My friend and mentor, Teshome Gabriel, a leading film theorist, who has died of cardiac arrest aged 70, was an authority in the study of third world and postcolonial cinemas. The third cinema movement began in Latin America among radical, anti-capitalist filmmakers determined to combat what they saw as the rampantly commercial and colonising influences of Hollywood films. Teshome was among the first to extend the political aims of "third cinema" into critical contexts.
His book Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetic of Liberation (1982) remains a seminal work. Other publications include Otherness and the Media (1993) and, recently, Third Cinema: Exploration of Nomadic Aesthetics & Narrative Communities.
Born in Ticho, near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, he moved to the US in 1962. In the early 1970s, Teshome moved to Los Angeles, where he earned a master's in film and television from the University of California, Los Angeles (1976) and a PhD in 1979. Gabriel became an exceedingly popular lecturer at UCLA, where he was promoted to assistant professor in 1981. He taught for more than 25 years there, becoming a full professor and vice-chair of critical studies in film.
As an African film specialist, he wrote influential essays on the directors Ousmane Sembène, Souleymane Cissé and others. Teshome's essay Nomadic Aesthetic and the Black Independent Cinema received an Opus award from the Village Voice for "charting out a genuinely new theory of black cinema".
Teshome was a rare scholar who created a sense of community and collective purpose among his students and colleagues. A gentle person, he combined humility, academic rigour and a keen sense of humour.
He is survived by his wife, Maaza, daughter, Mediget, and son, Tsegaye.