TOWARD A THIRD CINEMA

Author(s): Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino

Source: Cinéaste , winter 1970-71, Vol. 4, No. 3, latin american militant cinema (winter
1970-71), pp. 1-10
Published by: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41685716

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TOWARD A THIRD CINEMA
by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino

In an alienated world, culture - obviously - is a order to change qualitatively. The most daring
a deformed and deforming product. To overcome this attempts of those filmnakers who strove to conquer
it is necessary to have a culture of and for the. the fortress of official cinema ended, as Jean-Luc
revolution, a subversive culture capable of contrib- Godard eloquently put it, with the filmmakers them-
uting to the downfall of capitalist society. selves "trapped inside the fortress."
In the specific case of the cinema - art of the But the questions that were recently raised
masses par excellence - its transformation from appeared promising; they arose from a new historical
mere entertainment into an active means of dealien- situation to which the filmmaker, as is often the
ation becomes imperative. The camera then becomes case with the educated strata of our countries, was
ation becomes imperative. Its role in the battle rather a late -comer: ten years of the Cuban Revol-
for the complete liberation of man is of primary ution, the Vietnamese struggle, and the development
importance. The camera then becomes a gun, and the of a worldwide liberation movement whose moving
cinema must be a guerrilla cinema. force is to be found in the Third World countries.
This is the proposition of Fernando Solanas (33- The esdstence of masses on the worldwide revolution-
year-old Argentine) and Octavio Getino (34-year-old ary plane was the substantial fact without which
Spaniard) in this article written originally for those questions could not have been posed. A new
Tricontinental (Theoretical Organ of the Executive historical situation and a new man born in the pro-
Secretariat of the Organization of Solidarity of cess of the anti -imperialist struggle demanded a
the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America). new, revolutionary attitude from the filmmakers of
Solanas and Getino are co-authors of THE HOUR OF the world. The question of whether or not militant
THE FURNACES (see review last issue). cinema was possible before the revolution began to
be replaced, at least within small groups, by the
Just a short time ago it would have seemed questionlike a of whether or not such a cinema was nece-
Quixotic adventure in the colonialized, neocolonial- ssary to contribute to the possibility of revolution.
ized, or even the imperialist nations themselves to An affirmative answer was the starting point for the
make any attempt to create films of decolonization first attempts to channel the process of seeking
that turned their back on or actively opposed the possibilities in numerous countries. Examples are
System. Until recently, film had been synonymous Newsreel, a US New Left film group, the cinegiornali
with show or amusement: in a word, it was one more of the Italian student movement, the films made by
consumer good . At best, films succeeded in bearing the Etats Généraux du Cinema Français , and those of
witness to the decay of bourgeois values and testi- the British and Japanese student movements, all a
fying to social injustice. As a rule, films only continuation and deepening of the work of a Joris
dealt with effect, never with cause; it was cinema Ivens or a Chris Marker. Let it suffice to observe
of mystification or anti -his tor icism. It was surplus
the films of a Santiago Alvarez in Cuba, or the
value cinema. Caught up in these conditions, films, cinema being developed by different filmmakers in
the most valuable tool of communication of our times, "the homeland of all", as Bolivar would say, as
were destined to satisfy only the ideological and they seek a revolutionary Latin American cinema.
economic interests of the owners of the film indus- A profound debate on „the role of intellectuals
try , the lords of the world film market, the great and artists before liberation today is enriching the
maj or ity of whom were from the United States . perspectives of intellectual work all over the world.
Was it possible to overcome this situation? How However, this debate oscillates between two poles:
could the problem of turning out liberation films be one which proposes to relegate all intellectual work
approached when costs came to several thousand dol- capacity to a specifically political or political -
lars and the distribution and exhibition channels military function, denying perspectives to all art-
were in the hands of the enemy? How could the con- istic activity with the idea that such activity must
tinuity of work be guaranteed? How could the public ineluctably be absorbed by the System, and the other
be reached? How could System- impos ed repression and which maintains an inner duality of the intellectual:
censorship be vanquished? These questions, which on the one hand, the 'work of art1, 'the privilege
could be multiplied in all directions, led and still of beauty1 . an art and a beauty which are not nece-
lead many people to skepticism or rationalization: ssarily bound to the needs of the revolutionary po-
"revolutionary films cannot be made before the rev- litical process, and, on the other, a political com-
olution"; "revolutionary films have been possible mitment which generally consists in signing certain
only in the liberated countries"; "without the sup- anti -imperialist manifestoes. In practice, this
port of revolutionary political power, revolutionarypoint of view means the separation of politics and
films or art is impossible." The mistake was due to art.
taking the same approach to reality and films as did This polarity rests, as we see it, on two omis-
the bourgeoisie. The models of production, distri- sions: first, the conception of culture, science,
bution, and exhibition continued to be those of art, and cinema as univocal and universal terms, and,
Hollywood precisely because, in ideology and poli- second, an insufficiently clear idea of the fact that
tic^, films had not yet become the vehicle for a the revolution does not begin with the taking of po-
clearly drawn differentiation between bourgeois litical power from imperialism and the bourgeoisie,
ideology and politics. A reformist policy, as mani- but rather begins at the moment when the masses
fested in dialogue with the adversary, in coexis- sense the need for change and their intellectual van-
tence, and in the relegation of national contradic- guards begin to study and carry out this change
tions to those between two supposedly unique blocs through activities on different fronts.
-- the USSR and the USA -- was and is unable to pro- Culture, art, science and cinema always respond to
duce anything but a cinema within the System itself. conflicting class interests. In the neocolonial sit-
At best, it can be the 'progressive ' wing of Estab- uation two concepts of culture, art, science, and
lishment cinema. When all is said and done, such cinema compete: that of the rulers and that of the
cinema was doomed to wait until the world conflict nation. And this situation will continue, as long
was resolved peacefully in favor of socialism in as the national concept is not identified with that
1

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 of the rulers, as long as the status of colony or the "liberation of man", but another man , capable of
semi -colony continues in force. Moreover, the dual- arising from the ashes of the old, alienated man
ity will be overcome and will reach a single and uni- that we are and which the new man will destroy --by
versal category only when the best values of man starting to stoke the fire today .
emerge from proscription to achieve hegemony, when The anti -imperialist struggle of the peoples of
the liberation of man is universal. In the meantime, the Third World and of their equivalents inside the
there exist our culture and their culture, our cinema imperialist countries constitutes today the axis of
and their cinema. Because our culture is an impulse the world revolution. Third cinema is, in our opin-
towards emancipation, it will remain in existence ion, the cinema that recognizes in that struggle the
until emancipation is a reality: a oulture of sub- most gigantic cultural , scientific, and artistic
version which will carry with it an art, a science, manifestation of our time , the great possibility of
and a cinema of subversion . constructing a liberated personality with each people
The lack of awareness in regard to these dualities as the starting point -- in a word, the decoloniz-
generally leads the intellectual to deal with artis- ation of culture .
