Third Cinema (Spanish: Tercer Cine) is a Latin American film movement that started in the 1960s–70s which decries neocolonialism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money. The term was coined in the manifesto Hacia un tercer cine (Toward a Third Cinema), written in the late 1960s by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, members of the Grupo Cine Liberación and published in 1969 in the cinema journal Tricontinental by the OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America).
Solanas and Getino's manifesto considers 'First Cinema' to be the Hollywood production model that promulgates bourgeois values to a passive audience through escapist spectacle and individual characters. 'Second Cinema' is the European art film, which rejects Hollywood conventions but is centred on the individual expression of the auteur director. Third Cinema is meant to be non-commercialized, challenging Hollywood's model. Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring revolutionary activism. Solanas and Getino argue that traditional exhibition models also need to be avoided: the films should be screened clandestinely, both in order to avoid censorship and commercial networks, but also so that the viewer must take a risk to see them.
There are still some difficulties to clearly define what is considered "First Cinema" versus "Third Cinema". For example, Bollywood, one of the largest centres of film production in the world, can be viewed as resistance against "First Cinema" due to political, cultural and aesthetic differences, but at the same time it can also be said that Bollywood is a popular commercialized industry