imperialism - FilmRoot

Lucia (Cuba) – This 1960s Film is Stylish and Progressive

Lucia Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

How well do you know your Cuban history? Lucia charts the evolution of revolutionary consciousness in Cuba from Spanish Imperialism until after the Cuban revolution through the stories of three women named Lucia (living in 1896, 1932, and 1960 respectively). Who’d thought a Cuban film made in the 1960s would be more progressive than most of the Hollywood films of today because of it’s political consciousness and female protagonists.

Image result for lucia 1968

Why Should You Watch Lucia?

To experience life in Cuba before and after the revolution
If you like period films you’ll love the first two parts
For some chaotic battle scenes
To see how to add emotion to film scenes

The Breakdown

Part one. It’s 1895. Lucia, a lady from the upper class, gossips with her friends about another lady who has just returned from Paris with a rich, chubby husband before they all head into church. She catches the eye of a trader whilst in church, and they both exchange smiles. This is romance of the 1890s.

As part one progresses, you gradually see more and more of the demise of Spanish imperialism. Firstly, from the horrific story of Fernandina; a former nun that crazily roams the streets after being raped. Secondly from the doomed love affair of Lucia. And, lastly from the chaotic battles that take place at the end of the segment. The chaos which ends part one is a long way from the playful gossip that starts the film.

You’ll also notice how Humberto Solas adds loads of emotion to his film. For example, in Fernandina’s rape scene, he quickly cuts between different angles preventing us from focusing on one view point which disrupts our viewing flow. To add to the effect, he uses a hand-held camera. The combination of the quick cutting and the hand-held camera make us feel Fernandina’s confusion and horror as all these soldiers are frantically chasing her. If you’ve seen Sergei Eisenstein’s famous Battleship Potemkin, you’ll recognise this chaotic montage.

Conclusion

Lucia is stylish and progressive. It mixes quick cutting montages and hand-held cameras into it’s three parts which all feature women. For a film that charts the evolution of the revolutionary consciousness in Cuba from Spanish Imperialism to after the Cuban revolution, check out Lucia!

Click on the poster on the left to buy on Amazon!

Epicentro – An Outsider’s Perspective of Cuba

Epicentro Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Why Watch Epicentro?

It’s an interesting outsider’s perspective of a forgotten country
To meet anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist locals
Watch a filmmaker unwittingly become part of the cycle of exploitation

From: Cuba, North America
Watch: Trailer, IMDb, Website
Next: The Project of the Century, I Am Cuba, Let it Burn

Perfumed Nightmare (Philippines) – A Revolutionary Comedy

Perfumed Nightmare Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Honestly, I was a bit confused at the start of Perfumed Nightmare as the tone seemed a bit off. The film was made in 1977, but the black and white footage looks even older, so I was surprised to have the fourth wall broken a few times by the main character, Kidlat, after he pulls an increasingly larger toy truck over a bridge. The genre is also deliberately hard to pin down. It gives off the appearance of a stylish, amusing ethnographical film set in rural Philippines to disguise its strong revolutionary undertones. Don’t let anything put you off from watching this movie though as it’s a brilliantly unique and clever contribution to the Third Cinema movement.

From: Philippines, Asia
Watch: JustWatch, IMDb
Next: Black Girl, Breathless, Born in Flames

Perfumed Nightmare – The Breakdown

There are a lot of familiar elements in Perfumed Nightmare as it deliberately borrows from a mixture of well-known revolutionary film-making. The frenetic pace of the movie, with cuts across time and a fuzzy narrative voice that seems to be a half-second behind the images, feels a lot like Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic film, Breathless. The fast paced montages of Filipino and Parisian society, which meshes together a range of stock and new images showing the evolution of society towards modernization, borrows from Dziga Vertov’s influential Man with a Movie Camera. Both of these influences (each monumental to the development of European film) are referenced by the Director, Kidlat Tahimik, to stake a claim for Filipino film within the context of cinema and to also set Filipino film apart by reclaiming the medium’s portrayal of the Philippines.

One of the best things Kidlat Tahimik adds to the revolutionary film movement is humor. It both makes the film more enjoyable whilst also targeting the ‘Third World’s’ portrayal by ‘the West’ to reclaim it for the Third Cinema movement. One example of this is in the inventive use of dubbing, in which all of the film’s white characters, whether in the Philippines or Europe, are dubbed and made into comedic caricatures. One white person in the Philippines is turned into a bumbling, arrogant, imperialist, through the dubbing, whilst Kidlat’s French beneficiary is turned into a money obsessed businessman. Whilst it is fun to laugh at the dubbed characters, which makes the film an easier watch, the dubbing is also used to subvert the portrayal of Filipinos and other ‘Third World’ characters in Western film who are typically voiced and spoken for by white European/American directors. Instead, it’s the white characters that are spoken for in Perfumed Nightmare.

The film’s visual gags also serve a similar function. The shots of Kidlat filling up chewing gum dispensers in some ridiculous locations for his French beneficiary, whilst funny, also serves to make fun of capitalism. If chewing gum dispensers in cemeteries is the peak of Western progress, then capitalism and Western imperialism seems pointless. The humor is a welcome addition to an otherwise serious revolutionary genre. It makes the film easier to watch, but also backs up the central theme of Kidlat’s Charlie-Chaplin-esque journey chasing the American Dream; that life is better in the Philippines. Perfumed Nightmare mocks and rejects the progress of globalization, imperialism, capitalism, and everything the West stands for in favor of a celebration of Filipino life.

