Who payed the critics

Waste of time

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Blistering performances.

Fernando E. Solanas with Octavio Getino made a documentary about neocolonialism in Latin America. It's a very evocative film, a call to arms. It can be seen as a series of various themes of the revolution. The original version is 4 hours long clearly divided into three independent parts: I Neocolonialism and Violence (95 min), II The Liberation Struggle (120 min), III Violence and Liberation (45 min). But very often in Europe and the States we only see the first part, which might give a little limited picture of the subject - but I can't say for sure because I have only seen the first part in theaters.The first part Neocolonialism and Violence is the second longest and divided into twelve sequences: History, Earth, Everyday violence, Port city - Buenos Aires, Oligarchy, System, Political violence, Neorascism, Dependence, Cultural violence, Ideological war and Alternative option, which ends up filming the face of the dead Che Guevara for 5 minutes.The Hour of the Furnaces was very unique and original but on some level it reminded me of Santiago Alvarez's 79 Springs (1969), which proved that agitation can also be very intellectual. In the same way The Hour of the Furnaces is a synthesis of agitation and poetry. The art of editing and the use of montage is brilliant - the director clearly knows how to use this theory Eisenstein and Vertov created and defined.Through montage Solanas achieved cinema poetry he managed to create mental associations and allegories by showing suffering cows and the imperialistic American mass products. I had already seen impressive films about colonialism and imperialism - to mention a few; Moi un noir (1958) about the imperialism in Ivory Coast by Jean Rouch, The Song of Ceylon (1934) about the colonialism in India by Basil Wright and Les statues meurent aussi (1953) about colonialism in Africa by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. But none about the neocolonialism in Latin America the intention of The Hour of the Furnaces was clearly to wake up the people from the lethargy they were in. To show the reality and make the revolution happen. Obviously the filmmakers got there. Because I personally didn't know much about this and it was quite shocking to see it - a very eye opening and thought provoking experience.The Hour of the Furnaces is perhaps the greatest and most intelligent agitation can be. It's a realistic description of the neocolonialism in Latin America and about the revolutionaries. It is not just aimed at one group of people, the film manages to speak to all the people. Solanas shows us a society where the price of human life is forgotten, where people do more work and make less money and the world with no human value.

I think any analysis of this film should take into account the context in which it was released. In Argentina in the late 60's there were tremendous injustices inflicted upon the people. Argentina's teenage industry was being undermined by the unrestricted entrance of foreign capitals and products. Factories started to "rationalize" the personnel, workshops were closing, unable to compete with the multinationals that were landing in our fragile economy. This was not new at all for a country which has not yet fulfilled his economic independence, but the signs of underdevelopment were getting more and more evident in a country which has historically considered himself more European than Latin American. Whatisworse, democracy has become an utopia in a country where its major party was banned, and the minority parties which were allowed to rise in power after limb-democratic elections were quickly overthrown by the constant military coups. Argentina lived from 55-83 in a virtual State of Siege where all political activities related to the major party (Peronist Party)were fiercely persecuted. These regime did not hesitate to assassinate and imprisoned popular activists. So the Argentine people arrived to a sideways in those years. Either stay silent and tolerate the injustice, or raise their voice in protest. To raise the voice in those times involved persecution and most probably, death. So there was a new choice to make. Either protest and get killed or to protest and defend oneself. Argentine people were not thirst for blood, they were sick of injustice and were willing to fight for a better existence. The film is not a call for violence, it is a call for understanding, a call for conscience. the movie is the voice of the silent workers fed up with treason and exploitation.

I was shown the first segment of this film in a lecture on Latin American Cinema, and afterwards I was given the accompanying political manifesto in which Solanas reiterates his revolutionary philosophy. Whatever you make of the politics, it is admirable how he has so artfully expressed the same anti-imperialist messages in the very different mediums of cinema and literature. The economic and cultural colonization to which the West has subjected Argentina, and the craven cooperation of a mindlessly Europeanized elite are both harped upon; first with the skillful editing of interviews and documentary footage, and then simply with expertly chosen words. In both cases the goal was to ferret out the ultimate causes, rather than merely bemoan the effects -- namely chronic underdevelopment and immense poverty and human misery.This relatively cold description misses the point, however. The real strength of the first segment of this film is its unbelievable emotional power. It is a fire and brimstone tirade against the state of Argentina, with the explicit goal of stirring up revolutionary aggression against those whom Solanas and his cadre deem most immediately responsible. Everything is either extremely kinetic editing, emotionally charged narration, or carefully selected cinema verite footage of police and military brutality, urban and rural poverty, or the plight of indigenous peoples -- all accompanied by explanatory titles cards which literally surge forward at the viewer. The movie is a virtuoso experience of emotional manipulation at its most sophisticated, going so far as to climax with a rapid montage of shots of youth mindlessly milling around record stores edited to the sound of machine gun fire. Inevitably, reality soon sets back in. One hesitates to apply words like "one-sided" or "biased" to a film like this. This is no Michael Moore spiel, or one of the numerous liberal exposes that criticize American culture from within -- it is nothing less than a late 60s revolutionary call to arms; a militant document aimed at combating the repression of a very real authoritarianism. As such, it's more fruitful to critique the direction it wishes to lead than the relative truth of the world-view it puts forth. For this, one can find no better crystallization than the film's coda. This is simply a minute-long close-up of the lifeless face Che Guevara -- Argentina's ultimate revolutionary gazing at us from beyond the grave, perhaps inviting others to follow his example. This is not a blind fetishization of him on the basis of Alberto Korda's great photograph, but a valorization of his revolutionary Stalinism, which Solanas's manifesto agrees with in labeling "Peace" and "Democracy" reformist cop-outs on true social justice. This sort of thing is the real stumbling block to viewing the film today, when the ferment of the 60s is past and the new face of Argentinian cinema is the likes of Nine Queens. Today, for all but fanatics, the film is merely a fascinating socio-historical document.

As a very strong document of a lost age it still holds actuality.The film leaves no room for objection and it is assured of it's own truth. The subject of the film is the "Neo-Colonisation" of South America through a historical perspective but is still heavily anchored in the 60s. It is divided into sections labelled The History, The Country, The System and so forth. Each section is usually introduced with a presentation of the subject and it's problems, complications and horrors in a fact like fashion but then drifts into strong pictures illustrating the subject alternatively it uses very strong montage sequences (both audio and visual). Examples of these montages are cuts between ad campaigns and poverty or a slaughterhouse and the exploitation of South American resources and so fort, all skilfully made. In whole the film is a very strong piece of work and it would be futile to, at this level, try and analyse it. Still I would like to comment that it is as much propaganda as manifesto, not that it would make it a worse film but still, it doesn't really strike you as all that very objective. To wrap it up I must say that it is well worth seeing and studying.