tic and scientific expressions as they were univer- The culture, including the cinema, of a neocolon-
sally conceived by the classes that rule the world, ialized country is just the expression of an overall
at best introducing some correction into these ex- dependence that generates models and values born
pressions. We have not gone deeply enough into de- from the needs of imperialist expansion.
veloping a revolutionary theater, architecture, med-
icine, psychology, and cinema; into developing a In order to impose itself, neocolonialism needs
culture by and for us. The intellectual takes each to convince the people of a dependent country
of these forms of expression as a unit to be correc- of their own inferiority. Sooner or later, the
ted from within the expression itself 9 and not from inferior man recognizes Man with a capital M;
without j with its own new methods and models . this recognition means the destruction of his
An astronaut or a Ranger mobilizes all the scien- defenses. If you want to be a man, says the
tific resources of imperialism. Psychologists, doc- oppressor, you have to be like me, speak my
tors, politicians, sociologists, mathematicians, and language, deny your own being, transform your-
even artists are thrown into the study of everything self into me. As early as the 17th Century the
that serves , from the vantage point of different Jesuit missionaries proclaimed the aptitude of
specialties , the preparation of an orbital flight the [South American] native for copying Euro-
or the massacre of Vietnamese; in the long run, all pean works of art. Copyist, translator, inter-
of these specialties are equally employed to satisfy preter, at best a spectator, the neocolonialized
the needs of imperialism. In Buenos Aires the army intellectual will always be encouraged to refuse
eradicates villas miseria (urban shanty towns) and to assume his creative possibilities. Inhib-
in their place puts up "strategic hamlets" with ur- itions, uprootedness , escapism, cultural cosmo-
banized setups aimed at facilitating military inter- politanism, artistic imitation, metaphysical
vention when the time comes. The revolutionary or- exhaustion, betrayal of country - all find
ganizations lack specialized fronts in the Estab- fertile soil in which to grow.l
lishment's medicine, engineering, psychology, and
art -- not to mention the development of our own Culture becomes bilingual not due to the use
revolutionary engineering, psychology, art, and of two languages but because of the conjuncture
cinema. In order to be effective, all these fields of two cultural patterns of thinking. One is
must recognize the priorities of each stage; those national, that of the people, and the other is
required by the struggle for power or those demandedestranging, that of the -classes subordinated to
by the already victorious revolution. Examples: outside forces. The admiration that the upper
creating a political sensitivity as awareness of the classes expresses for the US or Europe is the
need to undertake a political -military struggle in highest expression of their subjection. With
order to take power; intensifying all the modern the coloniali zation of the upper classes the
resources of medical science to prepare people with culture of imperialism indirectly introduces
optimum levels of health and physical efficiency, among the masses knowledge which cannot be
ready for combat in rural or urban zones; or elab- supervised. 2
orating an architecture, a city planning, that will
be able to withstand the massive air raids that im-
Just as they are not masters^ of the land upon
perialism can launch at any time. The specific which they walk, the neocolonialized people are not
strengthening of each specialty and field subordin- masters of the ideas that envelop them. A knowledge
ate to collective priorities can fill the empty of national reality presupposes going into the web
spaces caused by the struggle for liberation and of lies and confusion that arise from dependence.
can delineate with greatest efficacy the role of the The intellectual is obliged to refrain from spontan-
intellectual in our time. It is evident that revo- eous thought; if he does think, he generally runs
lutionary mass -level culture and awareness can only the risk of doing so in French or English -- never
be achieved after the taking of political power, but in the language of a culture of his own which, like
it is no less true that the use of scientific and the process of national and social liberation, is
artistic means, together with political-military still hazy and incipient. Every piece of data,
means, prepares the terrain for the revolution to every concept that floats around us , is part of a
become reality and facilitates the solution of the framework of mirages that it is difficult to take
problems that will arise with the taking of power. apart.
The intellectual must find through his action The native bourgeoisie of the port cities such
the field in which he can rationally perform the as Buenos Aires, and their respective intellectual
most efficient work. Once the front has been de- elites, constituted, from the very origins of our
termined, his next task is to find out within that history, the transmission belt of neocolonial pene-
front exactly what is the enemy's stronghold and
where and how he must deploy his forces. It is in (1) THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES - "Neocolonialism
and Violence"
this harsh and dramatic daily search that a culture
of the revolution will be able to emerge, the basis (2) Juan Jose Hernandez Arregui, Imperialism
which will nurture, beginning right now, the new man and Culture
exemplified by Che -- not man in the abstract, not
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 Cultural penetration, pedagogical colonialization,
and mass communications all join forces today in a
desperate attempt to absorb, neutralize, or eliminate
any expression that responds to an attempt at de-
colonization. Neocolonialism makes a serious attempt
to castrate, to digest, the cultural forms that arise
beyond the bounds of. its own aims . Attempts are made
to remove from them precisely what makes them effec-
tive and dangerous, their politicization . Or, to
put it another way, to separate the cultural mani-
festation from the fight for national independence.
Ideas such as "Beauty in itself is revolutionary"
and "All new cinema is revolutionary" are idealistic
aspirations that do not touch the neocolonial con-
dition, since they continue to conceive of cinema,
art, and beauty as universal abstractions and not as
an integral part of the national processes of decol-
onization.
Any dispute, no matter how virulent, which does
not serve to mobilize, agitate, and politicize sec-
Godard and Solanas tors of the people to arm them rationally and per-
trat ion. Behind such watchwords as "Civilization ceptibly, in one way or another, for the struggle --
or barbarism!", manufactured in Argentina by Euro- is received with indifference or even with pleasure.
peanizing liberalism, was the attempt to impose Virulence,
a noncomformism, plain rebelliousness, and
civilization fully in keeping with the needs of discontent
im- are just so many more products on the
perialist expansion and the desire to destroy the capitalist market; they are consumer goods . This is
resistance of the national masses, which were suc- especially true in a situation where the bourgeoisie
cessively called the "rabble", a "bunch of blacks", is in need of a daily dose of shock and exciting
and "zoological detritus" in our country and "the elements of controlled violence^ -- that is, vio-
unwashed hordes" in Bolivia. In this way the ide- lence which absorption by the System turns into pure
ologists of the semicountries , past masters in "the stridency. Examples are the works of a socialist-
play of big words, with an implacable, detailed, and tinged painting and sculpture which are greedily
rustic universalism" , 3 served as spokesmen of those sought after by the new bourgeoisie to decorate their
followers of Disraeli who intelligently proclaimed: apartments and mansions; plays full of anger and
"I prefer the rights of the English to the rights avant-gardism which are noisily applauded by the
of man." ruling classes; the literature of progressive writers
The middle sectors were and are the best recip- concerned with semantics and man on the margin of
ients of cultural neocolonialism. Their ambivalent time and space, which gives an air of democratic
class condition, their buffer position between soc- broadmindedness to the System's publishing houses
ial polarities, and their broader possibilities of and magazines; and the cinema of 'challenge', of
access to civilization offer imperialism a base of 'argument', promoted by the distribution monopolies
social support which has attained considerable im- and launched by the big commercial outlets.
portance in some Latin American countries.
