Algiers-Buenos Aires-Montréal: third worldist links in the creation of the Latin American Filmmakers Committee (1974)

Abstract

The papers and audiovisual records of the Rencontres internationales pour un nouveau cinema held in Montreal in June of 1974 provide insight into many aspects of a particular moment in international political cinema. One of the insights that emerges is the influence of a sort of "cinematic Third Worldism" on the way Latin American filmmakers in particular organized themselves- an influence that can also be seen more broadly within an extensive region of political filmmaking in the First World. Remember that during 1973-1974-the years when, according Fredric Jameson, the "long decade of the sixties" came to an end1-the Third World was highly visible in international geopolitics, as "Third Worldism" was in the focus of political filmmaking. Two events indicative of this are significant here: the Third World Filmmakers Meeting in Algiers in December 1973, whose goal was to form a committee (partially a corollary to the Fourth Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries in September of the same year); and the second meeting of that committee, held in May 1974 in Buenos Aires, that is, just a few days before the gathering in Montreal in June.2When we speak of "cinematic Third Worldism," we are referring to a sort of political-cultural-cinematic trend that was adopted (with variations) by filmmakers and groups from different countries. In each national case (or even within each group), this trend often coexisted and was articulated with others (like Latin Americanism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Guevarism, Maoism, etc.), whose variations had extended to political cinema around the Third World and whose influence also extended to international political filmmaking. Cinematic Third Worldism was highly emphasized during the Montreal gathering, one of the most representative events of those years due to the quantity and quality of global political cinema groups present at the meeting.In the years previous, the films and political cinema documents of Latin Americans, Arabs, and Africans had forged an important niche for themselves in the film and political scene in Quebec. This could be seen, for example, in the way the journal Cinema Quebec promoted the writing of Andre Pâquet (and others) on Third Worldist cinemas, which he had encountered at different festivals (Berlin, Carthage, Leipzig, Mannheim, Pesaro, etc.). Several aspects of Third Worldism were emphasized in various issues of the journal as parallel with conditions of local cinema: an explicit outline of what problems they had in common, such as the "colonial" issue.3 In a dossier about African cinemas in Arabic, for example, Tahar Cheriaa (the founder and director of the Carthage Film Festival in 1966, the first dedicated to Arabic and African film) had justified the long-term solidarity and converging interests between Quebecois and African cinema, as both had suffered "the same conditions of foreign domination" and were in "the same situation of underdevelopment and economic dependence" (beyond the obvious differences in Quebec's favour, of course).4 Just after the conference, Fernand Dansereau made reference to the "colonial" nature of Quebec film,5 an interpretation that was adopted to a certain extent by the Comite d'action cinematographique (CAC), organizer of the Rencontres. Some months later, when many of CAC's members debated who should control Quebec film (as film institutions and laws related to the industry were being challenged), Pâquet drafted a long document whose very title evoked a deep national problem: "Pour une decolonisation du cinema quebecois."6 Adopting a program similar to that which had been debated a year earlier at the Montreal conference, the paper situated Quebec as one of the so-called "small countries" (like those of northern Europe) and stated that it had to defend its cultural/film production against domination by large international companies in the industry as well as the Canadian government.From the very invitation to the Montreal conference, the strong influence of Third Worldism on the project is evident. …