Channel 4 and the South Series (1991-93): from the Third World to the Global South

Abstract

This article provides a case study of a groundbreaking yet hitherto overlooked transnational coproduction experience on European broadcasting: the South series (1991–93). An ambitious initiative led by Channel 4’s Independent Film and Video Department (IFVD) and the South Productions company, headed by Argentine producer Ana de Skalon, the South series was widely conceived and promoted as the first magazine programme in the world to be directed by film and video makers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Focusing on Latin America, this article reconstructs this unique experience of transnational collaboration on a global scale while also examining the shifting relationship between European broadcasting and the cinema of this region.

Drawing on the internal production files of South Productions and using interviews with filmmakers, commissioning editors, and producers as well as the valuable information contained in Channel 4’s press packs, this article sheds light on this major effort of transnational coproduction. South not only constitutes the peak of the transatlantic collaborations developed between British television and Latin American cinema, but also embodies the conceptual shift from the Third World to the Global South through its broadening of film- and video-making practices, as is made clear through the series’ title.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to John King, Mónica Henríquez, and Claudia Bossay for the conversations and inspiration at different stages of this project; to Jez Stewart at the BFI National Archive; to Pablo Lavín, Pablo Basulto, Jane Bevan, Ignacio Agüero and the late Alan Fountain for sharing their memories of South with me; and to Sofia Serbin de Skalon for giving me access to the production files of South Productions. This research was supported by the postdoctoral project FONDECYT no. 3150667.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Channel 4’s weekly press packs provided the press with detailed information about forthcoming programmes. They are hosted at the British Universities Film and Video Council and accessible at http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp.

2 On film festivals, see Miriam Ross, ‘The Film Festival as Producer: Latin American Films and Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund’, Screen 52, no. 2 (2011): 261–67; and Minerva Campos, ‘Un impulso transnacional al cine latinoamericano de festivales: El programa Cine en Construcción’, in Nuevas perspectivas sobre la transnacionalidad del cine hispánico, ed. Robin Lefere and Nadia Lie (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Rodopi, 2016), 72–81. The quotation is from Octavio Getino, Cine iberoamericano: Los desafíos del nuevo siglo (Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales/Ediciones CICCUS, 2007), 64. All translations by the author.

3 Getino, Cine iberoamericano, 65; Hernán Dinamarca, El video en América Latina: Actor innovador del espacio audiovisual (Santiago: Centro El Canelo de Nos/ArteCien, 1991), 83.

4 Alberto Barbera, ed., Cavalcarono insieme: 50 anni di cinema e televisione in Italia (Milan: Electa, 2004), 168, 171, 173, 356.

5 Jorge Sanjinés, ‘Cómo llegar a una visión objetiva sin dejar de emocionar’, interview by Jean-René Huleu, Ignacio Ramonet, and Serge Toubiana, in Teoría y práctica de un cine junto al pueblo, ed. Jorge Sanjinés and Grupo Ukamau (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, 1979), 107–8. Originally published in Cahiers du cinema 253.

6 Antonio Skármeta, ‘Europe: An Indispensable Link in the Production and Circulation of Latin American Cinema’, in New Latin American Cinema, vol. 1, ed. Michael T. Martin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 268. First published in Altaf Gauhar, ed., Third World Affairs 1988 (London: Third World Foundation, 1988), 169–72.

7 Sylvia Harvey, ‘Channel 4 Television: From Anan to Grade’, in Behind the Screens: The Structure of British Television in the Nineties, ed. Stuart Hood (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1994), 102. Italics in the original.

8 On the relation between the independent sector and Channel 4, see Margaret Dickson, ed., Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain, 1945–90 (London: BFI, 1999).

9 Alan Fountain, ‘Opening Channels: Channel 4 and After’, interview by Sheila Rowbotham, in Looking at Class: Film, Television and the Working Class in Britain, ed. Sheila Rowbotham and Huw Beynon (London: Rivers Oram Press, 2001), 207; and Tony Dowmunt, ‘On the Occasion of Channel 4’s 25th Anniversary: An Interview with Alan Fountain, Former Channel 4 Senior Commissioning Editor’, Journal of Media Practice 8, no. 3 (2007): 248.

10 Rod Stoneman, ‘Sins of Commission’, Screen 33, no 2 (1992): 140; Hannah Andrews, ‘On the Grey Box: Broadcasting Experimental Film and Video on Channel 4’s The Eleventh Hour’, Visual Culture in Britain 12, no. 2 (2011): 206–7.

11 Eckart Stein, ‘Das kleine Fernsehspiel: An Attempt at Constructive Controversy’, in Alternative Filmmaking in Television: ZDF – A Helping Hand, ed. Gillian Hartnoll and Vincent Porter (London: BFI, 1982), 20.

