Third world film: the particular and the global

Radical Teacher, Winter, 2001 by Linda Dittmar

a) Youssef Chaheeds Alexandria Why? (Egypt) and Mouffida Tiatli's Silences of the Palace juxtapose panoramic and domestic representations. Bertochelli's Ramparts of Clay (Algeria/France) supplements them with its focus on a Berber woman and village uprising. All stress historic contexts and a move towards modern statehood. (Ditto The Scent of Green Papaya, which explores class and gender in the domestic sphere at the twilight of French colonialism in Viemam.)

b) Mohsen Makhmalbaf's The Peddler and Jafar Panahi's The Circle reveal contrasting renditions of Iranian realities. While they address internal matters, not colonizing influences, their inward perspective speaks obliquely to Iran's self-definition in relation to local and external historic forces. Like The Circle, Yilmaz Gunei's Yol (Turkey) also critiques internal repression as part of modern nation formation in his country.

c) Two Lebanese films to consider are Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut and Jocelyne Saab's Once Upon a Time in Beirut.

Weeks 13-14: Diasporic Cinemas. This challenge to a stable notion of "third world" reviews the founding definition of "third world" film within local and global contexts. It can also be blended into the preceding "special interest" section or otherwise reorganized to allow for a fuller exploration of the third world presence within the first world, and the role exilic cinemas play in the construction of contemporary globalism. This emphasis may be of special significance to first world students.

Note: Several films listed above (eg. Sambizanga, Ramparts of Clay, and The Battle of Algiers) already brought up questions about transnational co-productions and the notion of a "pure" third world film. The very concept of a "third world" is challenged by diasporic films such as Med Hondo's Soleil O (France), work by the Sankofa Collective (Afro-Caribbean/UK), Negosia Onwurah's The Body Beautiful (UK/Nigeria), and Frances NegronMuntana's Brincando El Caro (US/Puerto Rico). These films extend the notion of economic and often race-based dispossession from the third into the first world. Haile Gerima's Harvest, 3000 Years (Ethiopia/USA) and Raul Peck's Lumumba (Haiti/Congo/Belgium) are two examples of films which benefit from first world support, made by diasporic directors, about third world subject matter. Formally experimental within the latest post-modern definitions of "high art," Mona Hatoum's Measures of Distance (Lebanon/UK), Tracy Moffat's Night Cries (Australia), Shirin Neshat's videos (Iran/ Morocco /US), and Issac Julien's Looking for Langston illustrate ways exilic film and video can cross over from its third world pigeonhole into the establishment.

NOTES:

(1.) Arjun Appadurai distinguishes usefully between globalization from below, which relies on "strategies, visions, and horizons for globalization on behalf of the poor," and the globalization from above which has drawn protest and debate. "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination." Public Culture 30 (Winter 2000); Globalization pp. 1-19. The Family of Man was published in 1955.