Sound Without Vision – A Third Cinema Sonic Imaginary of Neo-Colonialism

In the spirit of Third Cinema, this is a non-visual exploration of the fundamental contradictions in attempts to construct a new nation in the image of the former colonizer: neo-colonialism. It begins with the extraction of raw materials – coal – and tangentially touches on what is usually missing from global film studies: How cinema is entwined with colonialism. The main thrust of this journey into the sonic past is how archival practices might unlock the political imaginary of an ex-colony. Using sounds (and text) from Nigeria’s National Film, Video and Sound Archive, this sonic installation seeks to chronicle sound recordings as a record of what might be called the sonic imaginary of the “post-colonial” nation state: As both a record of state protocols and rituals as well as an archive of possibilities for imagining different pasts and futures of this nation state. Given that Third Cinema arose in the 1960s and 1970s as a clash between Third World filmmakers and the social forms hostile to them – colonialism and neo-colonialism – what line of continuity could be drawn between contemporary Third World (sound) archival practices and the Third Cinema that derived from the anti-colonial struggle for national liberation? What does it mean to think of Third Cinema in relation to the sound archive?

Didi Cheeka is a Nigerian filmmaker and film critic. He is the editor of Lagos Film Review and co-founder and curator of Lagos Film Society, an alternative cinema center dedicated to the founding of Nigeria’s first arthouse cinema. He also serves as the artistic director of Decasia Festival, which he founded in collaboration with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. Cheeka is currently engaged in digitizing Nigeria’s rediscovered national audiovisual archives. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and primarily lives and works in Lagos.