Nicola Marzano: The Art of Hunger -- Re-Defining Third Cinema

The Art of Hunger: Re-Defining Third Cinema
by NICOLA MARZANO
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This article tries to address established notions of Third Cinema theory and its filmmakers from developing and post-colonial nations. The Third Cinema movement called for a politicized
film-making practice in Africa, Asia and Latin America, since its first appearance during the 60’s and 70’s, taking on board issues of race, class, religion, and national integrity.

The films investigated in this paper, from directors like Sembène, Getino, Solanas and Guzman, are amongst the most culturally significant and politically sophisticated from this movement and denote the adoption of an independent, often oppositional, stance towards
commercial genres and mainstream cinema.

Third Cinema has posed – and continues to pose – difficult and challenging questions. These questions, then, are crucial to this article, an article that focuses on Third Cinema in an inclusive fashion, studying films from Argentina, Chile, Senegal, and even England. Suggesting new methodologies and subtle refinements of existing ones, this article aims at rereading the entire phenomenon of film-making in a fast-vanishing 'Third World'.

Coming to terms with Third Cinema

There is an endless debate about Third Cinema and its strategies in offering valuable tools for documenting social reality. From the 70’s onwards, appreciation of its value and aesthetics has been unfolded through controversial approaches and different views on this radical form of cinema.

The idea of Third Cinema was conceived in the 1960s as a set of radical manifestos and low-budget experimental movies by a group of Latin American filmmakers, who defined a ’cinema of opposition’ to Hollywood and European models. Possibly, this new form of expression came from three different areas of the world: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At the time these three zones were labelled ‘Third World’ (sometimes they, or at least some of them, still are).

Even though scholars like Willemen explained how the notion of Third Cinema was most emphatically not Third World Cinema, these two concepts have often been confused either intentionally or accidentally (Willemen 1991: 3).

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J.M. Bernstein: The Very Angry Tea Party

The Very Angry Tea Party
By J.M. BERNSTEIN
The New York Times

...

Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one’s very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions. The opposing metaphysical claim, the one I take to be true, is that the very idea of the autonomous subject is an institution, an artifact created by the practices of modern life: the intimate family, the market economy, the liberal state. Each of these social arrangements articulate and express the value and the authority of the individual; they give to the individual a standing she would not have without them.

Rather than participating in arranged marriages, as modern subjects we follow our hearts, choose our beloved, decide for ourselves who may or may not have access to our bodies, and freely take vows promising fidelity and loyalty until death (or divorce) do us part. There are lots of ways property can be held and distributed — as hysterical Tea Party incriminations of creeping socialism and communism remind us; we moderns have opted for a system of private ownership in which we can acquire, use and dispose of property as we see fit, and even workers are presumed to be self-owning, selling their labor time and labor power to whom they wish (when they can). And as modern citizens we presume the government is answerable to us, governs only with our consent, our dependence on it a matter of detached, reflective endorsement; and further, that we intrinsically possess a battery of moral rights that say we can be bound to no institution unless we possess the rights of “voice and exit.”

If stated in enough detail, all these institutions and practices should be seen as together manufacturing, and even inventing, the idea of a sovereign individual who becomes, through them and by virtue of them, the ultimate source of authority. The American version of these practices has, from the earliest days of the republic, made individuality autochthonous while suppressing to the point of disappearance the manifold ways that individuality is beholden to a complex and uniquely modern form of life.

Of course, if you are a libertarian or even a certain kind of liberal, you will object that these practices do not manufacture anything; they simply give individuality its due. The issue here is a central one in modern philosophy: is individual autonomy an irreducible metaphysical given or a social creation? Descartes famously argued that self or subject, the “I think,” was metaphysically basic, while Hegel argued that we only become self-determining agents through being recognized as such by others who we recognize in turn. It is by recognizing one another as autonomous subjects through the institutions of family, civil society and the state that we become such subjects; those practices are how we recognize and so bestow on one another the title and powers of being free individuals.

All the heavy lifting in Hegel’s account turns on revealing how human subjectivity only emerges through intersubjective relations, and hence how practices of independence, of freedom and autonomy, are held in place and made possible by complementary structures of dependence. At one point in his “Philosophy of Right,” Hegel suggests love or friendship as models of freedom through recognition. In love I regard you as of such value and importance that I spontaneously set aside my egoistic desires and interests and align them with yours: your ends are my desires, I desire that you flourish, and when you flourish I do, too. In love, I experience you not as a limit or restriction on my freedom, but as what makes it possible: I can only be truly free and so truly independent in being harmoniously joined with you; we each recognize the other as endowing our life with meaning and value, with living freedom. Hegel’s phrase for this felicitous state is “to be with oneself in the other.”

