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Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)
Fourth Cinema is Indigenous Cinema
American Indian Cinema
First Nations Cinema
Tibetan Cinema
Mayan Cinema
Maori Cinema
The term “Fourth Cinema” was coined by filmmaker Barry Barclay to identify Indigenous Cinema as a distinct genre of filmmaking which emphasizes film made by and for Indigenous people.
Why is it the "Fourth"?
In the 1960s, filmmakers' manifestos established three types of “Cinema”:
In the 1960s, filmmakers' manifestos established three types of “Cinema”:
First Cinema is “Hollywood” cinema:
American films for the mass market.
Second Cinema is “Auteur” cinema:
Films made by singular artistic vision for film festivals and arthouse exhibition.
Third Cinema is “Revolutionary” cinema:
Films made by oppressed, post-colonial people seeking a voice of their own, to express their plight and experiences to their own nation or the world.
“Indigenous cultures are outside the national orthodoxy. They are outside the national outlook. They are outside spiritually, for sure. And almost everywhere on the planet, Indigenous Peoples, some 300 million of them in total, according to the statisticians ― are outside materially also. They are outside the national outlook by definition, for Indigenous cultures are ancient remnant cultures persisting within the modern nation state.”
Barclay, 2003
The distinction between Third and Fourth Cinema is the nation.
Third Cinema is the product of the people confined by a nation-state.
Indigenous Fourth Cinema belongs to a people within and preceding the nation-state, speaking from its own culture.
Third Cinema can be made by Indigenous people speaking from their place in a nation-state;
Fourth Cinema made by Indigenous people is speaking for their culture, by and for their own people.
“Modern nation states regularly raise taxes, directly or indirectly, to subsidize feature film production in their own territories. Indigenous peoples can not raise their own taxes; rather, they are dependent on irregular allocations from the ship people. Modern nation states are confident about what cinema is and what it should achieve.”
Barclay, 2003
“In the climate within which we script, it is so easy to "explain"...Once you do that, you are writing for the general audience, for the majority culture, not for your own culture.”
“My only defense against that valid observation is rather a high-handed response: Well, I am not writing for you. I am writing for a Maori audience. They will understand what the scene means."
Barclay, 1990
In the photo on the left, from his book Our Own Image, Barclay filmed his subjects with a telephoto lens, to allow the interviews to happen without interference from the production crew.
This allowed the Maori interviewees conduct their conversation in a comfortable, traditional way.
I met a wonderful Nigerian Ph.D. student, Tony Adah, at the documentary conference at this university two years ago. I asked him, "Tony, do you think there can be such a thing as a Fourth Cinema?" He laughed. He said, "Of course there can. And a fifth, and a sixth, and maybe a twentieth as well."
Barclay, 2003
Although Barclay introduced the idea of a new classification of film archetypes, he was not trying to pigeonhole or constrain filmmaking.
Barclay welcomed other ways of describing and expanding styles of filmmaking for all peoples and cultures.
Who Was Barry Barclay?
Barry Barclay was a Maori filmmaker who, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, established Indigenous Maori cinema, breaking the Western customs of filmmaking which did not fit Maori culture.
Barclay recognized that the Maori needed to be respected to produce films which speak in their voice, which was more than just interviewing the “natives” and recording their stories.
Molding Maori culture to fit Western sensibilities was a disservice to his own culture and he recognized making Maori films for Maori people was a better solution.
Barclay passed away in 2008.
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