What to Watch Next

There’s a few places you can turn to next after watching Perfumed Nightmare. The most obvious place to go would be to watch more revolutionary films from the Third Cinema movement such as Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl or Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga. You could also brush up on your European film history, which Kidlat Tahimik subverts in this film, by watching Breathless or Man with a Movie Camera. Obviously both of these film movements have plenty more examples than the four listed above, so please don’t limit your exploration to these four movies!

Hero (South Korea) – The First Cinematic Adaptation of a Patriotic Musical

By Sebastian Torrelio

Jung Sung-hwa has led a historical charge forward in this role for a significant portion of his life thus far. Hero claims to be the first motion picture fully adapted in South Korea from a native Korean musical, Jung’s portrayal of nationalist Ahn Jung-geun transitioning alongside the source. He does take the liberties of transformation to heart with such a brutalist narrative – recreating the personal strokes that took Ahn through the final period of his life, leading into the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi.

Songs string along the first half of Hero, inspirational operatic breaks that never coax the outlying direction too disruptively. Even so, some numbers arise organically into a splendid vigor more emotional than stage-play standards can suffice. One showstopping tune from Kim Go-eun’s Seol-hee, a ringer played from a lady-in-waiting’s heart, ushers a dark inner turmoil to an otherwise prosperous Japanese regime. Many of the musical’s segments resonate in patriotic uproars more energetic in their war-like definition than anything reminiscent of mid-century Broadway.

This largely complement’s Hero while it initially paces out character introductions within the resistance with sillier odes to the delicious nature of dumplings, and how unity can come at the hands of a warm reunion over rations. Though by film’s second half, political record overwhelms Yoon’s balance, tone and historical relevance wrying Ahn’s every action into plot-driven forcefulness.

The brutality of the circumstance is hard to overlook, especially for a picture that opens with sacrificial appendage-severing amid a musically-snowbound group pledge. Romance, comedy, drama and heart-struck drumbeats deal out with synchronicity, levity like a forward-marching parade navigating the plot’s inevitable coup d’etat direction by intoxicating overcompensation into emotional suffering.

At least Hero cannot speak to be too uninteresting or slow for such a direct-to-nationalism Korean anniversary effort. Imperialism portrayed as undercover scheme-brokering alongside musical courtroom trial pleas is not necessarily something that can be easily indulged from a one-off Netflix selection. Such consistency in the film’s thespian roots unfortunately cannot hold cohesively to a country wanting to invoke and demand so much of its theatrical devotees.

Seen at CGV Cinemas LA

The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (Oman) – Feminist Revolution

The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

The Hour of Liberation has Arrived is the only first-hand account of the democratic, feminist Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf. Enabled by recent advances in film technology, the film gave voices to the voiceless to create one of the most direct revolutionary documentaries from the Arab world and beyond.

From: Oman, Asia
Watch: YouTube
Next: Battle of Algiers, Flame, Mortu Nega

Why Watch The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived?

For one of the best examples of a revolutionary documentary film, helped by recent technological advances to film equipment
It broke boundaries – it was the first film directed by an Arab woman that was screened at Cannes (in 1974)
It’s the only first-hand account of the democratic, feminist guerrilla movement against the British backed Sultanate of Oman

The Breakdown

The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived offers the only glimpse of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, a secular, democratic, feminist revolutionary movement that managed to liberate one third of the Sultanate of Oman. In the region they liberated, the Front launched an extensive program of social reforms, captured in this revolutionary documentary, the most radical being affirmative action for women.

Filmed in 1971, The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived was made possible due to advances in film technology. It brought voices to the voiceless through synch sound (sound recorded at the time of filming). Whilst synch sound had been around since the birth of sound movies, it had only recently become more portable with new hand-held filming equipment that could record sound and video by itself, without a separate sound recorder. Without this advance in technology, this film wouldn’t have been made, as the 800 kilometers that Heiny Srour and her Team had to walk to reach the Front (under the bombing of the British Royal Air Force) would have been dauntingly arduous. The advance in synch sound technology allowed filmmakers, particularly documentary filmmakers, to capture otherwise inaccessible locations. The less intrusive equipment also allowed filmmakers to capture more authentic representations of reality – a truckload of equipment, lighting, and larger crews make people act different to one person filming with a small camera.

The film pieces together stock and live footage, photography, maps, and voice-over narration to create both a first-hand account of the movement, as well as a revolutionary manifesto. The photography and live footage provide the first-hand account of the revolutionaries and their day to day activities, whilst the stock footage, maps, and voice-over narration provide the anti-imperialist impetus that drives them. Its use of a range of media to tell its message looks raw, like a modern, student-made essay film, but this gives the documentary an authenticity that studio-made movies couldn’t replicate. Free from the ties to corporations/companies, governments and heavy, expensive film equipment, Srour could make whatever film she wanted. This is revolutionary cinema at its most direct.

What to Watch Next

You don’t have to turn far to watch more revolutionary cinema. For the big budget films, turn to the brilliant Cuban films sponsored by the USSR such as I Am Cuba and Lucia or Pontecorvo’s docu-drama of the Algerian fight for independence in Battle of Algiers. You can also find gold in lower budget third cinema films such as Flame, Mortu Nega, and Sambizanga.

To see how further technological advances have enabled filmmakers to get even closer to the revolution, check out some films enabled by the digital revolution, such as The Square, Winter on Fire, and The Edge of Democracy.