Hegel’s thesis is that all social life is structurally akin to the conditions of love and friendship; we are all bound to one another as firmly as lovers are, with the terrible reminder that the ways of love are harsh, unpredictable and changeable. And here is the source of the great anger: because you are the source of my being, when our love goes bad I am suddenly, absolutely dependent on someone for whom I no longer count and who I no longer know how to count; I am exposed, vulnerable, needy, unanchored and without resource. In fury, I lash out, I deny that you are my end and my satisfaction, in rage I claim that I can manage without you, that I can be a full person, free and self-moving, without you. I am everything and you are nothing.

This is the rage and anger I hear in the Tea Party movement; it is the sound of jilted lovers furious that the other — the anonymous blob called simply “government” — has suddenly let them down, suddenly made clear that they are dependent and limited beings, suddenly revealed them as vulnerable. And just as in love, the one-sided reminder of dependence is experienced as an injury. All the rhetoric of self-sufficiency, all the grand talk of wanting to be left alone is just the hollow insistence of the bereft lover that she can and will survive without her beloved. However, in political life, unlike love, there are no second marriages; we have only the one partner, and although we can rework our relationship, nothing can remove the actuality of dependence. That is permanent.

In politics, the idea of divorce is the idea of revolution. The Tea Party rhetoric of taking back the country is no accident: since they repudiate the conditions of dependency that have made their and our lives possible, they can only imagine freedom as a new beginning, starting from scratch. About this imaginary, Mark Lilla was right: it corresponds to no political vision, no political reality. The great and inspiring metaphysical fantasy of independence and freedom is simply a fantasy of destruction.

In truth, there is nothing that the Tea Party movement wants; terrifyingly, it wants nothing. Lilla calls the Tea Party “Jacobins”; I would urge that they are nihilists. To date, the Tea Party has committed only the minor, almost atmospheric violences of propagating falsehoods, calumny and the disruption of the occasions for political speech — the last already to great and distorting effect. But if their nihilistic rage is deprived of interrupting political meetings as an outlet, where might it now go? With such rage driving the Tea Party, might we anticipate this atmospheric violence becoming actual violence, becoming what Hegel called, referring to the original Jacobins’ fantasy of total freedom, “a fury of destruction”? There is indeed something not just disturbing, but frightening, in the anger of the Tea Party.

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Support the Dream Act Legislation

Hello all,

Please take a few minutes to read this carefully and reflect upon what is being asked of our group and of you for the next 6 weeks.

National Updates

As we get closer to making the DREAM act a reality, many efforts have been made across the country to show our communities and our legislators the importance of the DREAM Act. Students including our very own Kentucky DREAM Coalition have sacrficed a lot to get to this point and it is making a big impact. Many of us went hungry for 65 hours here in Kentucky and NY will soon follow, students in California protested and took to the streets, rallies and vigils have been held in MI and are being planned for MA and MT, students all over the state of FL are planning sit-ins, students in TX held a DREAM graduation and as you know, 4 amazing student leaders risked life as they know it and are facing deportation after they held a sit-in in Senator McCain's office last week. Since then, United We DREAM representatives and their student affiliates have met with many Senators and Congressman in Washington D.C. urging for DREAM to be passed this year.

Kentucky as a Key State

Which leads me to the next point. Kentucky is now in the middle of a major organizing push in which Senator Bunning has become a major target for the DREAM Campaign. Senator Schumer (NY-D) who has been championing CIR in the Senate has expressed concern that as of Memorial Day, CIR will more than likely be "dead" this year because of the lack of Republican support. With that in mind, Senator Schumer expressed great interest in the fact that the DREAM movement had a relationship with Senator Bunning and sees him as a target Republican. If we are able to get Senator Bunning's support, then support from other conservative republicans like Senator Brown of Massachusetts and Senator Snow and Senator Collins of Maine will follow through. Metaphorically speaking Senator Bunning could potentially be the lead domino initiating other Republican support WHEN we are able to get him on board with DREAM.

Yes, you read this right... Kentucky is a key focus state and Senator Bunning will be a major target for us as we move forward. This is not going to be easy, but it is possible. If we stay focused on the end cause: Making DREAM a Reality and taking each step forward with love and respect and each step with unshakeable passion we will celebrate the victory of a DREAM fulfilled.

Next Steps

Each and every person reading this email needs to make great efforts to making DREAM a reality as if your life depended on it. For many of us, our lives do depend on this legislation and we must all work hard together as one voice to encourage and persuade Senator Bunning to listen and take on our cause. I am convinced that if we do work hard and believe in ourselves and our work, we will acheive victory, so I ask you to put away any fears or negative thoughts. Put away your doubts and your preconceived opinions of Senator Bunning and our communities. Begin to see what I see; a new day in which Kentucky will embrace this cause. Our passion will be contagious and our hope for a better tomorrow and for access to full opportunities will inspire even our critics. WE have accomplished so much thus far; we have changed the culture of Kentucky through the college fairs, leadership camps, fundraisers, workshops, art, poetry and community events. We have starved, we have sacrficed time with family and friends, we have burned up the highways between Kentucky and Washington D.C. and we can gain the support of Senator Bunning.

