Trans Allegory in Film (an overview)

 

 

 Blue or red? Status quo or revolution? Will you take the blue pill and remain static, complacent, ignorant, or will you…

Wake up.

Everyone knows The Matrix. It’s a great film and, among other things, an allegory for accepting one’s gender identity. It’s also about finding a revolutionary community to fight capitalist hegemony, but the gender thing’s there. That shouldn’t be controversial; it’s confirmed by the directors that it was at least part of the story. And yet… people still insist on using the language of the film to support their reactionary ideologies. Take the red pill and wake up, man. But don’t wake up too much or you’ll get… woke? I guess? Whatever, this is old news. If you want to watch a detailed breakdown of the trans theming of The Matrix, just watch Aranock’s video. 


But if The Matrix may or may not be an allegory for the transgender experience, what other movies can we infect with our transgender symbology? What other works of art can I pry from big, manly cis hands and reappropriate to suit my woke agenda?

Anyone can interpret just about anything as just about anything. That is to say, thematic readings of texts (I’m including films in “texts” here) are as infinite as they are subjective. However, I fall somewhere in between the “death of the author” and “authorial intent” camps. So I feel the need to acknowledge here that there is no evidence to suggest that some of the films I will talk about were at all intended as trans allegory. Over the course of decades, especially with the proliferation of fan-fiction, the tides have changed. The public is largely in favor of interpreting shit however the hell you want to. (Rodney Copperbottom from Robots is a trans guy–change my mind). So that’s what I will do here. Not without evidence, of course.

To those contrary Marys who say stuff like “it’s not that deep” or “why does everything have to be ‘political’ (as if existing while trans is ‘political’)” or those who would tell me that I’m “reaching”... Here is my response to you:

But what if it is that deep. Why can’t it be? Finding solace or even simple commonality in the stories that mean something to you is an important part of being human. I am worried that (especially with actual literacy rates plummeting in the US) media literacy will become a lost art. When we cease to meaningfully engage with what we watch, are we any different than a Coco-melon rotted toddler whose brain is slowly shutting down all frontal lobe activity? #FoodforThought.

So, let’s get into the meat of things. What even is transgender allegory in film?

Well, first we have to define literal transgender representations in film.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TRANS FILM

Trans themes and characters are rarer to find in film than I initially anticipated when I set out on this research quest. You kind of have to dig for things. I feel this makes sense given how small the trans population is and the oppression and repression which it faces. It is not something one can just talk openly about all the time, especially in the past– this is where allegory comes in…

But, when you look, you can find portrayals of gender transgressive behavior from the very advent of film. You can see the Digital Transgender Archive for some early clips. In referring to “trans” film history, I am not trying to anachronistically map a modern identity onto the past, rather, I am trying to use “trans” in an expansive way that includes a whole host of identities and behaviors. It is disingenuous in my opinion to split hairs too much, to try to disentangle “homosexual” from “transgender” themes, especially in early cinema wherein, according to Vito Russo (you know, the gay film scholar that James Summerton stole his entire steez from), “homosexuality emerged onscreen… as an unseen danger, a reflection of our fears about the perils of tampering with male and female roles”. 

Historian Laura Horak has been foundational to my research here. They have done a great deal of the scholarly work available on this topic. To me, Horak is building on the work of Vito Russo (author of The Celluloid Closet). According to both Russo and Horak, in the early 1900s, trans-gender phenomena in film were a translation of their stage iteration, a form of entertainment, similar to minstrelsy. Russo writes in his first chapter about the prominence of transvestism in silent comedy, commenting on the obviously sexist origin of the “sissy” archetype (feminine = bad). He discusses the numerous cross-sex depictions in early American cinema wherein, he asserts, “the joke lies in the very appearance of a man dressed up as a woman”.

In addition to numerous films of vaudevillian female impersonators and other comedic gender-bending, there is an unfortunately lost documentary about an intersex person based on their own memoir from 1919. 

These are the depictions that interest me more–the ones I consider part of the lineage of “queer/trans cinema.” Films which contain more sincere or “genuine” depictions of sexual and gender variance. In addition to this documentary, certain fictional depictions, Russo says, had more “subtlety and grace,” like those of Charlie Chaplin (A Woman 1915) or Edith Storey’s gender-bending portrayal of Lillian/Lawrence in A Florida Enchantment (1914). That movie is really interesting by the way. It shows a disillusioned heiress who, upset with her unfaithful fiancee, ingests a sex-changing seed (I wish it was that easy, am I right, ladies?)and becomes an alternate persona, the debonair Lawrence Talbot. There is a lot of obvious queer content in that film as it explores different relationships between people who transgress boundaries of sex and is a witty commentary on sexism. We also have a verifiable film star who we would today likely call transgender who starred in DW Griffith films, a youth called Billy Foster who wished to be referred to as their male stage persona off-stage as well.

There are many gaps in the history which are hard for me to fill in… At the risk of telling you too much you already know, the period of 1934-1968 wherein the so-called “Hays code” imposed strict censorship over sexuality in Hollywood… Well it’s pretty much a dead-zone. It isn’t until the 60s and 70s where you see gender and sexuality explode onto the screen. And even so, much of “trans representation” is buried in the underground and indie scenes. But it’s not all too niche to recover– some indie filmmakers who included trans actors and characters like John Waters and Andy Warhol did reach a level of notoriety and are valued (especially in “cult” followings) to this day. With films like Paul Morrissey’s Women in Revolt (1971) (produced by Andy Warhol), John Water’s Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), and Jim Sharman’s iconic Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), campy and outrageous films featuring gender non-conforming characters became more common.

The ‘70s certainly opened up the floodgates for queer and trans characters, whether or not this was always what we would consider “good representation”. For instance, Myra Breckinridge (1970) follows a sadistic trans woman (played by cis actress Raquel Welch) through a romp of crime and deceit. Also released in 1970, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a weird-ass exploitation film that was initially created to be a sequel to the earlier rock centered drama film, Valley of the Dolls. Instead, it ended up being a “satirical pastiche” of the original. It is the first film I know of to represent a female-to-male transsexual. And boy, is it a doozy. The trans man in it is a predatory, murderous music producer nicknamed Z-man. At the end he is revealed to be a trans man (or I guess a “woman in drag” according to wikipedia) when he reveals his “scary” breasts. Apparently this film was low-key written as they went, and this plot twist was a last-minute decision. IDK maybe some practical effects artist really wanted to practice their prosthetic work and they adapted to that lol.

Overall, I feel like the largest quantity of trans representation comes from exploitation films and from the horror genre. Obviously some of the most iconic representations of trans-adjacent characters are in horror: we got Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Sleepaway Camp, and Silence of the Lambs. These are the ones that are discussed most frequently, especially in film/media studies circles. But, if you want some more trans film history that covers way more than just these films, check out this guy Logan-Ashley’s video Transgender Horror: a Visual History. It is fantastic.

And then, in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, the number of trans characters steadily increased. There are even a few genuinely critically acclaimed films with trans protagonists, for instance the famous Boys Don’t Cry (1999) for which Hillary Swank won an oscar for her portrayal of real life murdered trans man, Brandon Teena.

It isn’t until the late 2010s (especially with the release of The Danish Girl in 2015) where people begin to have conversations about whether cis actors should really be playing trans characters all the time in the first place.

BUT I digress. And when I digress, I digress HARD. Sam, @emodannydevito, you ask, isn’t this supposed to be about trans ALLEGORY in film? And I say to you: yes, I’m getting to that, you needy little fags. This is MY video, and I’ll talk about what I want. I wanted to explain to you how sparse and ambivalent the actual representations of trans people throughout film history are first so that you can see the importance of allegorical representation in filling those gaps.

DEFINING TRANS ALLEGORY

I chose to focus on allegorical rather than literal representations of so-called transgenderism because it is a less covered topic. Moreover, I think it is a beautiful and under-studied methodology of trans story telling which has been so essential because our community has had to be so underground. People haven’t felt the ability to speak openly about transness, even if the Hays code or whatever didn’t exist. Just think about how rare it is to find gay films– same thing but lowkey worse. Trans allegorical storytelling has given trans people (especially closeted ones) the means to express their story. #MyStory

Okay, so the million orbeez question: What is considered a trans allegory in film?

For my nefarious purposes, a trans allegory must contain at least some of the following elements:

-Some kind of bodily transformation

-Discordant feelings among the body, identity, and society at large

-Narratives of marginalization becoming self-realization

EXAMPLES

Because I am citing films with those aforementioned themes of transformation and navigating one’s identity, there is substantial overlap with things that are also read as an allegory for same-sex desire. You know, shit is subjective–both can be true. This makes sense, as sex, gender, and sexuality are all complex, intertwined subjects, and sexual minorities have overlapping community and axes of oppression with transgender people. So here is my list of greatest hits for trans allegory in order of release date:

Frankenstein (1931), James Whale

    Okay, don’t murder me, but I have read the book (and watched Young Frankenstein plenty), but I still haven’t watched the OG Frankenstein film.

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and its film adaptations have long resonated with trans people, especially “transsexuals” i.e. those who undergo medical transition. The creation of a human body and personage through medical science is the obvious parallel here as well as the utter loneliness experienced by Frankenstein’s creature as a result of his macabre and tragic existence.

    But also, being created as a fully formed adult can resonate, as many trans people feel a disconnect from who they were during childhood and now. Famous trans historian Susan Stryker writes about her kinship with the creature in her piece “My Words to Frankenstein”

        “...the transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like the monster, 1 am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment; like the monster’s as well, my exclusion from human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, like the monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist” (Stryker, 238)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Rouben Mamoulian

    I haven’t seen this one either, but… Again, we have an eccentric, isolated figure who uses medical science to transform himself. While Jekyll and Hyde has often been interpreted as a homosexual allegory, especially due to historical evidence about the author, to me that medical transformation theme can also have a strong trans reading. Hyde is a side of him that lives within him despite his attempts to repress it and comes out in an embodied form to wreak havoc on his life. Like a closeted trans person experimenting with cross dressing, sometimes even developing an alternate persona.

    The biological differences between Jekyll and Hyde were conceived at a time when anxieties about a kind of Darwinian degeneration of man were high and homosexuality was linked with the physical traits of “degeneration” i.e. a slighter or more effeminate frame. This strikes me as evocative of not just sexuality, but especially as a performance of gender and the gendered body. It speaks of the anxieties that some part of oneself might be less hardy and masculine and more inclined to a physical femininity.

    To quote Samuel McIntyre:

        “Jekyll himself describes Hyde as a regression or degeneration of himself, identifying Hyde as “less developed” and thus “smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll” (J&H 78). In consequence, a hermeneutics of the male body emerges through which external deformities or behaviors could be interpreted as evidence of internal failings.” 

    Perhaps, internal “failings” like gender confusion?

Dracula’s Daughter (1936), Lambert Hillyer

    This movie is beautifully shot, and I really tried to pay attention to the whole thing, but there are a lot of parts where frankly uninteresting men take up the screen and I was just like… can I see Gloria Holden being a brooding lesbian vampire again please?