In reality the area of 'permitted protest' of
It serves to institutionalize and give a normal the System is much greater than the System is
appearance to dependence. The main objective willing to admit. This gives the artists the
of this cultural deformation is to keep the illusion that they are acting 'against the sys-
people from realizing their neocolonialized tem' by going beyond certain narrow limits; they
position and aspiring to change it. In this do not realize that even anti-System art can be
way pedagogical colonialization is an effective absorbed and utilized by the System, as both a
substitute for the colonial police.4 brake and a necessary self- correction . 7

Mass communications tend to complete the destruc- Lacking an awareness of how to utilize what is
tion of a national awareness and of a collective ours for our true liberation - in a word, lacking
p olitici zat ion -- all of these 'progressive' alter-
subjectivity on the way to enlightenment, a destruc-
tion which begins as soon as the child has access natives
to come to form the Leftish wing of the System,
these media, the education and culture of the the improvement of its cultural products. They will
ruling
classes. In Argentina 26 television channels; one be doomed to carry out the best work on the Left
million television sets; more than 50 radio stations;that the Right is able to accept today and will thus
hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines; only serve the survival of the latter. "Restore
and thousands of records, films, etc., join their words, dramatic actions, and images to the places
acculturating role of the colonialization of taste where they can carry out a revolutionary role, where
and consciousness to the process of neocolonial ed- they will be useful, where they will become weapons
ucation which begins in the university. "Mass comm- in the struggle. Insert the work as an original
unications are more effective for neocolonialism fact in the process of liberation, place it first
than napalm. What is real, true, and rational at is the service of life itself, ahead of art;
to be found on the margin of the Law, just as are dissolve aesthetics in the life of society: only in
the people. Violence, crime, and destruction come this way, as Fanon said, can decolonization become
to be Peace, Order, and Normality. "5 Truth , then , possible and culture, cinema, and beauty --at least,
amounts to subversion. Any form of expression or (6) Observe the new custom of some groups of the
communication that tries to show national reality is upper bourgeoisie from Rome and Paris who
subversion . spend their weekends traveling to Saigon to
(3) Rene Zavaleta Mercado, Bolivia: Growth of get a close-up view of the Vietcong offensive.
the National Concept (7) Irwin Silber, "USA: The Alienation of Culture
(*+) THE HOUR OF THE FURNACE, ibid. Culture", Tricontinental 10.
(5) Ibid.
(8) The organization Vanguard Artists of Argentina.
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what is of greatest importance to us -- become our The placing of the cinema within US models, even
culture* our films * and our sense of beauty . in the formal aspect, in language, leads to the
The historical perspectives of Latin America and adoption of the ideological forms that gave rise to
of the majority of the countries under imperialist precisely that language and no other . Even the
domination are headed not towards a lessening of re- appropriation of models which appear to be only tech-
pression but towards an increase. We are heading nical, industrial, scientific, etc., leads to a con-
not for bourgeois -democratic regimes but for dicta- ceptual dependency situation, due to the fact that
torial forms of government. The struggles for demo- the cinema is an industry, but differs from other
cratic freedoms, instead of seizing concessions from industries in that it has been created and organized
the System, move it to cut down on them, given its in order to generate certain ideologies . The 35mm
narrow margin for maneuvering. camera, 24 frames per second, arc lights, and a com-
The bourgeois -democratic facade caved in some mercial place of exhibition for audiences were con-
time ago. The cycle opened during the last century ceived not to gratuitously transmit any ideology,
in Latin America with the first attempts at self- but to satisfy, in the first place, the cultural and
affirmation of a national bourgeoisie differentiated surplus value needs of a specific ideology , of a
from the metropolis (examples are Rosas' federalism specific world-view: that of US financial capital .
in Argentina, the Lopez and Francia regimes in Para- The mechanistic takeover of a cinema conceived as
guay,' and those of Bengido and Balmaceda in Chile) a show to be exhibited in large theaters with a
with a tradition that has continued well into our standard duration, hermetic structures that are born
century: national -bourgeois, national -popular, andand
die on the screen, satisfies, to be sure, the
democratic-bourgeois attempts were made by Cardenas, commercial interests of the production groups, but
Yrigoyen, Haya de la Torre, Vargas, Aguirre Cerda, it also leads to the absorption of forms of the
Peron, and Arbenz. But as far as revolutionarybourgeoispro- world-view which are the continuation of
spects are concerned, the cycle has definitely19th been Century art, of bourgeois art: man is accepted
completed. The lines allowing for the deepening ofa passive and consuming object; rather than
only as
the historical attempt of each of those experiences having his ability to make history recognized, he is
today pass through the sectors that understand onlythe
permitted to read history , contemplate it j lis-
continent's situation as one of war and that are
ten to it j and undergo it. The cinema as a spectacle
preparing, under the force of circumstances, to make aimed at a digesting object is the highest point
that region the Viet-Nam of the coming decade. A that can be reached by bourgeois filmmaking. The
war in which national liberation can only succeed world, experience, and the historic process are en-
when it is simultaneously postulated as social lib- closed within the frame of a painting, the same stage
eration -- socialism as the only valid perspective of a theater, and the movie screen; man is viewed as
of any national liberation process. a consumer of ideology , and not as the creator of
At this t'irne in Latin America there is room ideology. This notion is the starting point for the
for neither passivity nor innocence. The in- wonderful interplay of bourgeois philosophy and the
tellectual's commitment is measured in terms obtaining of surplus value. The result is a cinema
of risks as well as words and ideas; what he studied by motivational analysts, sociologists and
does to further the cause of liberation is psychologists, by the endless researchers of the
dreams and frustrations of the masses, all aimed at
what counts. The worker who goes on strike
»and thus risks losing his job or even his
selling movie-life , reality as it is conceived by
the ruling classes.
life, the student who jeopardizes his career,
The first alternative to this type of cinema,
the militant who keeps silent under torture:
each by his or her action commits us to some-
which we could call the first cinema , arose with the
so-called 'author's cinema' , 'expression cinema',
thing much more important than a vague gesture
9 nouvelle vague ' cinema novo9 , or, conventionally,
of solidarity.9
the second cinema . This alternative signified a
In a situation in which the 'state of law' is step forward inasmuch as it demanded that the film-
maker be free to express himself in non-standard
replaced by the ' state of facts ' , the intellectual ,
who is one more worker , functioning on a cultural language and inasmuch as it was an attempt at cul-
tural decolonization. But such attempts have already
front, must become increasingly radicalized to avoid
reached, or are about to reach, the outer limits of
denial of self and to carry out what is expected of
him in our times. The impotence of all reformist what the system permits. The second cinema film-
concepts has already been exposed sufficiently, not maker has remained "trapped inside the fortress" as
only in politics but also in culture and films -- Godard put it, or is on his way to becoming trapped.