Please recommit to this cause. As one strong solid voice we can make a difference that will change lives of many students in Kentucky and across the United States.

What can you do?

1. Petitions: http://www.facebook.com/l/7016b;action.dreamactivist.org/petition/bunning/

Please share this petition link with EVERYONE you know. Put it as your FACEBOOK status, send it to all your friends and family and fill it out everyday! It only takes 5 seconds. DO IT!

2. The Application DRIVE: Please email us at kydreamactivist@gmail.com for a file that contains the cover letters and generic applications we must use to target Senator Bunning. Please read the instructions and please work with student, educators, parents, community members and churches in your areas to fill out the ally or DREAMer letter for Senator Bunning and the application directed at Senator Bunning. We need to start flooding his offices with messages of our contributions to this state. Don't be afraid to say who you are and what you have done. It is important that our voices are added to the beautiful anthem of this cause and that we all step up and step out of the shadows of uncertainty and fear we have put ourselves in. We cannot change Kentucky if we continue to believe the lies that we do not matter and that we should live in fear and marginalization.

3. Phone Banking: CALL, CALL, CALL. Commit to calling all of Bunning's offices (and leave messages if no one answers) everyday, at least once or twice a day. That means 12 phone calls a day. The anti-immigrant side, which is small, is successful because they are relentless. They call all day everyday to let our legislators know they DO NOT want DREAM to be a reality. They do so in HATE. We can do the same thing but in LOVE. WE cannot change our opposition with hate or silence... only through love in the form of spoken words.

Bunnings Numbers are: Washington D.C: 202-224-4343; Fort Wright: 859-341-2602; Hopkinsville: 270-885-12112;
Owensboro: 270-689-9085; Louisville: 502-582-5341; Hazard: 606-435-2390

4. Meetings and Sit-Ins: We are sending a delegation of 4 students to Washington D.C. to meet with Senator Bunning's staff this Wednesday at 12 noon. We have also formally requested a meeting with Senator Bunning when he is in-district next week. I will update everyone about the meeting date and time once it is formalized. If we are not given a meeting, we will stage sit-ins in Senator Bunning's Fort Wright office until we are given one. In the event of a meeting or a peaceful sit-in, we NEED as many DREAM Supporters as possible to hold a peaceful and positive vigil outside of the office while the meetings (OR sit-ins) are taking place. Please be ready to take quick actions once we call upon you.

5. Accomplishments: We want to show how much we have contributed to this state so please send us the following informaiton and gather this information from as many of your friends and fellow students and community members as possible:
First Name:
Kentucky City:
List of Community Services, leadership roles, accomplishments/awards and military/ROTC participation:

6. BASEBALLS: We want to take buckets of baseballs to Senator Bunning. HE lived his dream of playing baseball for the Detroit Tigers. We are asking organizations, schools, communities to buy a baseball, and have as many individuals sign it in support of the DREAM Act. Once you collect the baseballs let me know (Erin at puravida.erin@gmail.com) and we will arrange for someone to pick them up.

Other actions being planned are community meetings in Lexington and an art project entitled "Secured Futures led to Secured Borders"... Stay tuned for details.

All these actions if done in dedication, with focus and in love will result in Senator Bunning's support of the DREAM Act. Even if you think this is impossible, step out on faith. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
The next Kentucky DREAM Coalition meeting will be held at BCTC on Friday at 1:00 pm in the Academic and Technical Building Lobby. A conference call number will be available. We understand that many of you are still in school and working so we ask you to let us know what you can do, what you are willing to do and how we can help you. A group of Enlace students will be heading to Bowling Green Friday afternoon to help them with their fundraiser. We are also willing to travel to your area to help organize. Please let us know if you need this help.

Please stay connected to the group and please take action. More information and updates will be sent as they come in so please take these emails seriously.

Thank you for all your hard work and your contributions to this cause. Estudiantes unidos no seran vencidos...

The DREAM is coming... What are you prepared to do to acheive your DREAM?

Humbly, Erin, Alexis, Roy and the Kentucky DREAM Coalition

Nov 20th Student Occupation of Wheeler Hall at University of California-Berkeley

(via California Knows How to Party: No Business as Usual in UC System)

Grit TV: Arundhati Roy -- Becoming Internal Security Threats

(via Truthout)

Grit TV

Novelist, activist, journalist, internal security threat? Arundhati Roy joins us for a special conversation about her journey into the forest in the heart of India to talk to Maoist revolutionaries.

Roy talks with Laura about resistance and struggle, war and colonialism, how you can't fire bullets at an ideology, and why we should all become internal security threats.