    Anyways… Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska, is kind of a “self-hating” vampire who tries to break her curse by ritually burning her father, the famous Count’s, body. When that doesn’t work, she goes to a psychologist for medical treatment (conversion therapy vibes) to un-vamp her. She spends a lot of the movie struggling against her dark vampiric urges but eventually caves and accepts them. 

    It definitely has major lesbian overtones despite attempts to tone it down, but you can also add the struggling to change her biology layer to it to view more of a trans spin.

        To quote Ariel Schudson:

“Countess Zaleska’s battle with her queer identity consumes her. From gender turmoil (she wants to be “free to live as a woman…”) to her expressed need for a standard existence (“to live a normal life – think normal things…”) She feels enslaved by her condition. Not only does she view herself as something Other Than Woman, she views herself as something Other Than Normal. As Zaleska wrestles with her demons and lust gets reiterated in the film text, the film shows itself to be a barely concealed allegory for individuals wrestling with gender identity and/or sexualities”

Pinocchio (1940), Sharpsteen & Luske

    Look, I mean, he wants to be a “real boy”. He becomes a “real boy”.

    But seriously, a lot of trans-masculine guys connect to this fuckass puppet boy (I definitely liked Pinocchio but not much more than other Disney films I think), to this story in which an initially-genderless little guy navigates the world to find his own truth and become a “real” flesh and blood boy. I found two particularly cool pieces of art that are inspired by the deep childhood connections trans men have made to this character:

    There is an I guess semi-digital play that toured and streamed in 2022 which is a satirical look at the character of Piniocchio through a trans-masc lens. This is “The Making of Pinocchio” by Cade and MacAskill. The couple who created it did so inspired by MacAskill’s gender transition. There’s some fun stuff including lots of humor about wood and some freaky puppet sex.

    There is also a collection of short creative writing works by Lucas Olvera for his Masters thesis called “The Pinocchio Boy”.

The Wolf Man (1941), George Waggner

    When I watched The Wolf Man, I was struck by the emotionally sensitive and very average looking portrayal of said Wolf Man (who was, to my surprise, the protagonist) by leading man, Lon Chaney Jr. To me, the tragic figure of The Wolf Man is very trans-masc coded to me, as are werewolves in general. And this is the first Real Popular feature film about werewolves I believe. The trans themes are there: especially regarding main character Larry’s transformation into the monstrous (and very hairy) body of the wolf man

    It deals with fighting against one’s nature and

    Discusses a complex relationship of the son to the father and the fate of following in your father’s footsteps

        To quote Henry Giardina:

“it’s so much a movie about masculinity, our fears around it, which of course are in dialogue with father-son anxiety. It’s a movie about the fear of not being able to become your father, as well as a fear around becoming only the worst parts of him.”

    Also interesting: the public and his family (especially Larry’s dad) is gaslighting him about werewolves not being real the entire time this transformation is occurring

Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971), Roy Ward Baker

    I also watched this one and it is super fun. It’s a schlocky twist on Jekyll and Hyde wherein, Dr. Jekyll, obsessed with eternal life, experiments with estrogen (because women tend to live longer) and ends up creating “sister Hyde,” this alternate female persona.

    They keep it all quite biological and don’t substantially explore gender as a construct, but it’s trans by virtue of the fact in and of itself that a man takes estrogen and becomes a woman. Basically, Sister Hyde slowly takes over (while going on murderous sprees as a hot lady) and becomes dominant over Jekyll.

        A quote from Lexi Bowen: “Like so many before and since, they are a character that falls into that ever-changing, ever-confusing ball of movie trans, which encompasses any and every character that, at some point or another, differs from their gender as assigned at birth.”

The Little Mermaid (1989), Clements & Musker

    It was produced by and the lyrics were written by a closeted gay man in the 80s, Howard Ashman (Geisinger). The movie obviously deals with a forbidden love. And a biological transformation which is both a curse and a blessing.

    The aesthetic of Ursula is, as you may know, inspired by famous drag queen Divine.

    Ariel’s misfit archetype is definitely relatable to queer folks (and the neurodiverse), as she feels a longing to be part of the human community, to the extent that she makes ill advised sacrifices to do so which put herself in danger

        Quoting Atreyo Palit: “But the allegory extends beyond forbidden romance for some viewers. Part of Ariel yearning to be part of the surface world comes with a desire to be human. She literally wants to lose her fins and instead have feet. This wish to be in a different body naturally resonates with the transgender community.”

Ghost in the Shell (1995), Mamoru Oshii

    Ghost in the Shell is an anime film from the turn of the century which, like its influence Blade Runner, is seminal to cyberpunk imagery. In an iconic sequence, cyborg protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi’s body (which is a fixation of the movie) is literally assembled before our eyes. She dons layers of flesh as the animation focuses on her nude female form (though she is more androgynous and less sexualized than some similar characters both in and out of the film)

    The film really interrogates the definition of the self. Do our memories define us? What if those memories are false? Do our current actions alone define us? Our body? Our mind? Is there a soul?

    Is Motoko little more than a violent agent of the state or is there a person in there?

        Solvi Goard: Those questions – Am I really real? Have I ever existed? Or am I a ghost of an identity? – are ones many trans people will recognise: the visceral confusion that comes about from knowing how you feel and experience your body, but having that experience jar so powerfully with what meaning other people and society give to it.  (Lee McGee)

    In general, robots are often allegory for trans people, or at least, trans people tend to identify with the figure of the robot

        There’s the build-a-body thing. The mind-body disconnect/separation of the self theme-

        Plus alienation from society–feeling like you’re artificial or fraudulent somehow

        Robots as Trans Allegory if you wanna see a great video about robots in general being allegorical to the trans experience which analyzes a lot of media about robots including but not limited to Ghost in the Shell, watch this video by Co2Goldy

The Matrix (1999), Wachowski sisters 

    The Matrix is the only film on this list with trans directors, though neither of them had come out at the time of its release.

    This one is pretty much an admitted trans allegory according to Lilly Wachowski.

    It’s about making the difficult choice to abandon familiarity and falsity for radical self actualization and truth.

        Morpheus says: "You know something. What you know, you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. There's something wrong with the world, you don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

    Neo, which by the way is a chosen name different from the character’s initial more masculine and “acceptable” moniker of “Mr. Thomas Anderson,” is living a double life but eventually chooses the more authentic, harder one, though he knows he’ll be persecuted for it.

        To quote Laura Dale: “Of particular note, while the homogenous face of civil obedience and status quo Agent Smith insists on discrediting this new chosen identity, those outside of the Matrix all unquestioningly support Neo's name from the very first moments of the film, presenting the idea that escaping those societal expectations is a path to having who you are seen and validated by others.”

    I should also mention that the character Switch was initially intended to be a trans character who lives as a different gender in and out of the Matrix, but that was scrapped.

X-Men movies, particularly The Last Stand, Brett Ratner

    Okay, you all know the basic premise of X-men, right? Some people are mutants and lots of people hate them.

    The X men comics were initially created as a commentary on the American Civil Rights movement

    These stories have rightly been seen as an allegory for many things from racism to homophobia, but can also have a more specific trans or intersex reading as part of the queer one, especially due to focus on physical bodily changing and mutilation– like that seen where Angel as a kid is so ashamed by his mutation that he tries to cut off his wings

    I think Mystique is also a canonically gender-fluid character?

    In the comics she apparently says “I have lived for years as sapiens males. Years more as females… The only true binary division lies not between the genders or sexes or sexualities. It lies between those who are allowed to be who they wish, and those denied that right” (Rob Salerno)

Gingersnaps (2000), John Fawcett

    This is a really cool werewolf movie from 2000 with some fantastic practical effects.

    Often interpreted in a feminist and sometimes also queer/lesbian way (Berlatsky), it is also possible for a trans (whether trans-masc or fem) reading of Gingersnaps.

    It focuses on the teens’ rejection of womanhood and feelings of horror at female puberty, driven home by the coincidence of her werewolf transformation aligning with her first menstrual cycle, which seems very trans-masc 

    See ItsForrestThere’s video

    The scene of taping – tail down and shaving all her hair could also be relatable to trans girls.

    The film deals with sexuality, gender roles, and coming of age in a visceral, bloody way.

    To quote Marisa Mercurio:

        At once emphasizing the horror of womanhood, Ginger Snaps explores the fluidity of gender through Ginger’s lycanthropy and her status as outcast alongside Brigitte. At the start of the film, it is clear that Ginger and Brigitte’s androgyny and disinterest in boys characterize their ostracization. Throughout the film, Brigitte remains an androgynous pre-pubescent teen, but there is an inevitability to her fear of becoming gendered: she will get her period sooner rather than later, she will change into a woman in the eyes of society, she will be forced to deal with sexuality and gender under her peers’ gaze. Ginger Snaps, however, offers another possibility: lycanthropy. A queering. 

Barbie (2023), Greta Gerwig

    Barbie is one of very few films on this list to be directed by a woman.

    Kinda like Pinocchio, Barbie is on a journey to become a “real” woman whether she wants to embrace that initially or not.

    While her experiences apply to womanhood in general, a case can also be made for trans womanhood specifically because it’s a lot about self-assemblage and learning as an adult.

    While Barbie’s existence (kind of like someone beginning to explore their gender identity) is at first defined by the more shallow talismans of femininity like perfect outfits and pink hairbrushes, she soon experiences an existential crisis and is motivated to go out into the real world to restore things to their “perfect” state– But, spoiler alert, she comes to prefer her more nuanced life as a real woman outside of Barbie Land.

        Joanna Mills says:

            Every transgender woman has a similar moment where she realizes living within her own Barbie Land no longer fulfills the emotional needs of a real woman. They also begin to see it is impossible to maintain the façade of her perfected avatar.

    And, while you might see the final stinger scene of Barbie at the gynecologist as kinda defining womanhood by the experience of having a vagina, you could also see it as similar to a trans woman finally getting the gender confirmation surgery she has been longing for.

Nimona (2023), Quane & Bruno

    I have not seen Nimona, but I hear good things!

    The movie is about a shapeshifter who is rejected by society which turns her into an anti-hero/temporary antagonist, though in the end, she is redeemed.

    This is an animated film, but it is very adult. It harshly deals with Nimona’s rejection from society and abandonment by her only friend, Ballister–and her subsequent wish to commit suicide. In the end before she can do so, Ballister apologizes, and they reconcile.

    The author of the comic it is based on is actually trans which definitely makes the trans/non-binary interpretation hold water a bit more.

        The Trans Allegory in Nimona

Lisa Frankenstein (2024), Zelda Williams

    Lisa Frankenstein is a horror comedy which, written and directed by women, is a very female centered story, however, at the risk of #erasing women– there could also maybe be a bit of a trans-masc reading to it.

    It centers on a grieving and depressed outcast, Lisa, who finds herself talking to the grave of a Victorian gentleman. When he’s resurrected by lightning strike, she starts a friendship (which blossoms into something more) with him. And he kills her evil stepmom, and things just kind of spiral from there.