The search for a market of 200,000 moviegoers in
and especially in the latter, whose history is that
of imperialist domination - mainly Yankee . Argentina, a figure that is supposed to cover the
While, during the early history (or the prehis- costs of an independent local production, the pro-
posal of developing a mechanism of industrial pro-
tory) of the cinema, it was possible to speak of a
German, an Italian, or a Swedish cinema clearly dif- duction parallel to that of the System but which
would be distributed by the System according to its
ferentiated and corresponding to specific national
characteristics, today such differences have dis-
own norms, the struggle to better the laws protect-
appeared. The borders were wiped out along with
ing the cinema and replacing 'bad officials' by
'less bad', etc., is a search lacking in viable
the expansion of US imperialism and the film model
that it imposed: Hollywood movies . In our times it prospects, unless you consider viable the prospect
is hard to find a film within the field of commer- of becoming institutionalized as 'the youthful,
cial cinema, including what is known as 'author's angry wing of society' -- that is, of neocolonial-
ized or capitalist society.
cinema', in both* the capitalist and socialist coun-
Real alternatives differing from those offered
tries, that manages to avoid the models of Holly-
wood pictures. The latter have such a fast hold by the System are only possible if one of two re-
that monumental works such as the USSR's Bondar - quirements is fulfilled: making films that the Sys-
tem cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its
chuk's WAR AND PEACE are also monumental examples
of the submiss ion to all the propositions imposed needs , or making films that directly and explicitly
set out to fight the System . Neither of these re-
by the US movie industry (structure, language, etc.)
and, consequently, to its concepts.
quirements fits within the alternatives that are
still offered by the second cinema , but they can be
(9) THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES, ibid. found in the revolutionary opening towards a cinema
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 of the masses. But the new political positions of
some filmmakers and the subsequent appearance of
films useful for liberation have permitted certain
political vanguards to discover the impor tance' of
movies. This importance is to be found in the spe-
cific meaning of films as a form of communication
and because of their particular characteristics,
characteristics that allow them to draw audiences of
different origins, many of them people who might not
respond favorably to the announcement of a political
speech. Films offer an effective pretext for gath-
ering an audience, in addition to the ideological
message they contain.
The capacity for synthesis and the penetration
of the film image, the possibilities offered by the
living document and naked reality, and the power of
enlightenment of audiovisual means make the film far
hour of the furnaces more effective than any other tool of communication.
outside and against the System, in a cinema of lib- It is hardly necessary to point out that those films
eration: the third cinema . which achieve an intelligent use of the possibil-
One of the most effective jobs done by neocolon-ities of the image, adequate dosage of concepts,
ialism is its cutting off of intellectual sectors, language and structure that flow naturally from each
especially artists, from national reality by lining theme, and counterpoints of audiovisual narration
them up behind 'universal art and models'. It has achieve effective results in the politicization and
been very common for intellectuals and artists to mobilization of cadres and even in work with the
be found at the tail end of popular struggle, when masses, where this is possible.
they have not actually taken up positions against The students who raised barricades on the Avenida
it. The social layers which have made the greatest 18 de Julio in Montevideo after the showing of ME
contribution to the building of a national culture GUSTAN LOS ESTUDIANTES (I LIKE STUDENTS) (Mario
(understood as an impulse towards decolonization) Handler) , those who demonstrated and sang the "In-
have not been precisely the enlightened elites but ternationale" in Merida and Caracas after the show-
rather the most exploited and uncivilized sectors. ing of LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS (THE HOUR OF THE FUR-
Popular organizations have very rightly distrusted NACES) , the growing demand for films such as those
the 'intellectual' and the 'artist.' When they have made by Santiago Alvarez and the Cuban documentary
not been openly used by the bourgeoisie or imper- film movement, and the debates and meetings that
ialism, they have certainly been their indirect take place after the underground or semipublic show-
tools; most of them did not go beyond spouting a ings of third cinema films are the beginning of a
policy in favor of "peace and democracy", fearful of twisting and difficult road being traveled in the
anything that had a national ring to it, afraid of consumer societies by the mass organizations ( Cineg-
contaminating art with politics and the artists with iornali liberi in Italy, Zengakuren documentaries
the revolutionary militant. They thus tended to in Japan, etc.). For the first time in Latin Amer-
obscure the inner causes determining neo- colonial - ica, organizations are ready and willing to employ
i zed society and placed in the foreground the outer films for political- cultural ends: the Chilean Par-
causes, which, while "they are the condition for tido Socialista provides its cadres with revolution-
change, they can never be the basis for change";10 ary film material, while Argentine revolutionary
in Argentina they replaced the struggle against im- Peronist and non-Peronist groups are taking an in-
perialism and the native oligarchy with the struggle terest in doing likewise. Moreover, OSPAAAL (Organ-
of democracy against fascism, suppressing the fun- ization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia
damental contradiction of a neocoloniali zed country and Latin America) is participating in the produc-
and replacing it with "a contradiction that was a tion and distribution of films that contribute to
copy of the world-wide contradiction. "11 the anti -imperialist struggle. The revolutionary
This cutting off of the intellectual and artistic organizations are discovering the need for cadres
sectors from the processes of national liberation -- who, among other things, know how to handle a film
which, among other things, helps us to understand camera, tape recorders, and projectors in the most
the limitations in which these processes have been effective way possible. The struggle to seize power
unfolding -- today tends to disappear in the extent from the enemy is the meeting ground of the political
that artists and intellectuals are beginning to dis- and artistic vanguards engaged in a common task
cover the impossibility of destroying the enemy which is enriching to both .
without first joining in a battle for their common Some of the circumstances that delayed the use of
interests. The artist is beginning to feel the in- films as a revolutionary tool until a short time ago
sufficiency of his nonconformism and individual were lack of equipment, technical difficulties, the
rebellion. And the revolutionary organizations, in compulsory specialization of each phase of work, and
turn, are discovering the vacuums that the struggle high costs. The advances that have taken place with-
for power creates in the cultural sphere. The prob- in each specialization; the simplification of movie
lems of filmmaking, the ideological limitations of cameras and tape recorders; improvements in the med-
a filmmaker in a neocoloniali zed country, etc. , ium itself, such as rapid film that can be printed
have. thus far constituted objective factors in the in a normal light; automatic light meters; improved
lack of attention paid to the cinema by the people's audiovisual synchronization; and the spread of know-
organizations. Newspapers and other printed matter, how by means of specialized magazines with large
posters and wall propaganda, speeches and other ver- circulations and even through nonspeciali zed media,
bal forms of information, enlightenment, and polit- have helped to demystify filmmaking and divest it of
ici zation are still the main means of communication that almost magic aura that made it seem that films
between the organizations and the vanguard layerswere only within the reach of 'artists', 'geniuses',
(10) Mao Tse-tung, On Practice . and 'the privileged.' Filmmaking is increasingly
within the reach of larger social layers. Chris
(11) Rodolfo Pruigross, The Proletariat and Marker experimented in France with groups of workers
National Revolution .