12 Fountain, ‘Opening Channels’, 203–4.

13 See Sue Clayton and Laura Mulvey, introduction to The Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s, ed. Sue Clayton and Laura Mulvey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 4–5; and Ian Christie, ‘Afterword. Thanks to Life: Jan Fairley, Musical Scholar and Activist’, in Living Politics, Making Music: The Writings of Jan Fairley, ed. Simon Frith, Stan Rijven, and Ian Christie (London: Routledge, 2016), 197.

14 Christie, ‘Afterword’, 197–98.

15 On the British solidarity campaign, see Grace Livingston, ‘British Campaigns for Solidarity with Argentina and Chile’, Bulletin of Latin American Research 39, no. 5 (2020): 614–28; and Shirin Hirsch, ‘The United Kingdom: Competing Conceptions of Internationalism’, in European Solidarity with Chile, 1970s–1980s, ed. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodríguez García (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014), 145–63.

16 See Tony Kirkhope, Paul Marris, and Peter Sainsbury, ‘The Other Cinema–A History: Part I, 1970–77’, interview by Sylvia Harvey, Screen 26, no. 6 (1985): 48–49.

17 Jim Pines, preface to Questions of Third Cinema, ed. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (London: BFI, 1989), vii. This volume contains the outcomes of the polemic Third Cinema conference held in 1986 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

18 The manifesto was first published in Spanish as ‘Hacia un tercer cine: Apuntes y experiencias para el desarrollo de un cine de liberación en el tercer mundo’, Tricontinental, no. 13, October 1969.

19 Michael Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne: Le cinéma latino-américain sur Channel Four’, Cinémas d’Amérique latine 2 (1994): 73.

20 See for example, Andrews, ‘On the Grey Box’; Dorothy Hobson, Channel Four: The Early Years and the Jeremy Isaacs Legacy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 75; and Erika Balsom, After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art Circulation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 224–25.

21 Alan Fountain, introduction to The Work of Channel Four’s Independent Film and Video Department: Eleventh Hour, People to People, Workshops (London: Channel 4, 1986), n.p.

22 Andrews, ‘On the Grey Box’, 209.

23 Ieuan Franklin, ‘Building a Television Audience for World Cinema in the (Late) Era of Media Scarcity’ (paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Seattle, March 20, 2014), 4, accessed 13 July 2021, http://media.bufvc.ac.uk/c4pp/extras/conferences_papers/papers_pdf/SCMS_Franklin.pdf.

24 Channel 4, ‘Programme Highlights: 1983 Week 41 Page 20’, press pack, accessed 10 September 2023, http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1983_41_1008_1014_020_proghigh.

25 This information was extracted from Channel 4 press packs and from The Work of Channel Four’s Independent Film and Video Department.

26 On the CSC, see Hirsch, ‘The United Kingdom’.

27 Michael Chanan, ‘The Melancholy of a Political Documentarist’, Studies in Documentary Film 13, no. 3 (2019): 197.

28 Chanan’s book is titled Chilean Cinema (London: BFI, 1976).

29 Chanan, ‘The Melancholy of a Political Documentarist’, 197.

30 Andrews, ‘On the Grey Box’, 210.

31 Channel 4, ‘Programme Highlights: 1983 Week 41’.

32 For recent critiques of the formation of this canon, see Verónica Cortínez and Manfred Engelbert, Evolución en libertad: El cine chileno de los setenta, vol. 1 (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2014), 25–33; and, from a feminist perspective, Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco, ‘Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano: Uma análise do cânone a partir do gênero’, Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura 30, no. 3 (2020), 39–62, DOI: https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-2096.23945.

33 Alan Fountain, interview with the author, 15 June 2015, London.

34 Michel Chanan, Twenty-five Years of the New Latin American Cinema (London, Channel 4/BFI, 1983), iv.

35 The information about the festival (held September 3–10) comes from the pamphlet ‘Latin American Festival for Peace and Freedom’, Papers of Norman Jacobs, Chile Solidarity Campaign, 1983–1984, 199/144/131, September 1983, https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/chile/id/412/rec/90. (accessed 13 July 2021).

36 Chanan, Twenty-five Years, 2.

37 The second season aired in 1986 was introduced by Havana Report, co-produced by Channel 4 and the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), and co-directed by Holly Ayllet and Chanan. The film was very much a report on the 1985 film festival held in Havana and the film season directly derived from the festival. Albeit smaller, this selection of six films was arguably more diverse than the first season, including, for example, Las madres de la Plaza de Mayo (The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, 1985) by Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz, not readily associated with the NLAC.

38 Alan Fountain interview with the author, 15 June 2015, London.

39 Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne’, 73.

