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Third World cinema as a Form of Liberation

 

            In order to address and come to a conclusion regarding the historical, political and cultural context(s) in which Third Cinema' came to being an important part of the third world's struggle for self identity and liberation, differing modes of knowledge will be interpolated with examples from the Sudanese film Human Being. The works of scholars Edward Said, Teshome H. Gabriel, and Fernando Solananas and Octavio Getino will be utilised in order to give an analytical theses as to how and why third world film is so massively influenced by the sphere of colonial influence.
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             Ibrahim Shaddad's (1994) Human Being gives the viewer a compelling depiction of a rural Sudanese farmer's struggle to find himself amongst the foreign environment of an urban setting. The awe and wonderment which he displays at the sight of mere everyday objects such as glass windows, VCRs and television sets evidently casts the farmer as a newcomer who has been totally immersed in new surroundings. The move that he makes to the city leaves behind subsistence farming in an attempt to reappropriate capitalist ideology to suit his particular context. The farmers constant struggle to find regular employment and the various ways in which he tries to sustain a monetary fuelled existence, clipping nails in the park, begging etc, all clearly exhibit this third world filmmakers fascination with the so-called exile' film. The farmer's experiences have been portrayed in a fish-out-of-water' manner, as he seems lost and confused within the metropolis setting, having been cut off from his rural roots. The clichéd phrase you can take the man out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the man' seems to be an appropriate analysis of the situation. The filmic technique of cross cutting displays nostalgic scenes that depict the farmer's former lifestyle interpolated with the his new urban setting creating an emotional narrative which yearns for the days of old.


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