverty, and the reformation and distribution of nationalist ideologies to the masses.

As the film movement has evolved, however, it has expanded beyond the confines of oppressive government, and the strict third world, and has grown to become a medium for directors around the world to express their disillusionment in regard to a number of issues. This ranges from the confinement of class or societal roles, political policies, marginalisation of certain types of people, or feminist issues, and opens a dialogue with history in order to challenge previously held conceptions of the past.

In honour of awards season, and the mainstream media’s marginalisation of Third Cinema films, I will be reviewing three family dramas from China, Iran, and Taiwan, which mirror concepts of the changing shape of each of these nations at the turn of the last century.

In three vastly different films in terms of aesthetic, directing style, language, religion, and culture, the formula to drama crosses borders and remains true; the old versus the new. A clash of ideals as the world around begins to change, with some not willing to change with it. This theme begs the overarching question; though the world around us is ever evolving, do we, as humans, ever really change at all?

The three films I will be reviewing in three separate articles are Yang Guang Can Lan De Ri Zi (In the Heat of the Sun), Rang-e Khoda (The Color of Paradise), and Yi Yi (A One and A Two).

Although all three films come from the same continent, and deal with similar themes of family, and life’s decisions in a changing world, each director, showcasing the diversity of richness and culture spanning third cinema on this continent, approaches them in vastly different ways