    The film has themes of constructing a new identity in the wake of grief, and the creature, played by Cole Sprouse, reads as trans-coded to me.

    This is more than a build-a-boyfriend film. Creature is, with the help of Lisa, reconstructing his identity in his new (after)life. This is especially present in the dress-up montage where the Creature consciously chooses more masculine clothes despite Lisa loving him in a pink feathery thing.

    Most overt: Creature has feelings of insecurity around not having a penis, to which Lisa assures him: “you don’t need one of those to be a man, it’s actually like the least important part, really, we can do other things”.

    But, in the end, the Creature severs the penis of Lisa’s step-sister’s shitty boyfriend, and Lisa lovingly performs a DIY bottom surgery on him

    Writer Diablo Cody (who also wrote Jennifer’s Body) does view it as a queer story and emphasized in an interview the theme of “transformation” (2:00 IntoMore)

        Void


Alright, so, yeah. That’s my broad overview of trans allegory in various films. But, now, let’s dig in a little deeper.

 

QUEER CINEMA: RANKED!

 
What is “queer cinema”? Is it a genre? A movement? A useless label? Perhaps it is a body of work with common themes centering on the queer experience. Or is it cinema primarily written/directed by LGBTQ artists? Must it center queer characters and narratives or is it something more abstract than that? Is it any movie with a gay or trans person in it?

These are the questions I will be ignoring in this video/article and instead leading you on a goofy little romp through queer movies.

I think examining the concept of “queer cinema” with too much scrutiny is pointless to be honest. Like, is Mulholland Drive Queer Cinema? The central romance is between two women, true, but it is the oeuvre of David Lynch, a straight man. Is it an example of the male gaze, a fetishization of lesbian romance? Well, maybe a little? Obviously, there is no denying that it is a beautiful film, and it very much passes the Bechdel test. And its exploration of psycho-sexual deviance and trauma is certainly adjacent to “queer theming”. I guess I personally would define “queer cinema” as films that somehow center queer perspectives. 

But, I do feel like “queer cinema” to me at least, kind of entails the heavy involvement of actual queer people. Yes, a work in isolation may have all the trappings of queer cinema on paper, but if no queers were involved, then how queer can it really be? But this is very difficult to verify and becomes a slippery slope of outing people. So, I won’t be focusing too hard on the personal identities of the creators.

I don’t know. What I do know, is in my search for movies to discuss for this video, I realized that queer cinema is a much smaller genre (if it can even be called a genre) than I had thought. There are not that many queer movies that are on my list…

In the interest of making this video/article fun and fluffy and easy-- let’s go with a tier list, shall we? You may be wondering, what is the criteria for these rankings? There is None. It is literally just what I like the best. Keep in mind, this is just MY opinion and it’s super subjective, but you know… uh if you wanna hear yet another white guy word vomit his thoughts about “cinema” but this time with a bit of zest, this one’s for you, champ.

Paris is Burning

    Released to great acclaim in 1990 and filmed by Jennie Livingston (who is a white genderqueer lesbian) over the course of the prior decade, during the throes of the AIDS crisis, Paris is Burning may just be the most monumental film in queer history. It’s a documentary about the queer and primarily black and Latino ballroom culture of the mid to late 20th century. The film has generated a lot of praise and a lot of controversy over the years, and we are still grappling with its legacy. Famous Black feminist scholar, bell hooks, wrote a well-known critique of the film upon its release wherein she claims that the politics of the film “played out in ways that are both progressive and reactionary” (hooks, 149), which surely is true of nearly any documentary. I don’t claim to be the arbiter of the queer community, and my experiences of race and class privilege are obviously the lens through which I see this movie. But, regardless of what you think about Paris is Burning, it is a deeply important historical text which documents a history that is being increasingly pushed into the shadows by the reactionary right. I won’t spend too much time on a deep analysis of the subjectivity of the film and its ethics or on refuting every point that I disagree with in bell hooks’ writing, but I did want to address it a bit. 
 

One common critique of the film is that it was exploitative of its subjects in multiple ways. Livingston has had to address these claims many times, especially after multiple (eventually dropped) lawsuits asking for greater compensation initiated by some of the subjects. In the end, thirteen of the film’s “stars” got some portion of $55k.

Yes, Livingston was not an organic part of the community which she was documenting, and yes, Livingston was propelled into notoriety and success relative to many of the film’s subjects who remained struggling. However, given the mixed responses from the actual people featured in the film [SOURCES], I don’t think it’s that black and white. In Livingston’s words, “I didn’t go to film school. I don’t have a film education, and I never suggested that I did. I took one summer class, and I shot that one ball which is not in the finished film. I never said ‘Babe, I’m gonna make you a star.’ I went in and said, ‘I’m interested, will you talk to me?’ I honestly, to this day, do not believe that anybody who signed those release forms was incapable of understanding what it meant, nobody was illiterate; some people were college educated. Plus, most of the people in the film had spent a lot of time with me before the bulk of the footage got shot” (Clark).

Given that the film was A. a documentary with no expectation of compensation stated at the time of production when everyone signed the release forms and B. only grossed a total of $3 million at the box office, much of which, I’m sure, had to go to distributors, producers, crew, etc., I think this at least makes sense (Clark). Obviously the subjects of the film could have used more money, and I wish the film’s success had done more for them materially. But, to me, the making of this movie doesn’t seem like a clear cut case of a person using their power and privilege to profit from those who are more marginalized. See this interview to read more on Livingston’s film practices in her own words (Maclay). And Livingston has actually done a lot to give back to the community both during the AIDS crisis as an ACT UP activist and more recently, raising thousands for charities like the Ali Forney Center which provides resources to LGBT youth of color (Clark).

The film has also been criticized, especially by hooks, as exploitative in the sense that the ballroom scene is treated as a “spectacle” (which I mean, ballroom is inherently a spectacle, but I understand what she means). Hooks makes the claim that Paris “celebrates” a “brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness” (hooks, 149) . She makes the movie out to be an ethnographic exploitation film for rich whites to gawk at and laugh at these communities, saying that Livinsgton is positioned as a “virtuous white woman daring to venture into a contemporary ‘heart of darkness’ to bring back knowledge of the natives” (hooks, 151). To be sure, many audiences did receive it this way. Hooks says “Watching the film with a black woman friend, we were disturbed by the extent to which white folks around us were ‘entertained’ and ‘pleasured’ by scenes we viewed as sad and at times tragic. Often individuals laughed at personal testimony about hardship, pain, loneliness (hooks,154)”. Wow that sounds… awful? I couldn’t imagine how that would feel to hear laughter at the expense of the movie’s subjects with whom you share a marginalized identity.

However, I don’t think the film celebrates upper class whiteness or “white femininity” as much as certain aspects of ballroom itself, unfortunately, kinda do that. In fact, the film offers a discussion of the role that the image of the well kept white woman plays as an icon in these communities. The film and the people within it are not uncritical of this facet of ballroom cultures. They are aware of this and engage with these aspects in a complex way, as hooks herself admits when she praises the reflective narration of Dorian Carey (hooks, 155).

 And yeah, Livingston may be an “outsider” to the communities she filmed, but bell hooks is also an “outsider”, as many responding scholars are quick to point out. I noticed when re-reading her chapter after a few years that she actually expresses some regressive and gender essentialist views including kind of implying that drag itself is an inherently patriarchal and misogynistic practice (hooks, 148). She misgenders the late trans woman Venus in it too, and that was not just like “oh well it was a different time” because no one else in the film ever called Venus anything but a woman and she made it quite clear how she wanted to be seen. 
 

There is much more I could say on the bell hooks chapter specifically, but at this point… God this is turning into a video about bell hooks. So I’ll wrap it up with this excerpt from another interview with Livingston:

AZ: bell hooks has criticised the film as being exploitative and too focussed [sic.] on the spectacle side of this subculture. How would you respond to that?

JL: She felt the identities in the film were not resonating with the white audience, that they were othered and therefore othering her. She also felt the ball world itself wasn’t politically in a direction that she would like. It was a kind of personalised community, that she didn’t like politically. And that’s fine, I can’t argue with that. What I have an issue with, is that she talks about white critics who got it wrong. She never acknowledged the popularity with queer black critics. She didn’t see how valuable the film was to queer black audiences, she didn’t acknowledge they needed a hit. So it’s fine to say ‘I as a straight black woman have issues with the film’ but I didn’t think it was entirely cool to silence the black and Latinx queer people who gravitated towards the film and got a lot of sustenance from it. 

And a lot of people did get sustenance from it, including the Afro-Latino, queer writer of the show Pose which is heavily inspired by this film.

IDK, like for a time, I felt guilty about how much this movie changed my life and how much I loved it. I felt betrayed when I first had to consider the possibility that it could have been exploitative. Over time, I have come to peace with this aspect of the film. I can admit that there are less than savory dynamics surrounding the making and reception of this movie where it seems like mostly white, privileged consumption of both the suffering and spectacular images of mostly black and brown queer people. People who did not always benefit as much as they should have from the film. But overall, it is still a huge entry in film history and in queer history. It’s still very close to my heart. And I wish only the best to the folks who were involved.

    
I Saw the TV Glow

I watched I Saw the TV Glow in an early screening with some friends at an indie theatre and Jane Schoenburn did a Q&A afterwards. It was fucking awesome. Going in, I had no idea about this movie other than it was a trans allegory and it was a surrealistic indie flick. Those things were definitely true. I ended up crying during this one, and I don’t often… do that? Honestly, it was quite relatable but more so than my own experience, I was thinking about my boyfriend’s because he transitioned later in life than me, and I feel like that’s kind of the vibe… with like pushing it down for so long and the whole “There’s still time” thing.

I really admire Schoenburn’s style and their exploration of media and technology as a channel of identity. In the words of Payton McCarty-Simas, “TV Glow's meditation on media fandom as an unstable lifeline for queer adolescents is a tragic portrait of potentialities never-quite-reached.” And yeah, I hadn’t really thought too deeply about that before, but with both depictions of the Pink Opaque and even the diegetic musical numbers at that bar where adult Owen and Maddy reconnect, it seems to evoke the importance of media as something for people (especially queer people) to grab onto. It certainly was–and is–for me. To quote again, “Owen and Maddy's friendship is made more intimate by its mediation through shared parasocial obsession; they rarely speak; rather Maddy's tapes come with scrawled notes (shown on screen) whose tone perfectly capture the high-octane confessionality of a teenage diary”.

It was a really powerful viewing experience for me, so it's definitely going at the top of my list- S TIER. Honestly, no idea why this movie was utterly ignored by awards season when it’s exactly the kind of artsy, profound, and “relevant” shit they would theoretically eat up. Are they really not ready to acknowledge a trans director? That feels fucking dumb… Like Emilia goddamn Perez gets a million BAFTAS and an Oscar but… whatever.

