Cast: Adolfo Llauradó, José Rodríguez, Idalia Anreus
Director: Manuel Octavio Gómez
Country: Cuba
Genre: Drama
Editor’s Notes: “Third Cinema” was sociopolitical film movement deriving from third world nations during the 1960s and 70s.
“Towards a Third Cinema” was the title of the manifesto published in 1969 in the cinema journal Tricontinental by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. The journal was started by the OSPAAAL, or Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Solanas and Getino were members of Grupo Cine Liberación; the Argentina arm of the broader movement. This manifesto might be seen as the solidification of the OSPAAAL’s ideas into a recognizable front in the world of film.
“First Cinema”, as described by Solanas and Getino, is the Hollywood production that promotes bourgeois values via escapist entertainment that invites no real participation from the audience. “Second Cinema” was the European art film that defied Hollywood convention, but was nonetheless tied down to the auteurist movement, relegating responsibility to a single artist. “Third Cinema” would be the opposite of both of these models: a cinema born of revolutionary principles belonging to a collective conceived to spread the truth of (sometimes surreptitious) colonial oppression, the struggles of the marginalized and the need for national dialogue.
Made in 1968 in celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the Ten Years’ War, the first step in the battle for independence from Spain, Gómez’s highly stylized film brandishes the machete as a symbol of national integrity and strength; a tool native to the Cuban people used in the fight against Spanish soldiers.
The First Charge of the Machete would be released on the very precipice of this manifesto’s publication; seemingly a serendipitous occasion. Made in 1968 in celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the Ten Years’ War, the first step in the battle for independence from Spain, Gómez’s highly stylized film brandishes the machete as a symbol of national integrity and strength; a tool native to the Cuban people used in the fight against Spanish soldiers. It stands as a monument to their independence. Before being taken up as a tool of rebellion, it was merely the standard tool of the farmer; something one grew accustomed to using even at a very young age, making it a distinctly Cuban fixture and distinguishing the Cuban people in battle against their sword-wielding Spanish counterparts.
In action, the film plays out like an historic documentation. A dramatized guerrilla-style handheld recording of the initial events of the Ten Years’ War with the eye of hindsight fixed on the opinions and actions of the Cuban and Spanish peoples of 1868. In this way, it plays much more like Matt Reeves’ sci-fi thriller Cloverfield than your standard war film. The camera’s presence is known, despite being anachronistic in the setting, and the “director” creates the narrative as he goes along, prodding individuals in both armies as well as everyday citizens for their opinion on what’s occurring, whether the Cubans can or will win and whether or not the machete can be used as an effective weapon against the more sophisticated equipment of the Spanish army.
I’d hesitate to imply Gomez was lacking in self-awareness. Near the beginning, a man decries the use of censorship by the Spanish government, and sprinkled throughout are indignant characters expressing frustration with things Cubans post-independence have been dealing with for as long as anyone can remember, including the pervasive censorship policies.
Deliberately aged and shown in almost entirely very high contrast black and white, with a few brief exceptions, it’s granted its authenticity in its authorial imprint alluded hitherto and its allegiance to the movement in its adherence to the principles laid out by Solanas and Getino as guidelines, both philosophical and technical. Though one may initially be pre-disposed to writing this one off as little more than propaganda with some neat dressing, I’d hesitate to imply Gomez was lacking in self-awareness. Near the beginning, a man decries the use of censorship by the Spanish government, and sprinkled throughout are indignant characters expressing frustration with things Cubans post-independence have been dealing with for as long as anyone can remember, including the pervasive censorship policies. Gomez may have cleverly snuck a Trojan horse of dissent through Cuban censors. I’ll end this with a quote from Solanas and Getino’s manifesto:
“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 masses, that of the author with that of the operative group, one of neocolonial misinformation with one of information, one of escape with one that recaptures the truth, that of passivity with that of aggressions. To an institutionalised cinema, it counterposes a guerrilla cinema; to movies as shows, it opposes a film act or action; to a cinema of destruction, one that is both destructive and constructive; to a cinema made for the old kind of human being, for them, it opposes a cinema fit for a new kind of human being, for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming.”
[notification type=”star”]70/100 ~ GOOD. Deliberately aged and shown in almost entirely very high contrast black and white, with a few brief exceptions, it’s granted its authenticity in its authorial imprint alluded hitherto and its allegiance to the movement in its adherence to the principles laid out by Solanas and Getino as guidelines, both philosophical and technical. [/notification]
