The Hour of the Furnaces (1968)

Original title

La hora de los hornos

Directed by

Octavio Getino, Fernando Solanas

Genre

documentary film, historical film, propaganda film

Country

Argentina

Runtime

4h 24m

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 32 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary trilogy examines the history and politics of neocolonialism in Latin America, arguing for liberation through revolutionary violence. It combines found footage, title cards, and voiceover to build a case against foreign domination and local oppression.

politically chargedconfrontationalessayisticintensefragmenteddidacticurgentanti-imperialist

What happens

The Hour of the Furnaces (Spanish: La hora de los hornos) is a 1968 Argentine political documentary film directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas. 'The paradigm of revolutionary activist cinema', it addresses the politics of the 'Third worldist' films and Latin-American manifesto of the late 1960s. It is a key part of the 'Third Cinema', a movement that emerged in Latin America around the same time as the film's release. The work is a four-hour trilogy, divided into chapters and united by the theme of dependency and liberation. The first part - "Neo-Colonialism and Violence" - is conceived for diffusion in all types of circuits, and is the one presented at Cannes Classics. In a survey of the 100 greatest films of Argentine cinema carried out by the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in 2000, the film reached the 22nd position. In a new version of the survey organized in 2022 by the specialized magazines La vida útil, Taipei and La tierra quema, presented at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, the film reached the 6th position. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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