Of course I love Shiva Baby. How could I not? It is so… Jewish. And gay. And cunty. And just like funny and sad and fantastic. Side note: how the fuck is Rachel Sennott not Jewish? This is potentially the biggest mystery and, dare I say, betrayal I have suffered.
Tongues Untied

Aired on PBS in 1989, Tongues Untied is a movie by Marlon Riggs which delves into the unique intersection of racialized and gendered experiences of queer Black men. Tongues Untied is an experimental, poetic sort of video-essay type film. Combining the art of spoken word with the grit and texture of videotape, it revels in the unapologetic depiction of gay black sexuality, pain, and hope.
Looking for Langston

Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston also is a film about gay black men and it was also released in 1989. It is an ethereal, lyrical, black and white film which recreates vignettes about poet Langston Hughes in an abstract, semi-narrative way. It is a really visually beautiful film.
Everything Everywhere

As the hype for this movie has died down, it’s easy to look back at it and be like wait this actually wasn’t that good, just remembering bits out of context, it seems corny. But I remember crying during this movie. It is deeply unique, funny, and heartfelt. It is able to speak on the experiences of Asian Americans and immigrants in general regarding assimilation, cultural change, etc. while also being fast paced, action packed, and very funny. It’s all centered on a mother’s journey to accept her lesbian daughter and how that prompts a deep self reflection for that mother. And I think it’s a really cool choice to make the mother and not the daughter the protagonist and the character who we get to see most deeply.

But I’m a Cheerleader

 This shit is an icon of queer cinema. It is a MASTERCLASS in effectively using camp (both in a figurative and literal sense, as it takes place at a conversion therapy summer camp for teens) as an artform which enhances the movie without taking away from its seriousness. It’s directed by Jamie Babbit, and it is her debut film as hard as that is to believe based on its immense success within the queer community. Though apparently upon its release, it really flopped. It’s so funny–I mean RuPaul plays a sexually repressed football coach at a straight-camp. Natasha Leone, the most lesbian-coded straight woman, plays the main character, a lesbian teen who ironically learns to accept herself at the homophobia camp. And it’s just really, really good.

Jennifer’s Body

I mean it’s a horror comedy with alt-rock/emo vibes and bisexual overtones. What’s not to love about this shit? I absolutely adore director Karyn Kusama’s work, and this is my fave. It’s aesthetically cohesive, and its fossilization of that 2010s high school culture but with a unique twist is very fun. And it does actually have things to say about women’s sexuality and experiences of misogyny. Meghan Fox is just killer in it.

The Watermelon Woman

The passion project of Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman is a fiction film in the style of an autobiographical documentary. It explores the experiences of black lesbians in a way that is both serious and funny. It “Addresses the serious political issues of the lack of visibility of black lesbians in film, in a comedy, thus avoiding the emphasis on suffering and despair that characterized films about lesbians” (Mennel, 47/69). Another really cool thing about this film is that when you’re watching it, you really don’t know how much of it is staged or made-up. I, for one, was under the impression that the actress who the fictionalized version of Ms. Dunye focuses on, simply known as “The Watermelon Woman” was a real historical figure. It is not until the end credits that read “Sometimes you have to create your own history. The Watermelon Woman is fiction.” that I realized she is not real in a literal sense. In general Dunye excels at blurring the lines between history and fantasy, reflecting on the medium of film–or in this case, video–itself in a very reflexive yet unpretentious way. Great movie!

    
The Handmaiden 

Written and directed by Park Chan-Wook, it’s billed on wikipedia as a “South Korean erotic historical psychological thriller film” which while a bit of a mouthful is certainly accurate. I fucking love this movie. It’s stunning and entrancing in every sense. I was glued to the screen for its entire two and a half hour duration. While it’s mostly highly critically acclaimed, I found this one review on Rotten Tomatoes that kinda stuck in my mind. “It is a male-gazey exploitative knock off of the British mini-series, Fingersmith, based off of the novel by Sarah Waters — a real lesbian who wrote for women. This version caters to the most boring and predictable demographic of all — men.” Is this true? I am not sure. There are also plenty of women (and queer women at that) who love this movie. I am a man. And I liked it, but did feel a little aware of the male gaze so to speak when watching all those gratuitous sex scenes. THE BELLS! If you know, you know. Shrug emoji. I like it.

Carol

This movie I also watched very recently. I think it is a really good film, and I did enjoy it. It got me to be actually interested in a slow burn romantic drama period piece which is definitely not always my thing. The chemistry between the two leads was great. I did really enjoy the movie, but you know, it’s not my fave, so it’s the top of my C tier.    
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

I watched this one recently as well, and it was really good! Definitely a beautiful romance, just not my genre in general. The concept itself is a really good one for a classic star-crossed lovers tale-- female painter hired to paint a wedding portrait of a noblewoman in secret because said noblewoman does not consent to her arranged marriage, so the painter has to steal long glances at her so that she can go and paint her likeness later, they fall in love, blablabla. Very tragic, very beautiful visually. It’s a great movie, but not one of my all-timers, so like Carol, into the top of C tier you go.

Stranger by the Lake

Stranger by the Lake. What a bizarre viewing experience. There are very few movies of which I genuinely do not understand the critical acclaim. This is one of them. This movie is straight up porn for at least the first half hour, dude. And, without getting into too much detail, I am pretty sure a lot of the sex acts are not simulated. Pro-tip: do not try to watch this movie with a friend. Or your parents. Dear God.

Emilia Pérez

What can I say about Emilia Pérez? AP News says “On one hand, ‘Emilia Pérez’ is one of the most celebrated films of the year. It triumphed at the Golden Globes, earned 11 BAFTA nominations and landed 13 Academy Award nominations. Only three movies, ever, have scored more” (Jake Coyle). Entertainment weekly calls it a “wild, gritty, glitter-soaked ride that defies convention and classification” (Lenker). Some people like Letterboxd user “MeitarG” are praising it as “ambitious, genre-defying, visually stunning, musically rich, and emotionally profound”. It is definitely unique and bold, true. It does play with genre and I think tries to be a profoundly emotional character study? I think it tries to speak on more internal themes of human identity as opposed to larger social issues like trans rights, sexism, and cartel violence and corruption in Mexico. But the problem, to me, is that it shouldn’t avoid confronting these huge issues that are so woven into the very fabric of the film’s setting. It needs to make an actual statement about it, otherwise it feels hollow and weird. Watching the film feels like there is an elephant in the room at best, and at worst it actively trivializes and mis-represents the struggles of marginalized people. Letterboxd user “comrade_yui” puts it better than I ever could as someone who couldn’t even get through the whole movie. This person’s on YouTube too so you can check their channel out: (1) Comrade Yui - YouTube.

They wrote that Emilia Perez is “so alienated from the experience of lived trans identity that it gets many basic facts wrong, stuff that any trans person could tell you about (for one thing, emilia pérez wouldn't 'smell like a man' if she was on HRT, as hormones have a massive effect on body odor). but even disregarding that, this is yet another crash-esque panorama of trying to tackle every societal problem and then acting as if the mere effort of that attempt, rather than the actual result, is profound. liberal-centrists can seemingly only understand queerness as 'the exceptional' to their 'normality', so they make a hyperbolic spectacle out of us and then go on to say that it's good optics, that it's 'representation', when in fact it is abstraction and dehumanization -- emilia pérez is made to represent so many contradictory things that in the end the film situates her as an icon rather than a real person, it is a crude mystification of everything the film claims to care about. and none of this is to mention the fact that director audiard films his musical in the most patronizing academicist way, an empty grab-bag of techniques with no decisive point-of-view (the split-screen sequence near the climax is particularly punishing). 

what emilia pérez offers is not meaning, but the sensation of supposedly meaningful things moving in rapid succession, and it hopes the resulting blur will pass by quick enough that we do not notice the superficiality of its style -- in other words, a perfect film for awards season.”

And on top of all that… it’s a film about Mexico with almost no Mexican people working on it--with the exception of actress Adriana Paz and kinda Selena Gomez who is Chicana (Jones). Mexican producer Héctor Guillén tweeted this:

Like what in God’s name convinced Jacques Audiard that he was remotely qualified to tell a story about a transgender Mexican cartel leader? Not that you always have to “write what you know,” but like why would you want to speak on behalf of people who are getting so much crap in global–especially American–politics right now with your story choices but then not even mention trans or Mexican people pretty much AT ALL in your awards touring. As a random white American guy, I don’t have much I can say about that cultural axis of the film, but about the trans stuff… I mean it wasn’t offensive per se. BUT and this is a big but (lol), look if it was even five years ago, I would not have had as big a problem with it. I mean at least they actually did cast a transgender actress, but RIGHT NOW of all times??? when we’re THE hot button “social issue,” when our very existence is now a political debate, when the US government is trying its damndest to fucking ERADICATE us from history, strip us of our rights and dignity, and perhaps even be RID of us altogether??? NOW? And not using it as an opportunity to advocate? Like you clearly couldn’t give less of a solitary shit about trans people or Mexican people for that matter. You just want people to jerk you off about your “brave” and artsy dumbfuck Oscar bait movie.

And no, I’m not going to talk about Sofia Gascon’s offensive tweets from past years. I don’t feel it’s particularly relevant.
Conclusion

In her book Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires, and Gay Cowboys Barbara Mennel describes queer film studies as “an archaeology of alternative cinematic aesthetics organized around non-normative desires” (Mennel, 1). Queer cinema is so much more than just stories on film about queer people; it is an entire mode of engaging with the medium, centered on questioning and subverting conventions and power structures. 

And you know what, I’m gonna say it, I think supporting queer film and queer artists is more important than ever right now given the current political climate and a rise in vitriolic rhetoric about transgender people. Woah, he’s gone woke.




CITATIONS

Clark, Ashley. “Burning down the House: Why the Debate over Paris Is Burning Rages On.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2015, www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning.

Coyle, Jake. “The ‘Emilia Pérez’ Backlash, Explained.” AP News, AP News, 27 Feb. 2025, apnews.com/article/emilia-perez-oscars-backlash-eb75830df1d413779daacc331cd2b8e6?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share.

Graham, Tristan. “Critique of Bell Hooks - the Will to Change and Beyond...” Medium, Medium, 22 Apr. 2023, tristangraham300.medium.com/critique-of-bell-hooks-the-will-to-change-and-beyond-cb09d504eb0.

Green, Jesse. “Paris Has Burned.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Apr. 1993, www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html#.

Hooks, Bell. “Is Paris Burning?” Black Looks: Race and Representation, South End Press, Boston, MA, 1992, pp. 145–156.

Jones, Emma. “‘You’re Playing with One of Our Biggest Wars’: Why Some Mexican People Are Upset about Oscars Frontrunner Emilia Pérez.” BBC News, BBC, 24 Jan. 2025, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250121-why-some-mexicans-are-criticising-oscar-tipped-emilia-perez.

Lenker, Maureen Lee. “‘Emilia Pérez’ Is a Joyfully Erratic Opera Swirled with a Soapy Melodrama.” EW.Com, Entertainment Weekly, 2 Sept. 2024, ew.com/emilia-perez-review-erratic-opera-telenovela-zoe-saldana-selena-gomez-8705123.