whom he provided with 8mm equipment and some basic
5

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instruction in its handling. The goal was to have The cinema known as documentary, with all the
the worker film his way of looking at the world, vastnes s that the concept has today, from education-
al films to the reconstruction of a fact or a his-
just as if he were writing it. This has opened up
unheard- of -prospects for the cinema; above all, a torical event, is perhaps the main basis of revolu-
new conception of filmmaking and the significance tionary filmmaking. Every image that documents,
of art in our times . bears witness to, refutes or deepens the truth of a
Imperialism and capitalism, whether in the con- situation is something more than a film image or
sumer society or in the neocolonial i zed country, purely artistic fact; it becomes something which the
veil everything behind a screen of images and appear-System finds indigestible.
ances. The image of reality is more important than Testimony about a national reality is also an in-
reality itself. It is a world peopled with fantasies estimable means of dialogue and knowledge on the
and phantoms in which what is hideous is clothed in world plane. No internationalist form of struggle
beauty, while beauty is disguised as the hideous. can be carried out successfully if there is not a
On the one hand, fantasy, the imaginary bourgeois mutual exchange of experiences among the people, if
universe replete with comfort, equilibrium, sweet the people do not succeed in breaking out of the
reason, order, efficiency, and the possibility to Balkanization on the international, continental,
'be someone.' And, on the other, the phantoms, we and national planes which imperialism is striving
the lazy, we the indolent and underdeveloped, we whoto maintain.
cause disorder. When a neocoloniali zed person ac- There is no knowledge of a reality as long as
cepts his situation, he becomes a Gungha Din, a that reality is not acted upon, as long as its tran-
traitor at the service of the colonialist, an Uncle sformation is not begun on all fronts of struggle .
Tom, a class and racial renegade, or a fool, the The well-known quote from Marx deserves constant
easy-going servant and bumpkin; but, when he refuses repetition: it is not sufficient to interpret the
to accept his situation of oppression, then he turns world ; it is now a question of transforming it.
into a resentful savage, a cannibal. Those who lose With such an attitude as his starting point, it
remains to the filmmaker to discover his own lan-
sleep from fear of the hungry s those who comprise
the System, see the revolutionary as a bandit, rob- guage, a language which will arise from a militant
ber, and rapist; the first battle waged against them and transforming world- view and from the theme being
is thus not on a political plane, but rather in the dealt with. Here it may well be pointed out that
police context of law, arrests, etc. The more ex- certain political cadres still maintain old dogmatic
ploited a man is, the more he is placed on a plane positions, which ask the artist or filmmaker to pro-
of insignificance. The more he resists, the more he vide an apologetic view of reality, one which is
is viewed as a beast. This can be seen in AFRICA more in line with wishful thinking than with what
ADDIO, made by the fascist Jacopetti: the African actually is. Such positions, which at bottom mask
savages, killer animals, wallow in abject anarchy a lack of confidence in the possibilities of reality
once they escape from white protection. Tarzan itself, have in certain cases led to the use of
died,
and in his place were born Lumumbas and Lobegulas film, language as a mere idealized illustration of a
fact, to the desire to remove reality's deep contra-
Nkomos , and the Madzimbamutos , and this is something
that neocolonialism cannot forgive. Fantasy has dictions, its dialectic richness, which is precisely
been replaced by phantoms and man is turned into an the kind of depth which can give a film beauty and
extra who dies so Jacopetti can comfortably film effectiveness. The reality of the revolutionary
his execution. processes all over the world, in spite of their con-
fused and negative aspects, possesses a dominant
I make the revolution; therefore s I exist . This
is the starting point for the disappearance of fan-line, a synthesis which is so rich and stimulating
that it does not need to be schematized with partial
tasy and phantom to make way for living human beings.
The cinema of the revolution is at the same time one or sectarian views.
of destruction and construction: destruction of the Pamphlet films, didactic films, report films,
image that neocolonialism has created of itself and essay films, witness -bearing films -- any militant
of us, and construction of a throbbing, living re-foim of expression is valid, and it would be absurd
ality which recaptures truth in any of its express- to lay down a set of aesthetic work norms. Be recep-
ions. tive to all that the people have to offer , and offer
The restitution of things to their real place and them the best ; or, as Che put it, respect the people
meaning is an eminently subversive fact both in the by giving them quality. This is a good thing to
neocolonial situation and in the consumer societies. keep in mind in view of those tendencies which are
In the former, the seeming ambiguity or pseudo-ob- always latent in the revolutionary artist to lower
jectivity in newspapers, literature, etc., and the the level of investigation and the language of a
relative freedom of the people's organizations to theme, in a kind of neopopulism, down to levels
provide their own information cease to exist,which, giving while they may be those upon which the masses
way to overt restriction, when it is a question move,
of do not help them to get rid of the stumbling
television and radio, the two most important System- blocks left by imperialism. The effectiveness of
controlled or monopolized communications media. the best films of militant cinema show that social
Last year's May events in France are quite explicit layers considered backward are able to capture the
on this point. exact meaning of an association of images, an effect
In a world where the unreal rules, artistic ex- of staging, and any linguistic experimentation
pression is shoved along the channels of fantasy,placed within the context of a given idea. Further-
fiction, language in code, sign language, and mes- more, revolutionary cinema is not fundamentally one
sages whispered between the lines. Art is cut offwhich illustrates, documents, or passively estab-
from the concrete facts -- which, from the neocolon- lishes a situation: rather, it attempts to intervene
ialist standpoint, are accusatory testimonies --to in the situation as an element providing thrust or
turn back on itself, strutting about in a world of rectification. To put it another way, it provides
abstractions and phantoms, where it becomes 'time- discovery through transformation.
The differences that exist between one and
less' and history- less. Viet-Nam can be mentioned,
but only far from Viet-Nam; Latin America can be another liberation process make it impossible to
mentioned, but only far enough away from the conti- lay down supposedly universal norms . A cinema which
nent to be ineffective, in places where it is de- in the consumer society does not attain the level of
politicized and where it does not lead to action. the reality in which it moves can play a stimulating
6

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 The existence of a revolutionary cinema is incon-
ceivable without the constant and methodical exer-
cise of practice, search, and experimentation. It
even means committing the new filmmaker to take
chances on the unknown, to leap into space at times,
exposing himself to failure as does the guerrilla
who travels along paths that he himself opens up
with machete blows. The possibility of discovering
and inventing film forms and structures that serve
a more profound vision of our reality resides in the
ability to place oneself on the outside limits of
the familiar, to make one1 s way amid constant dan-
gers.
