Addendum to the 60s

Black God White Devil (1964) - Glauber Rocha

As an afterthought I realized that amidst my overview of the 60s I left out a few things. For starters I ignored most of Asian cinema aside from Japan. What we've come to recognize as the definitive Hong Kong martial arts film got its start in the 60s with films by Chang Cheh and King Hu. In mainland China Xie Jin's Two Stage Sisters was one of the earliest films to draw attention to Chinese cinema. Over in Taiwan a host of offbeat films were being released which I've seen far too few of, although I can't recommend The Bride and I enough.

In India Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray continued to make excellent films even if the domestic audience was still ignoring their work in favor of Bollywood spectaculars which were a plenty. Even the Middle East was feeling the spirit of the New Wave. Directors like Egypt's Youssef Chahine were drawing attention to a cinema few were aware of. Iran had its own new wave with films like Gaav and The House is Black. Although begun in the 50s, this was seemingly a whole new continent for cinema goers and thanks to ever increasing festivals and revival houses the work was able to spread to a whole new film conscious audience.

I'm not sure if the Middle East can be considered "third world" by our standards, even in the 60s, but a whole new group of countries were emerging with a unique cinematic voice from parts less economically developed. Ousmane Sembene became forever known as "The Father of African Cinema" when his first feature film Black Girl was released in 1966. Sembene would continue to be the best African born director for the next four decades until his death a few years ago. The Senegal ties to France however indicated just how dependent an African cinema was on outside help. For the first time however Africa and Africans could be depicted by people who were actually African rather than the traditional colonialist slant we're still occasionally burdened with (Blood Diamond anyone?).

Equally volatile were the various film movements of Latin America. Although the first credited Cuban film was by a Russian no less, they did find their own voice particularly with the films of Homberto Solas and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. If Argentina never made another film besides Hour of the Furnaces it would still draw recognition in every film textbook. In addition were films from Venezuala, Chile, and Bolivia. However it was Brazil that would have the most profound impact on cinema. Glauber Rocha alone was a beast of cinema whose four films in the 60s got more and more political and experimental. Like his French counterparts (he appeared in Godard's Wind in the East, and Godard likewise appeared in Rocha's The Lion Has Seven Heads) Rocha was a film critic and used his knowledge of cinema to make the type of films he had not been able to see. Nelson Pereira dos Santos was certainly no slouch and although not as overtly political was the first of the two to gain international attention with his 1963 film Vidas Secas.

Amidst my praising of France, Italy, Britain, and Eastern Europe I left out our German friends. Although their national cinema was in something of a dark abyss internationally with a string of "Heimat" films, times were improving. Led by Alexander Kluge's manifesto (Rocha wrote a similar one directed at Third World Cinema), a new generation of German cinema was born. These directors (all of whom worked from West Germany) made the type of personal cinema akin to their Western European counterparts which found enormous attention at international festivals and little acknowledgment at home. Yet this is when we got the first (and I think best) collaboration from Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Hulliet, and the first works of Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff. Although these directors would find greater recognition and success in the following decade, it was this movement spearheaded by Kluge that helped make a new West German cinema possible.

And well that might do it for now. Australia and New Zealand still hadn't established film centers, and aside from Ingmar Bergman most of Scandinavian cinema were mere footnotes. We're still waiting for a cinema to emerge from Antarctica (well some people might be). So if I've left any more film movements out my apologies, but it was a busy and great decade. Also should point out that I hadn't forgotten about Luis Buñuel whose cinema took him all over the world in the 60s making masterpieces in Spain (Viridiana), Mexico (The Exterminating Angel), and France (Belle du Jour).