Maclay, Willow Catelyn. “Jennie Livingston on Paris Is Burning 30 Years Later.” Hyperallergic, 29 Feb. 2020, hyperallergic.com/544265/jennie-livingston-interview-paris-is-burning-criterion-collection/.

Martinez, Olga. “Paris Is Burning- Bell Hooks and Judith Butler.” Olga Says:, 30 Oct. 2012, opmartinez.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/paris-is-burning-bell-hooks-and-judith-butler/.

McCarty-Simas, Payton. “The Brooklyn Rail.” Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, 6 Mar. 2024, brooklynrail.org/2024/03/film/Jane-Schoenbruns-I-Saw-the-TV-Glow/.

Mennel, Barbara Caroline. Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys. Wallflower, 2012.

Shapiro, Stephen. “Pose, Paris Is Burning, and the Creation of Community.” Medium, Medium, 26 Jan. 2019, medium.com/@dr.sshapiro/pose-paris-is-burning-and-the-creation-of-community-1f1fdd69634d.

Zeric, Arijana, and Jennie Livingston. “Jennie Livingston on the Complex Legacy of Paris Is Burning.” AnOther, AnOther Magazine, 6 Mar. 2020, www.anothermag.com/design-living/12333/paris-is-burning-director-jennie-livingston-rupauls-drag-race-pose-bell-hooks.

The L.A. Rebellion: Black Cinema in Revolution

Despite its significant aesthetic and philosophical differences, the movement of Black student filmmakers at the University of California L.A. (UCLA) in the 70s-80s here referred to as "the L.A. rebellion" should in fact be considered an integral part of the militant anti-imperialist Third Cinema movement. Because of the unique positionality of black Americans, however, the L.A. Rebellion was only marginally able to achieve the kind of concrete political gains achieved in other parts of the world by Third Cinema. This discrepancy does not make these films any less important, however I hope aspiring leftist filmmakers can learn from this history.
Let’s dive in.

As defined by multiple theorists, but particularly Argentinian filmmakers and revolutionaries, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Third Cinema is more of a prescriptive political program than an "art" movement. Closely related to Brazilian Cinema Novo (see Glauber Rocha's "The Aesthetics of Hunger"), Garcia Espinosa’s Imperfect Cinema (see Espinosa’s For an Imperfect Cinema), and other film movements, Third Cinema was initially theorized by Latin Americans but practiced world-wide. Marrying various socialist tendencies such as Left Peronism (see James’s “The Peronist Left”)with film production, distribution, and theory, Solanas and Getino outline a compelling  manifesto for an already burgeoning filmic wave in their text "Toward a Third Cinema". In it, they emphasize the need for films that decolonize both the mind and material conditions by provoking not only thought, but real revolutionary action.

Side note: what is decolonization? The term is thrown around a lot in academic and liberal or “leftist” spaces, to the chagrin of some (see Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”). It can refer to: literally throwing off the yoke of a colonial power i.e. the Haitian Revolution which won independence from France in 1804; opposing the European cultural and ideological dominance that comes with colonization by centering nonWestern histories and lifeways; shifting the balance of power so that formerly colonized peoples have more agency; basically just healing from the destruction of colonialism in whatever ways possible. This is integral to the mission of Third Cinema. And of course, one cannot mention decolonizing without a shoutout to Frantz Fanon, the OG of decolonial theory (See “The Wretched of the Earth”).

Whereas films churned out by the imperial core are at worst capitalist-colonialist pig propaganda and at best, "the 'progressive ' wing of Establishment cinema" (Solanas and Getino, 1), Third Cinema presents the exact opposite model of filmmaking. It calls for "transformation from mere entertainment into an active means of dealienation" (ibid, 1).

The first element of Third Cinema is its militant stance against the dominant cinema culture of the imperial nations, primarily that of Hollywood. Thus, Solanas and Getino encourage the breaking of Hollywood-style film language and conventions. Third Cinema differs in form not only because of conscious aesthetic rebellion (though this is an important aspect of "developing a culture by and for us" [ibid, 2]), but also due to the vastly different material conditions under which these films are  made. It is shot on-location “guerilla-style”; decentralization is encouraged in production through distribution; all crew members should have a well-rounded knowledge of all the equipment rather than a hyper-specialized role to maintain adaptability; secrecy is needed; it must be made on a shoestring budget; etc (ibid, 8). Not only is the Third Cinema guerilla filmmaker invested in smashing the filmic and cultural norms imposed by the colonizer; they are also invested in building a new revolutionary Third Cinema as part of a new revolutionary culture:

The cinema of the revolution is at the same time one of destruction and construction: destruction of the image that neocolonialism has created of itself and of us, and construction of a throbbing, living reality which recaptures truth in any of its expressions (ibid, 6).

However, one cannot simply change culture and call it revolution. What differentiates Third Cinema from its antecedents is that Third Cinema goes further by emphasizing revolutionary praxis. If this is Third Cinema, what are the "first '' and "second"? These are actual categorizations that Solanas and Getino make. First cinema is hegemony; it is bourgeois ideology incarnate: conformity, escapism, ahistoriscization, consumerism and commodity fetishism, etc. Second cinema is essentially any "auteurist" form of cinema (meaning movies which are viewed as being “authored” by one individual’s creative vision; emphasizes the director as lone artist and architect of the film), particularly the arthouse productions of Europe which rebel against traditional film formulae, something Solanas and Getino consider a "step forward" from First Cinema. "But such attempts," they write, "have already reached, or are about to reach, the outer limits of what the system permits. The second cinema film-maker has remained 'trapped inside the fortress' as Godard put it, or is on his way to becoming trapped" (ibid, 4). Often, Second Cinema is “apolitical” and tries to universalize art, culture, and the human experience, a naïve testament to "art for art's sake". However, I agree with Solanas and Getino when they say: "Ideas such as 'Beauty in itself is revolutionary' and 'All new cinema is revolutionary' are idealistic aspirations that do not touch the neocolonial condition, since they continue to conceive of cinema, art, and beauty as universal abstractions and not as an integral of the national processes of decolonization" (ibid, 3). Even if the second cinema film attempts to question capitalism or colonialism, it may be caught up in denouncing the effects and not the causes, trapped in a reformist merry-go-round (ibid, 7). Or perhaps it simply documents without any attempt to intervene--even symbolically. After all, "revolutionary cinema is not fundamentally one which illustrates, documents, or passively establishes a situation: rather, it attempts to intervene…" [emphasis original] (ibid, 6).

Solanas and Getino made a film in 1968 called La Hora de los Hornos or The Hour of the Furnaces (dir. Solanas and Getino, 1968) about the political climate in Argentina and the need for socialist revolution. When they hosted clandestine screenings of this film, it was an overtly revolutionary act to simply watch it because to be a spectator: you were literally risking your life. The counterrevolution could storm in and shoot up the place any minute. Moreover, it was never just a screening; the films served a multifold revolutionary agenda. They at the very least always held a debate afterwards, turning every viewer into an active participant. They also frequently supplemented the film showing with other revolutionary arts; sometimes they would stage a play or read a poem. The film screening served multiple utilitarian functions. First, it was "an effective pretext for gathering" people in a revolutionary meeting. Second, the strong educational and ideological message of the film engaged with current socio-political realities grounded in class analysis and encouraged viewers to do the same. And most importantly, the attendees are radically transformed from passive viewer to active revolutionary via the screening as an event (ibid, 5). To quote Ella Shohat and Robert Stam:

Rather than vibrating to the sensibility of an auteur, the spectators are encouraged to 'author' their own collective narrative. Rather than placing a hero on the screen, the film suggests that audience members are history's real protagonists. Rather than a place of regression, the cinema becomes a political stage on which to act (Shohat & Stam, 262).

 In some cases, these screenings would even directly lead to revolutionary actions such as demonstrations (Solanas & Getino, 5). As you can see, Third Cinema is more than artistic rebellion; it is truly a cinema of action.

So back to the initial question; can we make Third Cinema here in the belly of the beast, in the most imperialist of imperialisms, the settler state of the USA? Solanas, Getino, Teshome Gabriel, and other Third Cinema theorists would say, yes. Directors in the first world can make third cinema, if it is aligned with global anti-imperialist/decolonial struggles (Field 2018, 278).
 Side note: I will be using the terms “First” and “Third” World, not as any sign of hierarchy or condescension, but because this is the language used by these revolutionaries. It is a show of solidarity with the “Third Worldist” Marxist position that emphasizes decolonial struggles in the global south as the world’s path to liberation.

 

Where Does the LA Rebellion Come Into All This?

When third cinema was just freshly theorized and brand new, there were already American filmmakers who were hooked on its message. And they were exactly who you might expect to be invested in anti-imperialist cinema; one of the US's own internal colonies. This is a black film movement through and through.

In the '60s, new initiatives like Affirmative Action finally pushed American universities to recruit more students of color, a mission which became all the more urgent on the West Coast in the wake of the Watts insurrection of '65 (Field et. al, 5). Cut to (arguably) UCLA's first black faculty member (ibid, 6), Elyseo Taylor, who was the only black faculty in the School of Theatre, Film, and Television while he was there. In 1970, "Elyseo Taylor became founding director of a program called Media Urban Crisis (MUC)" which was the new "ethno-communications" program at the college (ibid, 8). This program was "designed to train Black, Chicano, Asian, and Native American students at UCLA to use mass communication technologies to document their own communities and thereby increase understanding of and a sense of cultural participation for marginalized groups" (ibid, 9).
So, with a new multiracial cohort of students, the MUC program began. However, this first cohort was not integrated into the rest of the school: they had their own funding (from a grant from the Ford foundation)and their own equipment. They almost operated outside the school itself, though these students certainly did raise their voices and made themselves heard in the institution (ibid, 11). Taylor made sure that students learned about film and not only film production, forging connections to African filmmakers and bringing them in for lectures. He also created a new course: "Film and Social Change". He was very much enthusiastic about using film in a black liberation context. However, to the students’ dismay and anger, Taylor was denied tenure and soon had to leave the school. UCLA brought in Teshome Gabriel, an acclaimed Third World film scholar, to "replace" Taylor and teach the course, which he did until his death in 2010 (ibid, 13).

The students worked very closely and collaboratively throughout the years, and this collaboration started right away. Students started off with their “Project One” films and were thrown right into the fray. They worked together across ethnicity but were “encouraged to work within their minority groups” in order to authentically make a film which reflects that community. “There was certainly a naïve assumption operating here about community, one that elides differences of gender, class, and geographic origin and segments students along the reductive category of ethnic identity” (Field 2015, 85). This led to some conflicts among students such as women being marginalized within their own groups (ibid). But, the films produced by women in this cohort are especially powerful even though they had to face many extra challenges. Regardless, this loose collective forged powerful connections that would last for decades, as, according to Clyde Taylor, “Black independents were remarkable for their positive, supportive style, across the board” (Taylor, xviii). Eventually, older students like Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett, and Larry Clark, would really take on a vital mentoring role to others. Burnett became the TA for the Project One class in the mid 70s and got nicknamed “the professor” (Field 2015, 87). 

