Third Cinema in the Second World: Images of Anti-colonialism in the Polish People’s Republic, a talk by Marla Zubel, Ph.D.

February 7, 2023; 5:00-6:15PM (PDT) on ZOOM

Zoom Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/92453723595

This talk locates key elements of the politics and aesthetics of Latin American Third Cinema in anti-colonial reportage films made in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. The point is not to posit an alternative origin of a form of militant cinema first conceptualized by Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino in the late 1960s, but to draw attention to the shared ideological and material conditions, as well as points of influence, that allowed it to develop simultaneously in different corners of the world struggling for the right to national self-determination. I argue that, when seen from standpoint of the “satellite state,” the Eastern Bloc’s support for anti-imperialism abroad was frequently in contradiction with it practices at home. This contradiction was the basis on which of a more thoroughly anti-imperialist socialist politics could have, and occasionally did, emerge during the Cold War—in aesthetic form if not often in political practice.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Marla Zubel is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Film at Western Kentucky University. Her research focuses on the Cold War-era politics and aesthetics of anti-colonial solidarity between the former second and third worlds. Her work has appeared in the journals Studies in Eastern European Cinema, The Global South, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and Postcolonial Studies, among other venues. Her current book project examines Internationalist literature and film between Poland and the Global South, from the post-war period through the Solidarity movement.