British Series Gives a Voice to the Third World : Television: The makers of the experimental ‘South’ episodes hope to shatter stereotypical images and perceptions shaped by the industrialized countries.

An unseen poet speaks in the Gujarati language, his voice providing a bouncing cadence as the camera scans the streets of Ahmedabad, India, where, he tells us, his language was born.

Car traffic is thick; cow traffic often thicker.

Young men standing in the street lean toward the camera and make crude remarks about girls and sexual frustration. Everywhere, people are eating ice cream as the poet offers an obtuse, but compelling, perspective of the city.

No particular story line is offered in this short documentary, no narration beyond the rhythmic, enigmatic voice-over. Whatever messages or conclusions are meant to be conveyed must be deciphered by the viewer. The film is meant to be a profile of a city, but there are virtually no hard facts offered, no statistics, no overview.

An American watching the film might start to get itchy and wish Peter Jennings or Dan Rather would step forward to make sense of it all. And that, to a great degree, is the point.

“Memories of Milk City,” as the 11-minute Indian film is called, is part of an experimental British television series called “South,” which aims to present Third World issues from a Third World point of view.

Though the premise sounds simplistic, it is unique. The fact that it is billed here as the first TV series about the non-industrialized world not made by filmmakers from the industrialized world reflects a sad truth about the imbalance of global mass communication.

(CNN appears to have provided an initial breakthrough in global broadcasting in 1987 when it launched “World Report,” a Sunday series that airs news reports supplied by countries throughout the world.)

With the idea of addressing this imbalance, Britain’s Channel 4 television network commissioned filmmakers from Africa, Asia and Latin America to make TV programs about life in the South, a term referring to the Third World.

The filmmakers were free to choose the topic, format and length. The works chosen for the series vary greatly from highly stylistic films--mostly from South America--to more traditional, straightforward documentaries.

In all, 26 films representing 20 countries were packaged into 11 one-hour programs. Among the diverse works:

* “El Rojo Para Los Labios” (Red for the Lips) combines animation and actuality footage to address the loss of creativity in Cuba.

* “Microchip Al Chip” looks at the ecological and social effects of Japanese investment in Chile.

* “Ao Dai” (The Long Dress) focuses on the return of the traditional long dress in Vietnam as part of the changing economic conditions there.

* “Recording the Truth” reveals the struggle against censorship in Iran during the last 11 years and the subtle changes under way.

* “Mr. Foot” uses documentary filmmaking and fiction to describe the role of soccer in Cameroon, including its use as a political tool by the government.

* “The Singing Sheikh” tells the story of Sheikh Imam, a well-known Egyptian musician whose songs, critical of the ruling classes in the Arab world, have resulted in him being barred from the airwaves and repeatedly imprisoned.

* “Farewell GDR” studies the lives of Mozambican immigrant workers in the former East Germany--both those who have stayed and met with severe prejudice and neo-Nazi attacks and those who returned to Mozambique.

The idea behind “South,” says series executive producer Ana de Skalon, is to move beyond the stereotypical images and perception of the Third World that have largely been shaped by TV in the Northern industrial countries.

The standard image, she says, is one of “poverty, helplessness and drugs and the usual trade of misery. That is how the South has been defined.”

As she sees it, that characterization is connected to the economic role that the industrial nations have consigned to Third World countries.

“The role of the Third World is to provide raw materials for Northern industry,” she says, “or to provide cheap labor for the industries that are developing in the South, but are really catering to the needs of the richer nations.

“So you end up,” says De Skalon, “with the North defining the topics the South is going to be associated with and defining the images these countries are going to convey. Because television is such a powerful means of communication, you end up having people in the North who only understand the South in terms of a holiday resort and ‘people who need our help.’

“They’re not seen as subjects of their own history and they’re not seen as people living in a complex situation culturally, politically and economically like any other country in the North. And they’re definitely not seen as people who are capable of a perspective or analysis of world issues today.”

Channel 4, which has worked closely with Third World filmmakers through the years, provided initial seed money for the “South” project about 18 months ago. Network programming executives, along with independent producers such as De Skalon, an Argentine who has worked in Britain for more than a decade, fanned out across the Third World to discuss their plans with filmmakers and solicit proposals.

In each country they visited, the Channel 4 staff organized meetings of film and TV people and explained what they were trying to do. “You would end up addressing a meeting of 200 or 250 people,” says De Skalon, “and from there you would take it to a smaller scale.”

Although “South” producers couldn’t say exactly what it was they wanted, they had a “fundamental no” about commissioning “ethnographic” films that examined National Geographic-type subjects, such as a particular tribe in Africa, says De Skalon. Besides feeling that there were already enough of those programs on television, the “South” team wanted to create “more of a discussion and reflection on issues than a presentation of the South to the North,” she said.

Eventually, they received about 500 proposals, many of them a grim reminder of how the Third World views itself.

“The first batch of proposals were very much the ‘Northern agenda,’ ” says De Skalon. “It was the misery trade. Kids in the streets of Sao Paulo, drugs, cocaine, tribes and healing powers in Africa--the absolute cliches of the world. It shows how deeply ingrained those things are in peoples’ conception of themselves and their conception of their roles in international media.”

She also says it was a reflection of the dire state of film and broadcasting in those countries. Filmmakers, desperate to get commissions, decided to pitch ideas they knew were traditionally acceptable in the North.

While the series has been a critical success in Britain, where it just concluded its first season, it has received poor ratings. The subject matter was not exactly geared for mass appeal to begin with. But the series also was scheduled on Saturdays at 7 p.m. opposite a massively popular dating game show.

Nevertheless, the series has been renewed for another season and promised a better time slot.

Pre-sold in Australia and Spain, Channel 4 is now trying to sell the series elsewhere. There have been discussions with PBS in the United States, but no deals have been concluded.