There were a lot of long-lasting bonds formed in those times, but also tensions, particularly with the white students. White students “met with skepticism” content about racism and police brutality which was obviously very frustrating (ibid, 88). Regardless, students (particularly students of color) crewed on one another’s shoots and spent many nights up late in the editing room (ibid, 87).  Apparently, the Project Ones were really confrontational, and some were even violently problematic-- depicting sexual assault and violence in irresponsible and misogynistic ways (ibid, 89). Field writes that these “filmmakers also rehearse patriarchal and nationalist notions of gender roles in these early films and in this respect reflect contemporary debates about the role of women in revolutionary struggle. The machismo evident in some of these early films extended to the classroom, where professors reportedly felt intimidated by the perceived aggression of the male students of color” (ibid, 90). I can’t find a lot of info about the causes of this perceived aggression aside from one anecdote of Haile Gerima and another student carrying a white professor out of class for trying to screen Birth of a Nation without talking about race, which I think is somewhat justified honestly (Field 2015, 90). This leads me to believe that a lot of this perception on the part of white professors was simply due to their preconceived notions about Black and Latino men. However, that is not to say that the men of color in this group were not reproducing sexism. Especially in project one films, there is evidence of some very problematic sexist manifestations of Black Power. See The Red Papers, a collection of writings by female Black Panthers about combating sexism in Black nationalist liberation. See also the work of the Third World Women’s Alliance for a thoroughly intersectional feminist understanding of imperialist oppression. So, even though this group was very invested in liberation, they weren’t perfect and still reproduced different axes of oppression like misogyny and homophobia. 

Triple Jeopardy zine cover 1971, from Women of Color Resource Center on Flickr

 

The students created diverse works but shared a passion for “elaborating distinct elements of Black culture and exploring the lifeworlds of Black working class and poor people” (Field et. al, 4). They ranged from more narrative to more experimental, from short to long, from subtle to confrontational and were of differing aesthetics, pacing, and themes. Despite this diversity, there are certainly many common threads and broad strokes to outline the connections that make these pieces fit in as part of a unique African American Third Cinema movement. In “Tough Enough: Blaxploitation and the L.A. Rebellion”, Jan-Christopher Horak writes:

On the one side, a film like Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama (1975) consciously eschewed Hollywood genre narratives, relying instead on Third World cinema–style elliptical montages, mixing documentary and fiction as well as multiple levels of audio with extremely fragmented editing... At the other end of the spectrum, Jamaa Fanaka’s films like Emma Mae (1976) and Penitentiary (1979) employed the tactics of mainstream cinema to produce Black films as cheaply as possible, but they also critiqued Hollywood’s vision of African Americans through self-conscious irony (Horak, 124).

Despite their unique strategies and often more narrative and Euro-arthouse inspired modes than some other militant cinema, these films all operated on a level that critiqued and disrupted American racism, the incarceration and welfare state, control of women’s reproductive rights--particularly black women, American imperialism, etc. (Field et. al, 20-21).

What were they fighting against?

In the 1960s, Hollywood was facing a crisis of funding. After noticing the great commercial success of films like Melvin Van Peebles’s independent production, Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1971), studios finally decided to pick up features with black casts and even black directors. Before this, “institutional racism on the part of producers, studios, and craft unions conspired for much of the 1960s to keep African Americans out of the director’s chair and away from positions of industry power in general” (Sieving, 204). The movies that they made brought in huge profits as evidenced by the excessive reproduction of the “Blaxploitation” formula in numerous sequels, spinoffs, and ripoffs.
What was this formula? Set in inner city neighborhoods, such movies would follow a black hero or heroine who used their street smarts, bravery, and sex appeal to stick it to the man (Wilson). Replete with drug pushers, pimps and prostitutes, and crooked white cops, these movies were widely criticized by civil rights groups, film critics, and others as flattened and sensationalized portraits of black life. Christopher Sieving asserts that the new sex and violence formula was more commercially viable than black cinema prior to the 70s which was too artsy, political, or confused about its audience (Sieving, 202-206). Movies like Shaft (dir. Gordon Parks, 1971) and SuperFly (dir. Gordon Parks jr, 1972) showed their badass super-stud protagonists kicking ass and seducing  their way through life, getting the one-up on white mobsters, politicians, and cops-- all to a groovy as hell soundtrack. They are criticized for promoting a toxic interpretation of black masculinity, glamorizing drugs and ghetto life, and treating their female characters as sexy props, among other things (Wilson, Sieving, Horak, Mason, etc.). Though there were female equivalents in the genre in the form of franchises like Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones--both directed by men--wherein the strong and of course sexy black women protagonists get revenge on both oppressive white establishments and also local drug dealers whom they believe are preying on their own communities. 

 

Though these movies were widely enjoyed, there was also lots of backlash. There was a big opposition effort headed by groups like People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the NAACP. “Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP, describes Super Fly as ‘an insidious film which portrays the black community at its worst. It glorifies the use of cocaine and casts blacks in roles which glorify dope-pushers, pimps and grand theft'" (Mason, 62). Now, that statement is coming from an organization often criticized for its liberal reformism and politics of respectability. On the other hand, it seems the Panthers’ initial reaction to Sweetback was indeed a positive one. Huey P. Newton--Minister of Defense of the BBP--even wrote a whole article about it, saying that “it is the first truly revolutionary Black film” (Newton). So, Blaxploitation was more complex than the simple economic exploitation of black audiences and the proliferation of stereotypes. Increased inclusion and compensation of creative black filmmakers in the industry is a positive consequence of the Blaxploitation cycle, yet it is clear that whites were capitalizing on the sensational images and stereotypes that these movies were making. It seems likely that “Black directors, in particular, were considered by the studios to be insurance policies, or guarantees against accusations of stereotyping and exploiting” (Sieving, 206). Though in reality they were obviously not immune from criticism from the black community.

 

So, are the L.A. rebellion filmmakers really part of "Third Cinema"?

Well, many film scholars point out that they are at least "aligned" with Third Cinema. According to Allyson Nadia Field, the L.A. Rebellion took a great deal of direct inspiration from this movement. In her essay, "Third Cinema in the First World", Field states what I have heard throughout multiple texts about the movement: that the "L.A. Rebellion filmmakers sought to align their work with global anti-imperialist fights'' and were in many cases trying to emulate what they’d learned about Third Cinema (Field 2018, 277). It is interesting, though unsurprising, that the filmmakers espoused such global solidarity with anti-imperial struggles given the often hyper-localized nature of these works. In the words of Alessandra Raengo, “The L.A. Rebellion produced a cinema profoundly engaged with its local community, in other words, a cinema that finds elsewhere the artistic tools to articulate something very specific and tragically neglected about the over here” [emphasis original] (Raengo, 298). Even though there were students in that program from all over the country and even abroad, a lot of them were L.A. natives, and much of the work produced is very grounded in the spacio-temporality of L.A. in the late 60s through the 80s. There is something about the texture of these films, their rhythm and language, which is deeply culturally specific: from lingering shots of urban landscapes to carefully curated soundtracks to simple, quiet moments in the character's daily lives. 

Field points out that students sought to “inform an approach to domestic concerns, with local issues presented as part of a larger international struggle against systemic oppression” (Field 2018, 277). As the students learned about film from a global perspective, gaining access to African, Latin American, and Asian cinema, they made connections between those movements introduced by Professor Gabriel and their own circumstances as minorities in the states. Field writes that the L.A. rebellion was very invested in “decolonizing the mind,” an endeavor which she claims is “in the case of the ‘internal colony’ inhabited by a nonwhite underclass, perhaps the most radical gesture” (ibid, 280). This “internal colony” describes Third Worldist/Black Maoist perspectives popularized by the Panthers which views black people as an internal colony of the United States, drawing parallels between the settler colonialism in the US, including the kidnapping and enslavement of black people, and the ways that that the West has subjugated, economically exploited, and underdeveloped the global South (Martin & Bloom, 66). It was in this context that the filmmakers operated, shining a light with a sensitive “insider’s” touch on issues of the urban Black underclass.

[DASH INTERVIEW 01:46-02:43]
As Dash says here, this movement was really about making films about the stories that were being neglected. Similarly, in L.A. Rebellion filmmaker Zeinabu Davis’s words, “Generally speaking, the hope of the group is to realize a cinema of informed, relevant, and unfettered Black expression and the means to bypass the restrictive apparatus of distribution and exhibition to create a viable, alternative delivery system that will sustain the ongoing work of Black cinema artists” (Davis, 157). I believe that the goals regarding creating a new expressive black cultural medium have been exceeded, but it seems to me that the distribution part has been a bit neglected, something which I will discuss in greater detail later on.
The term “L.A. rebellion” is itself somewhat controversial. It was coined by Clyde Taylor to describe the first retrospective exhibition of the movement which he helped to present at the Whitney Museum in 1986: “The L.A. Rebellion: A Turning Point in Black Cinema” (Horak 2011). Apparently, Taylor simply coined it for the sake of coming up with a catchy name for the retrospective (ibid), and many scholars choose to use other terms like “the L.A. Collective” or the “L.A. School” to describe the movement instead (Martin, 198-199). However, I think that it is an appropriate label since the rebellion against filmic convention and rebellion in political content was and is a defining feature of the movement—if it can be called a movement at all. According to Alessandra Raengo, if nothing else, thinking of these films as a movement-- as the L.A. Rebellion--can:
…emphasize the productivity of a specific set of circumstances: the first generation(s) of filmmakers of color to have a formal education in filmmaking; the first generation(s) of filmmakers of color to develop a specifically domestic focus/aesthetics at the same time as they were articulating a transnational film language… (Raengo, 297).

This simultaneous alignment with global alternative and political cinema movements and tender care given to local people and situations can be seen in works such as Bush Mama (dir. Haile Gerima, 1979) which depicts a black woman, a mother in South Central L.A., coming into her own political consciousness after the incarceration of her partner T.C.

