Fifth Cinema

The notion of a Fifth Cinema was developed by Dr. Ricardo Peach as part of his PhD thesis titled 'Queer Cinema as a Fifth Cinema in South Africa and Australia' in 2005 (http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/425). He first presented his concept publicly at the Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities in 2005 (http://www.hichumanities.org/AH%202005%20Final%20Program.pdf).

Through a comparative analysis of the Queer cinematic cultures of South Africa and Australia, and stemming from their strong activist beginnings, Peach proposes the existence of a new genus of cinema he terms Fifth Cinema. For him Fifth Cinema includes Queer Cinema, Feminist Cinema and Immigrant/Multicultural Cinema and can be informed by First Cinema (classical, Hollywood), Second Cinema (arthouse or dual national cinemas), and Third and Fourth Cinema (cinema dealing with the decolonisation of Third World and Fourth World people).

Fifth Cinema, however, endeavours to assist in decolonisation not of itself (as does critical First Cinema), or of one dominant cinematic form by another (Second Cinema), or of one ‘nation’ by another (Third and Fourth Cinema); rather it seeks to decolonise discriminatory and dominating representations that come from within a society of origin or a society lived in by choice.
It develops its unique difference by engaging with the internal struggle of the dominant cultures within which it exists. Some of the dominant cultural ideologies that it challenges can include women's, transgender's and men’s lives which are often 'colonised' by patriarchal structures; Queer and non-Queer people's lives which are often colonised by the hetero-dominant ideologies of sex and gender master-discourses; and immigrant lives and those from multicultural backgrounds that can often be dominated by ideas of nationalisms, race and ethnicity that exclude them.

Fifth Cinema as a decolonising agent in this context therefore refers to the drive for self-determination and the development of interventions and representations that counter dominant, cultural cinematic forms from within cultures of origin or cultures of choice.

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