Young, C. (2004). Third World newsreel: Third cinema practice in the U.S. G.T. Meiss & A. Tait (Eds.) Ethnic media in America: Vol. 2. Taking control

           (pp. 31-57) Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt.

Cynthia Young is a Professor in the English Department at Boston College. She is also the Director of African and African Diaspora Studies program. Her focus is on culture and literature of the African diaspora, US popular culture, race and cultural theory, African American and US Ethnic literatures.

(Taken from http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/english/faculty/facalpha/young.html)

Among her published articles is Same Side of a Badass Coin: Postmodern Racism in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

     This article concerns Newsreel, the 'radical news service' which emerged in 1967 by people angered about how the mainstream media depicted the Anti-War March on the Pentagon. A group of individuals met to seek an alternative news service which would create and present films and reels of decidedly different tones than those of the mainstream press. This group was called Newsreel. The group initially declared itself aimed at anyone "working for change, students, organizations in ghettos and other depressed areas" (31), exemplifying its broad scope. After its inception, Newsreel chapters sprung up in New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Kingston, Ontario, further indicating the amount of people who sought an alternative news source besides the mainstream press. Newsreel produced and released a number of films in 1968 that screened at colleges, churches, union halls, and other such venues, which Young refers to as "visual embodiments of New Left activism" (31). 

     After the 1960s, however, Newsreel fell apart. The group quarreled over whether or not white members were "qualified" to produce films about ethnic people, such as Blacks and Latinos. The group eventually split into two factions, the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', until the 'haves' left the group altogether. The 'haves' just so happened to be the whites in question, and with their exit the remaining members of the Newsreel group found themselves struggling to continue on producing films. Both the White group and the Third World group (as it was referred to) were in charge of their own distribution, production, and finance, which was challenging for the Third World group. When Allan Siegel returned to TWN in 1972, the group could finally get off the ground, as he possessed valuable filmmaking skills and the financial clout to make such activities possible. TWN embraced its role as a maker of propaganda, as it considered itself 'a conscious alternative to the mass media", which it considered an instrument of social control (36). It is an interesting distinction to see the group actively refer to its own productions as 'propaganda', since that word has become so loaded with meaning. The Third World Newsreel, which became the group's name when the White caucus dissolved in 1972, was fully aware of and honest about its goals and political agenda. The White group who had split off from Newsreel eventually disbanded amid struggles to find a common ground from which to stand. That left Third World Newsreel as the victors of the messy Newsreel dissolution, and allowed the group to find itself growing in number and political voice. 

     Young's article goes on to outline some of the productions Third World Newsreel created, and notes that since TWN was a predominately female group, productions sometimes focused on the struggles of women within the Black, Latino and Asian communities, which was a far cry from the "phallocentric perspective on 1960s and 1970s activism to which we have since grown accustomed" (35). TWN's films sought to create a sense of an 'imagined community' for the audience, as viewers could relate to the depictions of their specific race in the films and develop a personal connection to the films for that reason. 

     Young goes on to focus on one particular film that TWN created, Teach Our Children. The film, which was released in 1972, chronicled the saga of the Attica prison riots in upstate New York in 1971. The prisoners involved were acting out against the shoddy living conditions with which they were faced, as well as the brutal force employed by many of the prison employees. The film even goes as far as to make claims of similarity between the prisoners' plight and the suffering of the Holocaust victims, in the scene detailing when prisoners were taken from their beds, stripped naked, and forced to crawl around outside in the pouring rain. That scene is interspersed with still photos from the Holocaust. Whether or not that is an accurate claim to make, the scene demonstrates TWN's incredible adherence to its cause. Besides the Holocaust connection, the film also draws ties between the prison conditions in Attica and the living conditions faced by many members of the lower-class Black and Latino communities in the United States. Films such as Teach Our Children, while maybe a bit flashy and over-dramatized, exemplify the kind of passion at work behind TWN and its strong connections to the underrepresented. Newsreel may have imploded in on itself due to members' refusal to get along with each other due to race issues, but the Third World Newsreel has managed to make a name for itself in the decades after Newsreel disbanded. 

     Cynthia Young's article is very well-crafted and details the ongoing existence of a revolutionary organization. The importance of having a company such as TWN that exists solely to produce films and programs concerning the circumstances felt by those people who commonly get ignored by the mainstream press and media cannot be understated. The works created by TWN have made significant strides in helping the marginalized have more of a collective voice, the type of thinking that was initially the driving force behind Newsreel itself. TWN took the reigns from Newsreel when it fell apart and has filled in admirably, serving as a source of alternative media to combat the biased and narrowly-centered coverage that the mainstream media provide. 

(Written by Adrian Garro)