Bush Mama

 

Truly cemented in the rebellion’s canon, Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama (1979) is a strong example of the revolutionary tenets of third Cinema at work in both form and theme. Formally speaking, Bush Mama is a unique interjection with its cacophonous non-diegetic soundscapes, disjointed dreamlike sequences, and non-linear storytelling. Haile Gerima uses such rebellious filmic techniques to tell a vivid story about the interactions of systems of oppression and paths toward resistance, using the political radicalization of Dorothy as a conduit for the viewer. While focusing on big picture themes and the machinations of massive social forces, Gerima also also develops characters and their motives, fleshing out these elements to keep the viewer invested on a personal level.
The non-linear storytelling in Bush Mama is one obvious example of defying convention. This aspect of the film serves multiple purposes: 1. The nonlinear time opposes conventional Western fiction narratives, instead placing power in the African diaspora’s traditions. 2. It calls attention to the filmmaking process, introducing a metanarrative aspect. 3. It emphasizes the arbitrary, strange, disruptive inevitability of oppression.
Gerima loves to oppose Western hegemony in his films. Speaking on mainstream film industries, Gerima has said that such industry “monopolistically imposes itself on people as a kind of complete reality and can sometimes replace a person's original and intuitive knowledge and temperament. It displaces those sensibilities. It makes its own standard the official standard” (Jackson & Gerima, 27). So, Gerima is invested in creating films which employ the traditions and sensibilities of the colonized instead, a principle which is very much in line with Third Cinema. “We all don't come out of the Aristotelian paradigm and the Greek and Roman and Spanish aesthetics,” says Gerima,  “We have our own narrative sensibilities, especially those of us who come from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We have our own aesthetics, narrative temperaments that should be appreciated by all human beings” (ibid, 28). With that in mind, it makes sense to me that he would place less emphasis on a “cohesive” linear story as defined by Western literary tradition and more on the emotions and truths within.
Gerima is also drawing attention to the intentional construction of this film, breaking the illusion that Hollywood cinema so often preserves. Gerima wants you to think for yourself when watching his film, not to blindly accept the activities on a screen as truth. Far from the false objectivity and apolitical-ness of first cinema, Gerima wants to openly show you where he stands. Further, the incongruous cuts in the movie insert the viewer into the film in a deeper way by making them think about the filmmaking process and the significance of that choice. In this way, the viewer is forced to also become a “political” actor. It confronts you with confusion and forces you to take a side. You think deeply about both the behind the scenes and the content/images themselves as you try to piece it together as an active part of the film’s creation. You’re drawn in to make your own connections between the shots and thus reminded of your own revolutionary agency.

Moreover, certain cuts and montages serve to jar the viewer and evoke the metaphor of a violent and illogical oppression. Perhaps the most jarring cut comes at 00:19:30 when the scene goes from T.C. leaving for a job interview to being escorted into a prison cell. This cut works on a few levels. Firstly, it’s a popping of the bubble that was starting to form of hope and faith in the neoliberal American Dream when we thought T.C. might get a job and make things better. It is also a radical denial of the white narrative of incarceration being a deserved consequence of some action. Why is he there? What did he do? It doesn’t matter. It’s unfortunately just the way this system works, funneling black folks into jail; there doesn’t need to be a reason.  On this unconventional cut, Gerima said:
...one of the experiences of being black in America is not going where you want to go, being stopped. . . . It is a truthful representation to cut from him leaving for the job interview to a prison scene without justifying how he got in jail. . . . That one cut in Bush Mama satisfies a truthfulness to a black experience. (Field 2018, 284)
 

There’s also the oft told anecdote of the opening scene in Bush Mama, the one of two black men being stopped and frisked by white cops next to their car. Now, I would not have known, if not for reading about this movement extensively, that this was in fact director Haile Gerima and a crew member on the shoot being stopped, presumably for being black and having film equipment. I don’t know if everyone who saw this film was privy to this information when it was released back in the day, nor does it really matter, however, this scene is a deeply ironic and perfect encapsulation of the absurd and evil policing of black people in L.A. that they were talking about in this film (Cason, 122).

In terms of its exact politics, the film has been read differently by various film scholars. For instance, Casey Shoop contests Mike Murashige’s reading of the film with regard to T.C. and Dorothy’s relationship, arguing that T.C. is not, as Murashige claims, acting chauvinistically in his letters. In his essay “Haile Gerima and the Political Economy of Cinematic Resistance,” Murashige asserts that Dorothy’s political awakening is indeed catalyzed by her partner and is caused in part by her partner’s letters to her from prison, however, her own experiences are also foregrounded as essential in the formation of her worldview. To him, Gerima presents many different narratives for Dorothy to draw from when constructing herself and her unique relationship to power and resistance (Murashige, 188). Dorothy’s friend Molly represents the ignorant mindset of victim-blaming and misdirected anger as she rants about black people “goin’ crazy”. The drunken man at the bar expresses something similar with his own insistence that the white man never “messed with” him, though his stance stems from a masculine ego wherein he clings to his false sense of agency as he claims--despite listing off ways that white society has screwed him over--that he would “whoop [their] ass” if they ever did mess with him. On the other hand, T.C. provides a useful critique of capitalism and its relationship with racism and colonialism; the young Angie provides a fresh and enthusiastic revolutionary spark; and Simmi provides connection to community with her experienced black feminst view of organizing built on bonds of kinship. Murashige asserts that T.C. becomes more depersonal, even condescending, with his increasingly preachy and abstract letters. Dorothy cannot see her own experiences reflected in T.C.’s critique which is narrow and even chauvinistic (ibid, 196). In the end, it takes hearing Simmi, a black woman organizer, discussing community for Dorothy to really connect this analysis of oppression with her own experiences and begin to take up resistance. 

However, Shoop attributes T.C.’s less tender and personal letters to the process of incarceration and not to any un-feminist failings. Shoop writes that “the chauvinism that Murashige reads into T.C.'s monologues should be attributed more directly to the process of penalization itself. ‘Tenderness’ is precisely what incarceration threatens to kill” (Shoop, 25). Shoop also disagrees with Murashige’s interpretation of the framing as indicating T.C. feeling threatened by a black woman’s agency, instead claiming that it simply serves to reinforce the atmosphere of state control over T.C. (ibid). What Murashige fails to mention when pointing out the distance between Dorothy and T.C. is the obvious: the role of state violence. It seems like, because he doesn’t mention this, Murashige is implying that T.C. is pushing Dorothy away because of some kind of male chauvinism or some personal choice. In so doing, he unintentionally imbues T.C. with far too much agency here and also, in my opinion, misinterprets Dorothy’s reactions.
Despite or perhaps because of the multiple simultaneous narratives and complexities in Bush Mama, it is still a Third Cinema film. For one, Gerima clearly constructs his works with Third Cinema in mind (Gerima). Gerima discusses the influences he had which were overwhelmingly from Third World cinema. As his investment in countering racism and imperialism in culture and his explicit alignment with decolonial global South film proves, Gerima is a Third Cinema practitioner according to most definitions.

Not only does Bush Mama point out the negative conditions inherent in colonial-capitalist ghetto-ization of black Americans; it also attempts to intervene. Dorothy is not only a surrogate for the viewer’s own challenged reality. Dorothy is more than a symbol; she is neither a “passive victim,” nor a two-dimensional “agential muse of revolutionary masculinism” which black women so often are made into (Shoop, 22). However, this deeply human character does inspire the viewer’s own parallel journey to political consciousness. The film asks--demands that the viewer reckon with what’s on screen just as Dorothy took things into her own hands when she killed the policeman who was raping her daughter. The final shot of Bush Mama is a realization of Dorothy’s character growth as well as the most explicit call to action in the film. After rack focusing between the poster of the Angolan freedom fighter with her baby in one arm and a gun in the other and Dorothy, drawing obvious parallels between Dorothy’s revolutionary act to defend her daughter and decolonial struggles abroad, it turns to a freeze frame. Then, we hear a monologue, a letter written from Dorothy to T.C. in which she stresses the importance of self-education [play “I have to get to know myself, to read and to study. We all have to, so we can change it” 1:35:52] but also communication and tender, loving bonds of kinship within the revolutionary struggle. Dorothy finally answers T.C.’s “preaching” with her own voice and calls on him to consider other people’s experiences when talking politics [play “most of the time I don’t understand your letters… talk the same talk, but talk easy to me” 1:36:10]. Especially with the final shot, Bush Mama goes beyond simple critique, offering paths of resistance via community organizing, political education, defending one another against oppressors, and revolutionary love.

Bush Mama is pretty different from a film like La Hora de los Hornos though, so it’s worth discussing variations within Third Cinema. I think that Michael Martin’s concept of “cine-memory,” the constant rewriting of history and present, works well to classify the different sub-strains of Third Cinema and to prove that the L.A. Rebellion was truly Third (and not second) cinema. However, it is worth noting that many writings complicate and dispute the category of Third Cinema. Maybe I am mis-categorizing according to some theorists. Critical of Teshome Gabriel’s definitions and “overdetermination” of Third Cinema, Anthony Guneratne writes that “the slippage between Second and Third Cinema in those original statements enables Gabriel to cite as examples of Third Cinema many films that more comfortably fit into García Espinosa’s category of Imperfect cinema than into Solanas’s and Getino’s Third Cinema” (Guneratne, 14). And yet, according to Paul Willemen, Third Cinema’s diversity should be emphasized. The theorists of Third Cinema apparently spoke of  “the historical variability of the necessary aesthetic strategies to be adopted;” different strategies to accomplish similar political goals (ibid, 14). Thus, it could be argued that the minute differences that determine what is and is not Third Cinema may come down to the circumstances of a film’s reception rather than its creation: "a dialogical relation exists between modes of authorial address and modes of reception” (ibid, 26). Perhaps then, it is the context of screenings and distribution that determines whether these movies are indeed Third Cinema. If they are siloed within the academy, presented as an artistic diversion for the intelligentsia to critique in the parlors of the global north, these films are not serving their purpose as catalysts for change.

In my opinion, despite the focus on culture and narrative as opposed to explicit political purposes in many of the L.A. Rebellion films, they still broadly meet the objectives of Third Cinema and do in fact, in their own way, accomplish one of the most important defining features of Third Cinema: intervention. According to Martin, “Class 2 cine-memory works to recuperate the past and in the service of renewal, identity, culture, and nation and infers comparisons between historical struggles” (Martin, 204). Films like Bush Mama do this, but it’s even more accurate to the films which had less of an overt call to concrete political action such as Cycles (dir. Zeinabu irene Davis, 1989) or The Diary of an African Nun (dir. Julie Dash, 1977). 

So let’s discuss Julie Dash’s The Diary of an African Nun (1977) and how it too is Third Cinema. Diary is adapted from an Alice Walker story of the same name. Set in Uganda, it follows a nun who is experiencing conflicting emotions about her cultural role and allegiance, incurring a crisis of faith. This film stars the same actress who portrayed Dorothy so beautifully in Bush Mama, Barabara O. Jones. In this short film, the titular nun character is shown walking around the wide open landscapes of Uganda near the convent grounds, writing her diary, and praying in her room. Virtually every shot of the nun contains only her in the frame, creating a clear isolating effect, particularly when she is cloistered in her chambers. The use of extreme wide shots and closeups both serve to underscore the nun’s feelings of disconnection and entrapment. 

In one shot, a girl frolics over to join her family and they walk with their arms around each other away from the camera. Then, the nun enters the frame, blocking them from view, and the camera pans right to follow her as she walks into the distance, her lone white figure populating the next few shots. The nun is literally moving away from the potential family she could have had and the culture to which she belonged in favor of a lonely existence where her figure in the frame looks almost like an affront to the environment. Her sense of belonging is now transferred to this colonial establishment, the Catholic church, which she must navigate as a black woman alone. She has chosen this life because it’s something she has wanted from a young age, to adopt this “regal” tradition, to be “shrouded in whiteness like the mountains I see from my window”.