Our time is one of hypothesis rather than of
thesis, a time of works in process -- unfinished,
unordered, violent works made with the camera in one
hand and a rock in the other. Such works cannot be
assessed according to the traditional theoretical
and critical canons. The ideas for our film theory
the people and their rifles, Joris Ivens ' film on Laos and criticism will come to life through inhibition-
removing practice and experimentation. "Knowledge
role in an underdeveloped country, just as a revo- begins with practice. After, acquiring theoretical
lutionary cinema in the neocolonial situation will knowledge through practice, it is necessary to re-
not necessarily be revolutionary if it is mechan- turn to practice." 12 Once he has embarked upon
ically taken to the metropolis country. this practice, the revolutionary filmmaker will
Teaching the handling of guns can be revolution- have to overcome countless obstacles; he will exper-
ary where there are potentially or explicitly viable ience the loneliness of those who aspire to the
layers ready to throw themselves into the struggle praise of the System* s promotion media only to find
to take power, but ceases to be revolutionary wherethat those media are closed to him. As Godard would
the masses still lack sufficient awareness of their say, he will cease to be a bicycle champion to be-
situation or where they already have learned to come an anonymous bicycle rider, Vietnamese style,
handle guns. Thus, a cinema which insists upon the submerged in a cruel and prolonged war. But he will
denunciation of the effects of neocolonial policy is also discover that there is a receptive audience
caught up in a reformist game if the consciousness that looks upon his work as something of its own
of the masses has already assimilated such knowledge; existence, and that is ready to defend him in a way
then the revolutionary thing is to examine the that it would never do with any world bicycle cham-
causes, to investigate the ways of organizing and pion.
arming for the change. That is, imperialism can
sponsor films that fight illiteracy, and such pic- IMPLEMENTATION
tures will only be inscribed within the contemporary
need of imperialist policy, but, in constrast, the In this long war, with the camera as our rifle,
marking of such films in Cuba after the triumph of we do in fact move into a guerrilla activity. This
the Revolution was clearly revolutionary. Although is why the work of a film-guerrilla group is govern-
their starting point was just the fact of teaching ed by strict disciplinary norms as to both work
reading and writing, they had a goal which was rad- methods and security. A "revolutionary film group
ically different from that of imperialism: the is in the same situation as a guerrilla unit: it
training of people for liberation, not for subjec- cannot grow strong without military structures and
tion. command concepts. The group exists as a network of
The model of the perfect work of art, the fully complementary responsibilities, as the sum and syn-
rounded film structured according to the metrics thesis im- of abilities, inasmuch as it operates harmon-
posed by bourgeois culture, its theoreticians and ically with a leadership that centralizes planning
critics, has served to inhibit the filmmaker in the work and maintains its continuity. Experience shows
dependent countries, especially when he has attemp- that it is not easy to maintain the cohesion of a
ted to erect similar models in a reality which group when it is bombarded by the System and its
offered him neither the culture, the techniques, nor chain of accomplices frequently disguised as pro-
the most primary elements for success. The culture gressives ' , when there are no immediate and spec-
tacular outer incentives and the members must under-
of the metropolis kept the age-old secrets that had
given life to its models; the transposition of the go the discomforts and tensions of work that is
latter to the neocolonial reality was always a mech- done underground and distributed clandestinely.
anism of alienation, since it was not possible for Many abandon their responsibilities because they
the artist of the dependent country to absorb, in a underestimate them or because they measure them with
few years, the secrets of a culture and society values appropriate to System cinema and not under-
elaborated through 1ihe centuries in completely dif- ground cinema. The birth of internal conflicts is a
ferent historical circumstances . The attempt in the reality present in any group, whether or not it po-
sphere of filmmaking to match the pictures of the ssesses ideological maturity. The lack of awareness
ruling countries generally ends in failure, given of such an inner conflict on the psychological or
the existence of two disparate historical realities. personality plane , etc . , the lack of maturity in
And such unsuccessful attempts lead to feelings of dealing with problems of relationships, at times
frustration and inferiority. Both these feelings leads to ill feeling and rivalries that in turn
arise in the first place from the fear of taking cause real clashes going beyond ideological or ob-
risks along completely new roads which are almost a jective differences. All of this means that a basic
total denial of ' their cinema . ' A fear of recogniz- condition is an awareness of the problems of inter-
ing the particularities and limitations of a depen- personal relationships , leadership and areas of com-
dency situation in order to discover the possibil- petence. What is needed is to speak clearly, mark
ities inherent in that situation by finding ways of (12) Mao Tse-tung, op. cit.
overcoming it which would of necessity be original.

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off work areas, assign responsibilities and take on work in each country: periodic regional or inter-
the job as a rigorous militancy. national gatherings to exchange experiences, contri-
Guerrilla fi lnmaking proletarianizes the film butions, joint planning of work, etc.
worker and breaks down the intellectual aristocracy At least in the earliest stages, the revolution-
that the bourgeoisie grants to its followers. In a ary filmmaker and the work groups will be the sole
word, it democratizes. The filmmaker's tie with producers of their films. They must bear the respon-
reality makes him more a part of his people. Van- sibility of finding ways to facilitate the continuity
guard layers and even masses participate collective- of work. Guerrilla cinema still doesn't have enough
ly in the work when they realize that it is the con- experience to set down standards in this area; what
tinuity of their daily struggle. LA HORA EE LOS experience there is has shown, above all, the ability
HORNOS shows how a film can be made in hostile cir- to make use of the concrete situation of each coun-
cumstances when it has the support and collaboration try. But, regardless of what these situations may
of militants and cadres from the people. be, the preparation of a film cannot be undertaken
The revolutionary filmmaker acts with a radically without a parallel study of its future audience and,
new vision of the role of the producer, teamwork, consequently, a plan to recover the financial in-
tools, details, etc. Above all, he supplies himself vestment. Here, once again, the need arises of
at all levels in order to produce his films, he closer ties between political and artistic vanguards,
equips himself at all levels, he learns how to since this also serves for the joint study of forms
handle the manifold techniques of his craft. His of production, exhibition, and continuity.
most valuable possessions are the tools of his A guerrilla film can be aimed only at the distri-
trade, which form part and parcel of his need to bution mechanisms provided by the revolutionary or-
communicate. The camera is the inexhaustible exprop- ganizations, including those invented or discovered
riator of image-weapons ; the projector, a gun that by the filmmaker himself. Production, distribution,
can shoot 24 frames per second . and economic possibilities for survival must form
Each member of the group should be familiar, at part of a single strategy. The solution of the
least in a general way, with the equipment being problems faced in each of these areas will encourage
used: he must be prepared to replace another in any other people to join in the work of guerrilla film-
of the phases of production. The myth of irreplace- making, which will enlarge its ranks and thus make
able technicians must be exploded. it less vulnerable.
