1. WHAT IS CINEMA? CRITICAL APPROACHES Postcolonialism I

2. Lecture structure 1.Is film (theory) racist? 2. Early approaches to race, ethnicity and colonialism 3. The ‘third eye’ 4. Third cinema

5. 1. Is film (theory) racist? Race: a social invention based primarily on physical criteria Ethnicity: a social invention based primarily on cultural criteria

7. 2. Early approaches to race, ethnicity & colonialism

8. ‘Since the beginnings of the cinema coincided with the height of European imperialism, it is hardly surprising that European cinema portrayed the colonised in an unflattering light. […] Hundreds of Hollywood westerns turned history on its head by making the Native Americans appear to be intruders on what was originally their land, and provided a paradigmatic perspective through which to view the whole of the non-white world.’ (Stam and Spence, ‘Colonialism, Racism and Representation’)

9. Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948) Oliver Twist (Roman Polanski, 2005) ‘Stereotype analysis’ Eg Lester Friedman’s Hollywood’s Image of the Jew (1982)

11. ‘The exclusive preoccupation with images, however, whether positive or negative, can lead both to the privileging of characterological concerns and also to a kind of essentialism, as the critic reduces a complex diversity of portrayals to a limited set of reified stereotypes’ (Stam and Spence, ‘Colonialism, Racism and Representation’)

12. Stam and Spence argue that we should also consider narrative structure, genre conventions, film style and spectator positioning. Similarities with Mulvey’s feminist approach and attention to form.

15. How much space do the representatives of different social groups occupy in the shot? Are they seen in close-ups or only in distant long shots? How often do they appear compared with Euro-American characters and for how long? Are they allowed to relate to one another, or do they always require mainstream ‘mediation’? Are they active, desiring characters or decorative props? Do the eyeline matches identify us with one gaze rather than another? Whose looks are reciprocated, whose ignored? How do character positionings communicate social distance or difference in status? How do body language, posture and facial expression communicate social hierarchies, arrogance, servility, resentment, pride? Is there an aesthetic segregation whereby one group is haloed and the other villainised? ( Ella Shoat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994), p. 208 )

16. 3. The ‘third eye’ King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, 1933) Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)

17. ‘I cannot go to a film without seeing myself… [A black male viewer] identifies himself with the explorer, the bringer of civilization, the white man who carries truth to the savages – an all-white truth.’ (Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 1952, qu. Tobing Rony, p. 5) ‘With another eye I see how I am pictured as a landscape, a museum display, an ethnographic spectacle, an exotic’ (Tobing Rony, p. 17)

18. Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (Tracey Moffat, Australia, 1990)

19. 4. Third cinema Term ‘Third Cinema’ proposed by Argentinean filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in late 1960s. First cinema: dominant means of representation (Hollywood) Second cinema: western art (auteurist) cinema Third cinema: a politicised mode of filmmaking which aims to deconstruct the (ideologically laden) conventions of first and second cinema.

20. The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, 1968)

21. The Battle of Algiers (1966) Gillo Pontecorvo (on right) Saadi Yacef (second from left) The Battle of Algiers is often seen as an example of Third Cinema, not only due to its critique of colonialism, but also because it shows race (as well as gender) to be an ideological construction.

22. How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film. (Flyer for screening of The Battle of Algiers. The Pentagon, 2003.)