I need someone who watched Lucía(1968,Dir. Humberto Solás) before

and notes on Lucia

 A manifesto

published in 1969 by

two Argentinean film

directors, which calls

for a revolutionary

cinema.

 They formed El Grupo Cine Liberacion,

which produced La Hora de los Hornos

and promoted the concept of Third

Cinema.

 Solanas and Getino directed the film La

Hora de Los Hornos (Hour of the

Furnaces, 1968)

 An “epic” documentary about the

effects of colonialism and

neocolonialism, and the need for a

revolution, in Latin America.

 Gave audiences their first glimpse

at Latin American revolutionaries

such as Ernesto “Che” Guevara

 Under “the system” (of imperialist capitalism or neocolonialism) film is a commodity • a spectacle and consumer good sold for

entertainment

• The political economy of film is such that it only satisfies “the ideological and economic interests of the owners of the film industry,” the majority of whom are in the U.S.

 Under these conditions, how can one create a cinema of liberation?

 Contemporary revolutionary movements at the time (1960s) in Cuba, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world, offer not only inspiration, but present models of leftist documentarians and film groups that challenge the status quo.

Solanas and Getino: • “The anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of

the Third World and of their equivalents inside the imperialist countries constitutes today the axis of the world revolution. Third cinema is, in our opinion, the cinema that recognizes in that struggle the most gigantic, cultural, scientific, and artistic manifestation of our time, the great possibility of creating a liberated personality with each people as a starting point – in a word, the decolonization of culture.”

 Solanas and Getino analyze and critique the upper classes and bourgeoisie of the Third World with regards to how they maintain the neocolonial order of the imperialist countries.

 They recognize and critique the notion of “art for art’s sake” (focusing simply on beauty and upholding the status of the elite) in favor of “art as serving a social function” (politics and liberation for the masses).

 They understand that art and culture in a given society can function toward upholding the status quo, especially when the structures of the given film industry are the neocolonial instruments of imperialist nations such as the U.S.

 Thus, a new film language is needed that challenges the status quo mentality of art and culture with its commercial interests and the perception of the spectator as merely “a passive and consuming object.”

 First Cinema • Hollywood; the studio system  But, according to Solanas and Getino, first cinema perpetuates “Man

as consumer of ideology…not the maker of ideology…the image of reality as it is conceived by the ruling classes.”

 Second Cinema • Author Cinema  cinema as the personal artistic expression of the individual

 An attempt at an alternative form of self-expression, but limited by the commercial demands of the system.

 Third Cinema • A cinema of liberation  “making films that the system cannot assimilate and which are

foreign to its needs”

• “making films that directly and explicitly set out to fight the system”

Making third cinema entails • Making films that raise the consciousness of the

audience and mobilizes them for revolution and

liberation.

 documentaries

 guerilla filmmaking

• Conceiving of a different type of filmmaking

using a variety of approaches and formats

• Conceiving of a different type of distribution and

exhibition

Cuba

 considered a classic of Cuban cinema along with Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)

 produced by the ICAIC • Instituto Cubano de Arte e

Industria Cinematograficos ; Cuba’s state film institute

• conceived by the ICAIC as an epic that would compete with the Hollywood epics that were previously distributed on the island

 To what extent does the film play upon certain genres and audience expectations (see later slide)

 A character named Lucia links the three historical periods and stories in the film, each of which also has a different style

• melodramatic romance

• social realism

• situation comedy  The film presents

different Cuban women as a part of history, but what is Barbara Weinstein’s critique?

 Is Lucia “Third Cinema?”

Lucia I

• The War for Independence of 1895  the rebellion against Spanish colonialism

 The “Victorian Age” of Cuba

 very conservative social values

 Lucia is an unmarried spinster in her 30s; falls in

love for the first time, but at what cost to her

family and the struggle for Cuban independence

 Fernandina = the horrors of colonialism

The “Failed” Revolution of 1932-33  the uprising against the regime of Gerardo

Machado

 the revolution succeeds, but then fails to meet the

ideals of the revolutionaries

 Cuban society in the 1930s; influenced by the

Roaring 20s and Prohibition Era in the U.S.

 Lucia is a teenager from a dysfunctional middle

class family; she falls in love with Aldo, a

revolutionary

• The Literacy Campaign of the Social Revolution, 196…  depicts rural society under the socialist-

communist regime of Fidel Castro

 the Cuban state’s efforts to educate the empowered peasantry of the countryside

 The people are liberated, but what about the legacy of patriarchy?

 Lucia is a newlywed rural peasant and a mulatto  She is uneducated at first, but then becomes literate

and develops her consciousness of gender roles and her rights as a woman.