The whole group must grant great importance to The distribution of guerrilla films in Latin
the minor details of the production and the security America is still in swaddling clothes, while System
measures needed to protect it. A lack of foresight reprisals are already a legalized fact. Suffice it
which in conventional filmmaking would go unnoticed to note in Argentina the raids that have occurred
can render virtually useless weeks or months of during some showings and the recent film suppression
work. And a failure in guerrilla cinema, just as law of a clearly fascist character, in Brazil the
in the guerrilla struggle itself, can mean the loss ever -increasing restrictions placed upon the most
of a work or a complete change of plans. "In a militant comrades of Cinema Novo, and in Venezuela
guerrilla struggle the concept of failure is present the banning and license cancellation of LA HORA DE
a thousand times over, and victory a myth that only LOS HORNOS; almost all over the continent censorship
a revolutionary can dream."13 Every member of prevents any possibility of public distribution.
the group must have an ability to take care of de- Without revolutionary films and a public that
tails; discipline; speed; and, above all, the will- asks for them, any attempt to open up new ways of
ingness to overcome the weaknesses of comfort, old distribution would be doomed to failure. But both
habits, and the whole climate of pseudonormality of these already exist in -Latin America. The ap-
behind which the warfare of everyday life is hidden. pearance of the films opened up a road which in some
Each film is a different operation, a different job countries, such as Argentina, occurs through show-
requiring variations in methods in order to confuse ings in apartments and houses to audiences of never
or refrain from alerting the enemy, especially as more than 25 people; in other countries, such as
the processing laboratories are still in his hands. Chile, films are shown in parishes, universities, or
The success of the work depends to a great extent cultural centers (of which there are fewer every
on the group's ability to remain silent, on its per-day) ; and, in the case of Uruguay, showings were
manent wariness, a condition that is difficult to given in Möntevideo's biggest movie theater to an
achieve in a situation in which apparently nothing audience of 2500 people, who filled the theater and
is happening and the filmmaker has been accustomed made every showing an impassioned anti -imperial ist
to telling all and sundry about everything that he's event. l^ But the prospects on the continental
doing because the bourgeoisie has trained him pre- plane indicate that the possibility for the contin-
cisely on such a basis of prestige and promotion. uity of a revolutionary cinema rests upon the
The watchword 'constant vigilance, constant wari- strengthening of rigorously underground base struc-
ness, constant mobility' has profound validity for tures.
guerrilla cinema. You have to give the appearance Practice implies mistakes and failures. 15
of working on various projects, split up the mater- Some comrades will let themselves be carried away by
ials, put it together, take it apart, confuse, neu- the success and impunity with which they present the
tralize, and throw off the track. All of this is first showings and will tend to relax security meas-
necessary as long as the group doesn't have its own ures, while others will go in the opposite direction
processing equipment, no matter how rudimentary, of excessive precautions or fearfulness, to such an
and there remain certain possibilities in the trad- extent that distribution remains circumscribed,
itional laboratories. limited to a few groups of friends. Only concrete
Group -level cooperation between different experience
coun- in each country will demonstrate which
tries can serve to assure the completion ofare a film
the best methods there, which do not always lend
or the execution of certain phases of work (14) thatThemay
Uruguayan weekly Marcha organized late-
not be possible in the country of origin. To night
thisand Sunday morning exhibitions that
should be added the need for a reception center arefor
widely and well received.
file materials to be used by the different groups
(15) The raiding of a Buenos Aires union and the
and the perspective of coordination, on a continent-
arrest of dozens of persons resulting from a
wide or even worldwide scale, of the continuity badof
choice of projection site and the large
(13) Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare.
number of people invited.

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themselves to application in other situations. Before and during the making of LA HORA DE LOS
In some places it will be possible to build in- HORNOS we tried out various methods for the distri-
frastructures connected to political, student, work- bution of revolutionary cinema -- the little that
er, and other organizations, while in others it will we had made up to then. Each showing for militants,
be more suitable to sell prints to organizations middle- level cadres, activists, workers, and univer-
which will take charge of obtaining the funds nece- sity students became -- without our having set our-
ssary to pay for each print (the cost of the print selves this aim beforehand --a kind of enlarged
plus a small margin) . This method, wherever pos- cell meeting of which the films were a part but not
sible, would appear to be the most viable, because the most important factor. We thus discovered a
it permits the decentralization of distribution; new facet of cinema: the participation of people
makes possible a more profound political use of the who, until then, were considered spectators . At
film; and permits the recovery, through the sale of times, security reasons obliged us to try to dis-
more prints, of the funds invested in the production. solve the group of participants as soon as the show-
It is true that in many countries the organizations ing was over, and we realized that the distribution
still are not fully aware of the importance of this of that kind of film had little meaning if it was
work or, if they are, may lack the means to under- not complemented by the participation of the com-
take it. In such cases other methods can be used: rades, if a debate was not opened on the themes
the* delivery of prints to encourage distribution suggested by the films.
and a box-office cut to the organizers of each show- We also discovered that every comrade who attended
ing, etc. The ideal goal to be achieved wouldsuch be showings did so with full awareness that he was
producing and distributing guerrilla films with infringing the System's laws and exposing his per-
funds obtained from expropriations of the bourgeois- sonal security to eventual repression. This person
ie -- that is, the bourgeoisie would be financing was no longer a spectator; on the contrary, fron
guerrilla ■ cinema with a bit of the surplus value the moment he decided to attend the showing, from
that it get s from the people. But, as long as the the moment he lined himself up on this side by taking
goal is no more than a middle or long-range aspir- risks and contributing his living experience to the
ation, the alternatives open to revolutionary cinema meeting, he became an actor, a more important pro-
to recover production and distribution costs are tagonist
to than those who appeared in the films. Such
some extent similar to those obtained for conven- a person was seeking other committed people like him-
tional cinema: every spectator should pay the same self, while he, in turn, became committed to them.
amount as he pays to see System cinema. Financing, The spectator made way for the actor , who sought him-
subsidizing, equipping, and supporting revolutionary self in others .
cinema are political responsibilities for revolu- Outside this space which the films momentarily
tionary organizations and militants. A film can be helped to liberate, there was nothing but solitude,
made, but if its distribution does not allow for noncommunication, distrust, and fear; within the
the recovery of the costs, it will be difficult or freed space the situation turned everyone into ac-
impossible to make a second film. complices of the act that was unfolding. The de-
The 16mm film circuits in Europe (20,000 exhib- bates arose spontaneously. As we gained in exper-
ition centers in Sweden, 30,000 in France, etc.) are ience, we incorporated into the showing various ele-
not the best example for the neocolonialized coun- ments (a stage production) to reinforce the themes
tries, but they are nevertheless a complement to be of the films, the climate of the showing, the 'dis-
kept in mind for fund raising, especially in a sit-1 inh ibi ting' of the participants, and the dialogue:
uation in which such circuits can play an important recorded music or poems, sculpture and paintings,
role in publicizing the struggles in the Third posters, a program director who chaired the debate
World, increasingly related as they are to those and presented the film and the comrades who were
unfolding in the metropolis countries. A film on speaking, a glass of wine, a few mates , etc. We
the Venezuelan guerrillas will say more to a Euro- realized that we had at hand three very valuable
pean public than 20 explanatory pamphlets, and the factors :
same is true for us with a film on the May events 1) The participant comrade > the man- actor- accom-
in France or the Berkeley, USA, student struggle. plice who responded to the summons;
A Guerrilla Films International? And why not? 2) The free space where that man expressed his
Isn't it true that a kind of new International is concerns and ideas, became politicized, and started
arising through the Third World struggles;tothrough free himself; and
OSPAAAL and the revolutionary vanguards of the 3) The
con-film, important only as a detonator or
sumer societies. pretext .