40 Patricia Aufderheide, ‘Blurred Visions’, South, March 1990, 69.

41 Peter Schumann, ‘La experiencia de la historia’, in El nuevo cine Latinoamericano en el mundo de hoy, Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano IX (México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1988), 108–9.

42 Zuzana M. Pick, The New Latin American Cinema: A Continental Project (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 36.

43 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Programme highlights: 1991, week 51, page 18’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1991_51_1214_1220_018_proghigh (Accessed 26 July 2023).

44 Oscar Ranzani, ‘Murió el cineasta y productor argentino Jorge Denti’, Página 12, 19 December 2022, https://www.pagina12.com.ar/506308-murio-el-cineasta-y-productor-argentino-jorge-denti; Michael Chanan, The Politics of Documentary (London: BFI, 2007), 39.

45 South Productions. ‘Biography–Ana de Skalon’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

46 La guerra del centavo (The Penny War, Ciro Durán, 1985), Remitente: Nicaragua (carta al mundo) (Sender: Nicaragua. Letter to the World, Fernando Birri, 1984) and Cien niños esperando un tren (One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train, Ignacio Agüero, 1988). Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne’, 74.

47 South Productions, ‘South’, Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

48 South Productions, ‘South: Premières Rèflexions JB, 02/20/91’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

49 South Productions, ‘Interview with Ana de Skalon. Series producer of South’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

50 Alan Fountain interview with the author, 15 June 2015, London.

51 I am writing to seek your creative collaboration and support (Sample letter to be addressed to potential collaborators), p.3. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

52 Channel 4 Press Pack ‘Autumn 91: Documentaries & Factual Programmes’ (1991): 19.

53 ‘“Isn’t it strange that “world” means everything outside the West?” An Interview with Rod Stoneman’, in De-westernizing Film Studies, ed. Saër Maty Bâ and Will Higbee (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012), 211–12.

54 Jeff Kaye, ‘British Series Gives a Voice to the Third World’, Los Angeles Times, 30 December 1991. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-30-ca-1014-story.html (accessed 8 August, 2023).

55 According to Nick Deocampo, his proposal for Memories of Old Manila (1992), which aired in the second season, was selected among 800 submissions. Nick Deocampo and Lolita Lacuesta, ‘Preface’, in Beyond the Mainstream: The Films of Nick Deocampo (Pasig City: Anvil, 1997), viii.

56 Stoneman, ‘Sins of Commission’, 140.

57 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Programme highlights: 1993 week 10 page 31’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1993_10_0306_0312_031_proghigh (Accessed 10 September 2023).

58 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Seasonal Pack: AUTUMN 1990 page 25’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1991_autumn_025 (Accessed 10 September 2023).

59 Interview with Ana de Skalon. Series producer of South. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

60 ‘“Isn’t it strange that “world”’, 210.

61 On these two terms and their connections see Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 25–31 and 248–91.

62 Arif Dirlik, ‘Global South: Predicament and Promise’, The Global South 1, no. 1 (2007): 12-13; Anne Garland Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 32.

63 Dirlik, ‘Global South’, 13.

64 Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South, 32–3.

65 Alan Fountain, ‘Viewing the World from the South’, New Statesman & Society vol. 4 no 172 (11 October 1991), 18.

66 Fountain, ‘Viewing the World’, 19. Originally published in Armand Mattelart, Xavier Delcourt and Michelle Mattelart, International Image Markets: In Search of an Alternative Perspective (London: Comedia Publishing Group, 1984), 53.

67 Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 408.

68 Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne’, 75.

69 Stoneman, ‘Sins of Commission’, 128.

70 Jon Snow, ‘Ana de Skalon: A film-maker casting light into dark corners of Latin America’, The Guardian, 9 March 2006.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/09/guardianobituaries.film (accessed 13 July 2021).

71 Snow, ‘Ana de Skalon’.

72 South Productions. ‘Biography–Ana de Skalon’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

73 Jane Bevan interview with the author, 11 June 2015, London.

74 South Productions, South.

75 South Productions, ‘Article for Rotterdam Film Festival’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

76 Dinamarca, El video en América Latina, 87; Mariel Balás, ‘Producción de video regional para el mercado global en los noventa: el caso de La esperanza incierta (1991)’, Revista Encuentros Latinoamericanos, vol. IV, no 2, July/December (2020): 226.

77 ‘Sur’, CINE 40, October 1990, 2.