However, this choice is not an easy one, as it sends the nun into turmoil. She describes feeling ambivalent about the role in colonization which she is playing as a representative of European cultural domination. From the very beginning, she writes, “As I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art housed in a magical color, the incarnation of civilization, anti-hedonism, and the fruit of a triumphant idea”. The nun’s relationship to the white travelers whom she encounters is indicative of the ambivalence he feels toward her vows. Each European confronts her with their own perceptions, perceptions which are undeniably colonial, condescending, and objectifying. The shots during this narration also work to complicate ideas of European cultural superiority. When she says “primitive art,” we are shown a side table with a plain white porcelain wash basin and pitcher, creating a Kulishovian association which urges us to think about the hypocrisy of calling African things “primitive,” while West European objects of that time period frequently reflect a boring artistic rigidity and capitalist/colonial modes of production. Who’s “primitive” now? Then when she says “the incarnation of civilization,” she shows us two other objects which represent the Western concept of civilization: a gregorian wall calendar inscribed with the image of Mary and baby Jesus and a table with a globe, glassware, and some books. These material objects show the technological and commodity fetishism shrouded in intellectualism present in Western culture, and the antique globe which displays the African continent invokes the European scramble for Africa. Who is really primitive here? Seems to me like that would be the group which barbarically conquered, pillaged, kidnapped, enslaved, sold, destroyed, and subordinated other societies.

Later, when the nun’s crisis reaches a high point, she is wearing less clothing, showing more of her brown skin and less of the white that shrouds her. She is trying in vain to connect with her uncaring white god through prayer, all the while thinking about the life of sensuality and vibrancy which she relinquished with her vows. The nun cries out to Jesus, but she receives no response, no engagement from her supposed “husband,” only the pounding of African drums in her mind. She then describes a courtship ritual of dance which becomes a passionate affair, the desperation in her voice reflected by the closeup of her face as she holds a rosary to her mouth, attempting to bite back the lust inside her. Afterwards, we see a barrage of quick close shots of her arms/hands clasping together in prayer interspersed with closeups of her face in which her eyes conspicuously move upward to the heavens. All the while, the frenzied drumming grows louder. To me, this sequence symbolizes the fragmentation of self and spirituality caused by the nun’s identity crisis. Who is she? A celibate devotee to the Catholic church and “wife” to God Himself, a pious, pure and noble woman? Or is she an agent of Western hegemony, representative of the Christianization and cultural erasure of colonialism which supports white power? Or is she a Ugandan woman who knows deep down that she longs to reconnect to her roots and her people? As the nun desperately tries to invoke her god, the film invokes ritual through repetition, except that instead of connecting her to community and providing solace, this ritual is hollow and strained.

This film depicts with a firm aesthetic cohesion the downfalls of imperialism, showing clearly how this African nun is “conflicted about serving white interests and how they lock the women into white-defined historical roles of servitude and invisibility” (Martin, 212).  Through its formal aesthetic choices like soundscape, mise en scene, framing, editing, and recurring visual motifs like the white marble figure of Jesus and confining horizontal lines, Diary calls on the viewer to consider cultural politics. How is culture erased and replaced, used violently in the context of colonialism? If this is the case in Africa, it is not difficult to draw connections to black and indigenous people in the states. Since the main character herself is both the oppressed and the oppressor due to her participation and assimilation in the colonial institution, the film also asks the viewer to consider their own role in perpetuating colonialism. This story is so different from anything in mainstream film and full of revolutionary potential even just in the centering of an African woman’s perspective and its candid discussion of colonialism. It is not hard to see how Dash’s film acts within the 2nd class of cine-memory to “refute held beliefs; substantiate and redress historical claims… and invite audiences, in the tradition of Third Cinema, to conjure and narrate their own outcomes for historical struggles” (ibid, 218).

Distributional Critique
I’m not gonna sit back here from my ivory tower and tell you that these revolutionary filmmakers didn’t do enough to get their films out there or that they failed in any way. That isn’t true. These movies changed history, and there definitely was community engagement going on during the making of these films. Charles Burnett’s highly acclaimed and much discussed Killer of Sheep starred local non-actors, and other productions used non-actors as extras too. Elyseo Taylor “visited Watts frequently, taking his still camera and his Bolex film camera to teach neighborhood youth how to document their own communities” (Field et. al, 6). And student Larry Clark started a workshop through Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles where he helped to train “inner city youth” in film; at a 2011 Q&A he said “I made myself a promise that I would have one foot in UCLA and another foot in the community” (Field 2015, 90). However, it has been very difficult for me to figure out the exact political activities of all these filmmakers and how/if they really used their films in a context which made them useful to the revolutionary project. That is really the factor that determines whether or not this should be identified as “Third Cinema”. It was really hard to actually get these films out to the public, particularly to larger black audiences. According to the preliminary research done by the organizers of UCLA’s big 2011 retrospective on the Rebellion,  “less than 39 percent of our initial list of L.A. Rebellion titles received distribution of any kind, other than when venues directly approached the filmmakers with invitations to screen their work or borrow prints” (Field et. al, 35). For one, these films were obviously not the entertainment that folks had come to expect from film; they are confrontational and, honestly, inaccessible at times due to their avante-garde-ness. Field, Horak, and Stewart write:

But it is not surprising that their work could not reach mass Black audiences, given that so few titles received theatrical distribution and so little of the work fit the generic and stylistic parameters that were familiar to viewers, or marketable to them via the attention of major media outlets. Indeed, it is not clear that all of the filmmakers wanted to reach Black audiences on the same scale as “Blaxploitation” films. Instead, because these artists also crafted individual voices in auteurist terms, their films received the most initial critical attention outside the orbit of the Los Angeles–based film industry, from academics and the film community at large in Europe and other places far from L.A.  (Field et. al, 29).

So what does this mean?

A primary criticism of Third Cinema is that it supposes a very particular reception on the part of its audience, constructing films for an imagined spectator who they consider paradoxical in nature. At the same time this imagined spectator is assumed to be depoliticized, in need of lessons about class consciousness, and simultaneously appreciative of and receptive to the strange and “oppositional” aesthetics in which the film operates. How could this spectator be both ignorant of politics and sophisticated enough to appreciate the film? I think this is somewhat of a contradiction, however, we must also avoid condescension here; I am sure there are people who have not yet made the formalized connections between their own condition and these larger systems of oppression or have simply been too timid to act but are primed to do so if only given the vocabulary or that extra push. Surely, we mustn’t assume that poor people are incapable of appreciating “high art”. And yet, it is true that audiences who are so conditioned to have certain expectations of film could be alienated by such an extreme breakage of those conventions. According to Guneratne and Dissanayake: “Not unexpectedly, the audiences who responded to the aesthetics of Third Cinema were already familiar with its political motivations. Thus, Third Cinema’s critical reception and reception at film festivals could seldom be mapped onto the same experiential terrain as those of audiences at popular venues” (Guneratne & Dissanayake, 181). Confining Third Cinema to festivals, academia, and artsy cinephilic annals can hardly be a good thing since the whole point of Third Cinema is to be a tool of concrete decolonization and radicalization, a weapon of the revolution.

“Ultimately, the L.A. Rebellion artists did not form lasting collective mechanisms for funding and showing their work; though they worked as crew on each others’ films, they largely shepherded the financing and distribution of their own projects individually. Bernard Nicolas and Haile Gerima spearheaded distribution initiatives” (Field et. al, 50) and the nonprofit Black Filmmaker Foundation and other similar projects did get these films some circulation (ibid, 35). They played at venues and festivals both domestically and internationally, but the films of the Rebellion never even approached the kind of recognition achieved by the “Blaxploitation” movies they were trying to oppose. If the “goal” of these filmmakers wasn’t necessarily to reach mainstream black audiences according to the editors of LA Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema, can it really be said to be serving a utilitarian purpose in raising revolutionary consciousness? Chuck Kleinhans argues that the momentum that was building towards a new independent black cinema was hindered due to the misconceptions and utopian errors of the Rebellion’s practitioners (Kleinhans, 58). He contends that filmmakers and critics--and presumably others who supported the movement-- “did not deal realistically with the nature of film viewing in the African American community” (ibid, 59). They were, understandably, very opposed to replicating the tropes and conventions perpetuated by the Hollywood machine and therefore avoided sports, music, comedy, and mainstream entertainment strategies which may have made their work more marketable (ibid, 60). He also argues that divisions among black communities in the wake of the civil rights era and disunities within the group caused by differing stances on things like feminism and gay liberation likely contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Rebellion. People’s personal circumstances were also constantly in flux, especially since these filmmakers started out as students, so turnover rate was high (ibid, 64). Ultimately, there are many reasons why the L.A. Rebellion folks did not necessarily widely disseminate their films or create a lasting platform for indie black cinema. Though, of course, there are always thriving black artists creating wonderful indie films like multimedia artist Cauleen Smith who exhibits her work in galleries across the country.

However, decades later, after these films have had a chance to permeate film studies and even get a tiny taste of mainstream recognition (Dash’s Daughters of the Dust; Burnett’s Killer of Sheep), I do think that there are long resonating successes. I would like to acknowledge the countless hours of hard work done by the academics and alums of this movement to preserve the films and get them out there into the world. In 2011 for this massive L.A. Rebellion retrospective, a group of passionate folks put together a book (the primary reference text for this essay), a website, a series of interviews, restored films, and toured the films around the country. Though the revolutionary messages seem to have been dulled by the grindstone of academia, I think that perhaps this second life is the closest thing these films ever got to Third Cinema distribution. Alessandra Raengo discusses the methodology of touring these films, particularly in the South, emphasizing the context of their viewing. She says that because the “L.A. Rebellion demands a collectivity at the point of reception,” the group tried their best to not only deliver the films but to provide context for them and make sure that audiences were able to engage and process them (Raengo, 295). Speaking on the Atlanta leg of the tour, Raengo writes:

We mapped out environments that we believed should be exposed to this type of cinema and created teach-ins to educate various Atlanta communities, bringing the filmmakers to places as diverse as the fine art gallery and the feminist bookstore, the community arts center and the corporate world. We facilitated postscreening conversations to foster contacts between filmmakers and audiences and to let the works reverberate as we discussed them informally (Raengo, 294).

This recent archival effort has been instrumental in bringing some of this work a little further into the light. This kind of thing is what we need to do more of. With Third Cinema films, we need to really make that effort to implement Third Cinema viewing and distro practices! 

Some things that might be helpful in realizing the revolutionary goals of these movies:
Creating a real formal collective rooted in decolonial socialist politics to facilitate production and distribution of such films. Unlike the informal “collective” of the Rebellion, this would be a political group structured with mass-line vanguardist strategies in mind.

Making these movies more readily available! I think they should be FREE online with an optional donation that goes to both the filmmaker and the collective who is hosting the streaming site.
Promoting these as revolutionary literature akin to pamphlets, speeches, and other radicalizing methods. Distributing them to specific organizations: political orgs, mutual aid groups, community centers, arts nonprofits, etc.

That’s just my two cents. I love these movies; I want them to be seen! And I hope that I have inspired you to give them a try.

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