T
he story of third world cinema corporation—a
fledgling production house founded by Black and
Latino artists in 1971—is at once inspirational and
heartbreaking. An earnest “for us, by us” effort to
tell stories the studios would have never picked up,
the company staffed its productions with people
who had been or would have been systemically kept outside stu-
dio gates. Throughout most of Hollywood’s first century, few
studios had produced Black- and Latino-centric movies, claim-
ing they were risky or not of interest to general audiences. From
the silent era through the 1950s, segregated theaters created an
independent market for movies by Black filmmakers for Black
audiences, and later, new independent filmmaking efforts arose
with the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, followed by the rise of
blaxploitation, the L.A. Rebellion, and Chicano Cinema. But the
problem of representation persisted within the studios, and at a
more fundamental level, little was done to promote talent from
underrepresented backgrounds.
Then there was Third World Cinema Corporation, an unusual
presence even in the much-mythologized annals of independent
studios—the rare film company where the board would be led by
people of color: actors Ossie Davis, Rita Moreno, Cliff Frazier,
Brock Peters; and writers Piri Thomas and John O. Killens. At the
height of the blaxploitation era, Black intellectuals and activists
had worried that the defining narratives of their communities
would center on street violence, prostitution, and drugs. Movies
from Third World Cinema (TWC) were to serve as antidotes to
those narratives. And Claudinewas its success story.
Distributed by 20th Century Fox but produced by the Third
World Cinema Corporation, Claudine follows a struggling
mother (Diahann Carroll) of six as she hides her income as a
domestic worker from a nosy welfare worker. She’s more or less
given up on love until a friendly garbageman, Roop (James Earl
Jones), takes an interest. The movie is remarkable not just for itsheartwarming story or Carroll and Jones’s impressive perfor-
mances; it also includes a pointed critique of a welfare system
that seems designed to thwart the couple’s happiness.
Claudine was a preview of the kinds of movies that might have
come from Third World Corporation had it survived: heartfelt
stories that ditched stereotypes for complex characters. And in
terms of representation off screen, fully 28 of the 37 production
jobs on the film’s set had been filled by Black or Latino talent.
That level of inclusivity didn’t come from a studio mandate—the
push came from Third World Cinema Corporation, which set up a
training program, struck deals with unions to get their students
membership, and helped place many of their first alums into job
opportunities once thought to be closed off to them. On its release
in 1974, Claudine went on to find a sizable audience, earning $6
million at the box office, or roughly $31 million today.
Third World Cinema Corporation had been founded by Davis
with Hannah Weinstein, a producer who had fled the States because
of McCarthyism. Davis became the company’s President, and Fra-
zier—an actor turned activist after the death of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.—was appointed to be the Administrator over the training
program. When Davis announced his new initiative to establish a
production and training studio, the news of a “minority-run” film
company with a distribution deal through a major studio earned
headlines in The New York Times, The New York Post, and Va r i e t y.
Frazier, one of the last surviving board members of TWC,
recalled the significance of the commercial and critical apprecia-
tion in a recent interview: “It gave us a prominence that we had
never achieved before. Whites collaborating [on] a Black film
and not controlling it.” Carroll earned Oscar and Golden Globe
nominations for her performance; Jones also picked up a Golden
Globe nomination, as did Curtis Mayfield’s song “On and On.” A
handful of the first TWC training graduates worked on Claudine,
like assistant cameraman Audley Simpson and assistant editors
Sharon Brown and Carey Beth Cryor.48 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 201920THCENTURYFOX^FILMCORP./EVERETT^COLLECTIONDIVIDED WE FALL
FOR THIRD WORLD CINEMA CORPORATION, SURVIVING AS AN INDEPENDENT
CREATIVE FORCE WAS ONLY ONE OF MANY CHALLENGESBY MONICA CASTILLO
Claudine(x 2)