78 Kaye, ‘British Series Gives a Voice’.

79 De Skalon quoted by Kaye, ‘British Series Gives a Voice’.

80 Ignacio Agüero interview with the author, 4 June 2015, Santiago de Chile.

81 See Paola Margulis, De la formación a la institución: El documental audiovisual argentino en la transición democrática (1982–1990) (Buenos Aires: Imagomundi,

2014), esp. 51–108; 200; 236–7; Pablo Alvira, ‘De repente: video, televisión y latinoamericanismo’, in CEMA: archivo, video y restauración democrática, ed. Beatriz Tadeo Fuica and Mariel Balás (Montevideo: FIC-UdelaR/ICAU, 2016); María Aimaretti, ‘Entre la confluencia y la dispersión: el Movimiento Latinoamericano de Video y sus encuentros en Montevideo, Río de Janeiro y Cuzco’, Revista Encuentros Latinoamericanos, vol. IV, no 2, July/December (2020).

82 Alvira, ‘De repente: video, televisión y latinoamericanismo’, 97.

83 Dinamarca, El video en América Latina, 88.

84 Dinamarca, El video en América Latina, 87–8.

85 South Productions. ‘South Series II – Foreign Production Costs (04/08/92)’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

86 Hernán Dinamarca, ‘La experiencia de South y el video latinoamericano’, Videored no 17, October–December 1992, 30–1. I thank María Aimaretti for sharing this source with me.

87 Germán Liñero, Apuntes para una historia del video en Chile (Santiago: Ocho libros, 2010).

88 Liñero, Apuntes para una historia, 165–9.

89 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Programme highlights: 1991 week 49 page 21’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1991_49_1130_1204_021_proghigh (Accessed 10 September 2023).

90 Balás, ‘Producción de video regional’, 214–8.

91 Interview with Pablo Lavín, 2 June 2015, Santiago de Chile.

92 South Productions, ‘From Mary Barlow, Jane Balfour Films Limited’, to Ana de Skalon 6 January 6 1993. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

93 South Productions, ‘South at the Film Festival Rotterdam’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

94 Email with Pablo Lavín, 31 January 2017.

95 Pablo Basulto interview with the author, 3 June 2015, Santiago de Chile.

96 Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne’, 74.

97 Chanan, ‘Grande-Bretagne’, 74–5.

98 Alan Fountain interview with the author, 15 June 2015, London.

99 Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain: A History of Black and Asian Images on British Television (London: SAGE 2002), 60–3. On these categories see Jean Chalaby, ‘Deconstructing the Transnational: A Typology of Cross-Border Television Channels in Europe’, New Media & Society 7, no. 2 (2005): 155–75; Sarita Malik, ‘From Multicultural Programming to Diasporic Television: Situating the UK in European Context’, Media History 16, no.1 (2010): 123–8.

100 South Productions, ‘Article for Rotterdam Film Festival’. Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

101 South Productions, ‘South Series II’ (Sample letter to be addressed to potential local producers). Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

102 South Productions, ‘Article for Rotterdam’.

103 Pablo Basulto interview with the author, 3 June 2015, Santiago de Chile.

104 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Seasonal Pack: AUTUMN 1992 page 45’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1992_autumn_045 (Accessed 10 September 2023).

105 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Seasonal Pack: AUTUMN 1992 page 44’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1992_autumn_044 (Accessed 10 September 2023).

106 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Programme news: 1992 week 42 page 11’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1992_42_1010_1016_011_prognews (Accessed 10 September 2023).

107 Channel 4 Press Packs, ‘Programme highlights: 1992 week 41 page 31’. http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/c4pp/search/index.php/page/c4_pp_1992_41_1003_1009_031_proghigh (Accessed 10 September 2023). My emphasis.

108 Manuel Pérez Estremera, ‘Quelques principes, faits et conclusions’, Cinémas d’Amérique latine 2 (1994), 70.

109 Pérez Estremera, ‘Quelques principes, faits et conclusions’, 70.

110 Ieuan Franklin and Justin Smith, ‘Interview Dossier’, Historical Journal of.

Film, Radio and Television 33, no. 3 (2013): 467.

111 Stoneman, ‘African Cinema’, 53.

112 South Productions, ‘South’, Personal collection Ana de Skalon/Sofia Serbin de Skalon.

113 Alan Fountain interview with the author, 15 June 2015, London.

114 Balás, ‘Producción de video regional’, 234.

115 Dinamarca, ‘La experiencia de South’, 30–1.

116 Malik, Representing Black Britain, 70.

117 Quoted in Malik, Representing Black Britain, 70.

118 Through South Productions and the support of Channel 4, she produced the celebrated film Evita: La Tumba sin paz/Evita: The Unquiet Grave (Tristán Bauer, 1996–97) and with Lita Stantic, she co-produced one of Lucrecia Martel’s early films, the documentary Las Dependencias (1999).

119 Steve Presence, ‘Maintaining a Critical Eye: The Political Avant-garde on Channel 4 in the 1990s’, in Cinema, Television and History: New Approaches (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 92–3.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto

Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto is Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.