Fernando Solanas: An Interview
Solanas, Fernando and MacBean, James Roy. Film Quarterly volume 24, no. 1 (Autumn 1970), pp. 37-43.
This article is an interview with Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Solanas about documentary filmmaking and Third Cinema, the cinematic ideology which he and a collaborator founded and popularized in the latter half of the 20th century. Solanas discusses the tenets of Third Cinema–a democratizing, anti-capitalist approach to filmmaking which deemphasizes Hollywood and prioritizes filmmakers in the global South–as well as questions of revolutionary cinema and the aesthetics of ideology in both fictional and documentary filmmaking.
All cinema is narrative, whether it creates an original fictional narrative, adapts its narrative from another medium, or uses reality to craft an argument and a story about a given scenario. These narratives have the potential for political power, whether they use that power to destroy peace, to change minds, or to kickstart the peacebuilding process. Solanas’s films are aware of this power, and they use every facet of cinema–aesthetic, emotion, storytelling, and the image–to radicalize and promote a positive narrative about Latin America and about the oppressed globally. His ideas and ideology, while not explicitly about peacebuilding, help us understand how film, both fictional and documentary, can bring justice and peace to communities globally.