A guerrilla cinema, at this stage still within We concluded from these data that a film could be
the reach of limited layers of the population, is, much more effective if it were fully aware of these
nevertheless, the only cinema of the masses possible factors and took on the task of subordinating its
today j since it is the only one involved with the own form, structure, language, and propositions to
interests, aspirations, and prospects of the vast that act and to those actors --to put it another
majority of the people. Every important film pro- way, if it sought its own liberation in the subord-
duced by a revolutionary cinema will be, explicit ination and insertion in the others , the principal
or not, a national event of the masses . protagonists of life . With the correct utilization
This cinema of the masses , which is prevented of the time that that group of actor-personages
from reaching beyond the sectors representing the offered us with their diverse histories, the use of
masses, provokes with each showing, as in a revo- the space offered by certain comrades, and of the
lutionary military incursion, a liberated space, a films themselves, it was necessary to try to trans-
decolonized territory. The showing can be turned form time3 energy s and work into freedom-giving
into a kind of political event, which, according to energy . In this way the idea began to grow of
Fanon, could be "a liturgical act, a privileged structuring what we decided to call the film act,
occasion for human beings to hear and be heard." the film action , one of the forms which we believe
Militant cinema must be able to extract the in- assumes great importance in affirming the line of a
finity of new possibilities that open up for third cinema. A cinema whose first experiment is to
it from
the conditions of proscription imposed by the Sys- be found, perhaps on a rather shaky level, in the
tem. The attempt to overcome neocolonial oppression second and third parts of LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS
calls for the invention of forms of communication; ("Acto para la liberación" ; above all, starting with
it opens up the possibility . "La resistencia" and "Violencia y liberación") .
9

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 on those who organize it, on those who participate
in it, and on the time and place; the possibility of
introducing variations, additions, and changes is
unlimited. The screening of a film act will always
express in one way or another the historical situ-
ation in which it takes place; its perspectives are
not exhausted in the struggle for power but will in-
stead continue after the taking of power to streng-
then the revolution.
The man of the third cinema , be it guerrilla
cinema or a film act , with the infinite categories
that they contain (film letter, film poem, film
essay, film pamphlet, film report, etc.), above all
counters the film industry of a cinema of characters
with one of themes, that of individuals with that of
hour of the furnaces
masses, that of the author with that of the oper-
Comrades [we said at the start of "Acto para La
ative group, one of neocolonial misinformation with
liberación" ] , this is not just a film showing,
one of information, one of escape with one that re-
nor is it a show; rather, it is, above all, A
captures the truth, that of passivity with that of
MEETING - an act of anti-imperialist unity;
aggressions. To an institutionalized cinema, he
this is a place only for those who feel iden-
counterposes a guerrilla cinema; to movies as shows,
tified with this struggle, because here there
he opposes a film act or action; to a cinema of de-
is no room for spectators or for accomplices of
struction, one that is both destructive and construc-
the enemy; here there is room only for the tive; to a cinema made for the old kind of human
authors and protagonists of the process to which
being, for them, he opposes a cinema fit for a new
the film attempts to bear witness and to deepen.
kind of human being , for what each one of us has
The film is the pretext for dialogue, for the
seeking and finding of wills . It is a report
the possibility of becoming .
The decolonization of the filmmaker and of films
that we place before you for your consideration, will be simultaneous acts to the extent that each
to be debated after the showing. contributes to collective decolonization. The
The conclusions [we said at another point in battle begins without, against the enemy who attacks
the second part] to which you may arrive as the us, but also within, against the ideas and models of
real authors and protagonists of this history the enemy to be found inside each one of us. De-
are important. The experiences and conclusions struction and construction. Decolonizing action
that we have assembled have a relative worth; rescues with its practice the purest and most vital
they are of use to the extent that they are use- impulses. It opposes to the colonialization of
ful to you, who are the present and future of minds the revolution of consciousness. The world is
liberation. But most important of all is the scrutinized, unraveled, rediscovered. People are
action that may arise from these conclusions, witness to a constant astonishment, a kind of second
the unity on the basis of the facts. This is birth. They recover their early ingenuity, their
why the film stops here; it opens out to you so capacity for adventure; their lethargic capacity
•that you can continue it. for indignation comes to life.
Freeing a forbidden truth means setting free the
The film act means an open-ended film; it is possibility of indignation and subversion. Our
essentially a way of learning. truth, that of the new mail who builds himself by
getting rid of all the defects that still weigh him
The first step in the process of knowledge is down, is a bomb of inexhaustible power and, at the
the first contact with the things of the outside
same time, the only real possibility of life .
world, the stage of sensations [.in a film , the Within this attempt, the revolutionary filmmaker
living fresco of image and sound ]. The second ventures with his subversive observation , sensibil-
step is the synthesizing of the data provided ity, imagination, and realization . The great themes
by the sensations; their ordering and elabor- -- the history of the country, love and unlove be-
ation; the stage of concepts, judgements,
tween combatants, the efforts of a people that
opinions, and deductions [ in the film , the awakens -- all this is reborn before the lens of the
announcer, the reportingSj the didactics , or decolonized camera. The filmmaker feels free for
the narrator who leads the projection act~'. the first time. He discovers that, within the Sys-
And then comes the third stage, that of know-
tem, nothing fits, while outside of and against the
ledge. The active role of knowledge is ex- System, everything fits, because everything remains
pressed not only in the active leap from to be done . What appeared yesterday as a preposter-
sensory to rational knowledge, but, and what ous adventure, as we said at the beginning, is posed
is even more «important, in the leap from today as an inescapable need and possibility .
rational knowledge to revolutionary practice.
Thus far, we have offered ideas and working prop-
...The practice of the transformation of the
world... This, in general terms, is the dia-
ositions, which are the sketch of a hypothesis
lectical materialist theory of the unity of arising from our personal experience and which will
knowledge and action. 16 lin the projection have achieved something positive even if they do no
more than serve to open a heated dialogue on the new
of the film act, the participation of the
comrades , the action proposals that arise , and revolutionary film prospects. The vacuums existing
in the artistic and scientific fronts of the revo-
the actions themselves that will take place
later ] . lution are sufficiently well known so that the ad-
versary will not try to appropriate them, while we
Moreover, each projection of a film act pre- are still unable to do so.
supposes a different setting , since the space where Why films and not some other form of artistic
it takes place, the materials that go to make it up communication? If we choose films as the center of
(actors -participants) , and the historic time in our propositions and debate, it is because that is
which it takes place are never the same. This means our work front and because the birth of a third
that the result of each projection act will depend cinema means, at least for us, the most important
(16) Mao Tse-tung, op. cit. revolutionary artistic event of our times.
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