Bold, fresh, and intriguing, New Wave has its origins in late 1950s France. A rejection of traditional French cinema, the New Wave was about experimentation, spontaneity, and showcasing real political themes of the time. Rather than adapting safe literary works, these filmmakers, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Agnes Varda, focused on original and current stories. The movement spread across the world, notably seen in the auteur-focused New Hollywood of 1970s U.S.A. However, the catalyst of New Wave on the cinema of African and Latin American countries has long been unfairly overlooked. Let’s remedy that.
Due to colonial forces, films have been made in Africa since the inception of the medium, but the tools of cinema were only put in the hands of Africans themselves in the 1950s. The earliest known film made by an African, was Congolese filmmaker Albert Mongita’s The Cinema Lesson in 1951. Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, of Yoruba origin, had lived in France since he was seven and finally attended a French film school. Graduating in 1955, he made the film Africa on the Seine with his fellow colleagues in 1955.
Africa on the Seine tackles issues of immigration and shows a group of Black students and artists trying to make their way in Paris. A critique of the way Africans were positioned as exotic and strange through the eyes of European filmmakers, Vieyra explored the complex inner life of Black immigrants. Coming before many of the French New Wave’s most potent films, such as The 400 Blows (1959) and Breathless (1960), Vieyra explored the themes of realism, experimentation, and was an independent production. The film can be seen as a precursor to the greater French New Wave movement that, while aiming to show the lives of real Parisians, would exclude large groups of people, notably the immigrant communities of France whose countries were being ravaged by the French colonial project.
New Wave had an impact on the film industries of Africa itself, not only the immigrants she produced. Nigerian cinema remains the biggest African film industry. Nollywood, a term coined in 2002, is the second largest film industry in terms of output, only topped by India’s Bollywood. Gaining independence in 1960, Nigeria’s film industry expanded and the oil boom of the 1970s allowed many to enjoy the theater, creating the Golden Age of Nollywood. However, the television age of the 1980s caused a steep decline in Nollywood, and many Nigerian filmmakers itched for a revival.
In the 2000s, New Nollywood finally emerged, emphasizing more complex narratives and higher quality film-making. Irapada, a supernatural thriller released in 2006, was one of the films that launched the movement. With the expansion of theaters into new districts and the creation of modern theater chains, people started to go to the cinema again, making the Nigerian film industry profitable once more. Unlike the New Wave in France that eschewed big studio money, New Nollywood productions had higher budgets and greater production values, improving on the Golden Age. As cinema started rockily in Nigeria and had never enjoyed the big-budget studio systems that powered France or the U.S., their rebellion and revival of their film industry involved finally getting the monetary funds and technology they had always needed.
Latin American countries like Brazil have more in common with the North American U.S.’s Hollywood. For instance, traditional Brazilian cinema consisted mainly of musicals and epics, with Cinema Novo emerging in the 1960s and ‘70s as a more realistic form of filmmaking that showcased the cultural unrest in the country. Fighting against the foreign production that showed Brazil as backwards and the near monopoly of Italian Brazilian artists, Cinema Novo was a highly political movement that arose alongside the victories of progressive presidents. The movement was highly inspired by the French New Wave and their auteur theory, aiming to showcase the artist’s vision without any corporate meddling. Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964) shows the plight of the working class and the racial issues in the country, for instance.
When a military coup turned Brazil into an autocracy in 1964, Cinema Novo became more pessimistic and hopeless. It was criticised as trying to appeal to critics and audiences rather than staying true to the people it was meant to represent. The late ‘60s and early ‘70s relished in tropicalism, themes of cannibalism, and gaudy aesthetics. The comedy film How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (1970) shows literal cannibalism but also explores the metaphorical need for cannibalism– appropriating the coloniser’s own tools of violence for use against them– as a means of social revolution. Cinema Novo was becoming more polished and professional, further from the working-class ideals it started as. The Novo Cinema Novo started as a return to form, using trashy, messy, and B-movie inspired images to connect to the audience again, a bold opposition to selling out.
New Mexican cinema emerged in the 1990s and focused on more global success. While trying to depict a more authentic and artistic portrait of a country beset by poverty, the filmmakers embraced Mexico’s new globalised and modern policy. They also incorporated the sense of magical realism that had long been a part of Latin American literature. Filmmakers such as Alfonso Cuaron’s international award-winning Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) showcases his interesting new forms of visual storytelling while painting a vivid picture of teenage hedonism. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) was a richly dark fantasy with teeming political commentary. Both filmmakers have worked in Hollywood as well as remaining loyal to their homeland.
The New Wave is not tied to a place or a time. It is the spirit of rebellion and experimentation. Film needs revolution and change, else it would get stale and stagnant, a sin in this format of moving pictures. The New Wave movements in historically disenfranchised countries are important tools of social commentary and community. The power of cinema is to give everybody a voice and a place, and so the New Wave might recede, but its tide will come in again whenever it is needed as a megaphone to console the masses and to demand better from the powers that be.