What is Third World Cinema? Third world Cinema is a project that has guided filmmakers through the regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Third World cinema involves factors such as economic, cultural, and social. Third world cinema expresses issues, problems and emotions that no other cinema expresses. Third World cinema makes you become critical viewers. The book “Third World Film Making and the West”, talks about Frantz Fanon a writer whose work relate to third world cinema. Frantz Fanon illustrated three stages of national cultural. The three stages are, “The Native,” “The Native Disturbed,” and “The Fighting Phase.” The following paragraphs would have a brief description of the Third World films “Xala” and “Black Girl,” and a discussion on how Frantz Fanon’s stages of national cultural relate to these Third World Films.
“Xala” is a Third World film about an African American man named Hadji. Hadji is the representation of the “Black elite”. This man was an old traditional man with three wives. Each wife had different characteristics, but they were all strong women. Hadji became a “Black elite” that separated from the values of his culture and assimilated to the French culture. Hadji became a victim of a curse. He first taught it was his second wife that cursed him, because she was jealous that he got married a third time. In reality, it was a poor blind man that cursed him. Hadji started to lose the power he had. When he started to lose what he taught was important, he realized that he had to gain back his culture because that was more important. Hadji’s curse was broken once he connected back to his culture and paid for the way he mistreated the beggars.
“Black Girl” is a Third World Film about a young wom...
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...lustrated how both Hadji and Diouna have an attraction to the European power and they leave their culture behind and start to assimilate to the new culture. In the second stage, “The Native Disturbed,” they realized that they had been idealizing something that is not a part of them, and they try to connect back to their traditional culture. Furthermore, in the third stage “The fighting phase,” both Hadji and Diouna awaken from their idealizations, but they had different coping mechanism to unite back to their culture and people’s struggles. These third world films involved and expressed economic, cultural and social issues that were related to Frantz Fanon’s stages of national culture.
Works Cited
Armos, Roy. (1987) Third World Film Making and the West. University of California Press.
Sembene, Ousmane. (1966). “Black Girl.”
Sembene, Ousmane. (1975). “Xala.”
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