La Hora De Los Hornos - The Hour Of The Furnaces, (1968) directed by Fernando Solanas

This is a DIY event, so please bring beverages and/or snacks to share.

Considered by many to be the greatest political documentary of all time, Fernando Solanas' three-part La Hora de los Hornos (Hour of the Furnaces, 1968) is a blistering analysis of neocolonialism & resistance in both his native Argentina & throughout Latin America. The film was both shot & screened clandestinely at the commencement of Argentina's notorious "dirty war", shown to sympathetic groups of anarchists, workers, & revolutionaries (with cues in the film to "stop the projector & start the discussion" at various points!)

"The title of this three-part agitprop documentary comes from a quote Che Guevara used to open what was to become his last public statement, the 'Message to the Tricontinental', in 1967: "It's the hour of the furnaces and only the light shall be seen." The author of the quote is José Martí, Cuba's nineteenth century national hero. This double reference, to a revolutionary who died fighting Spanish colonialism, and to a revolutionary who had just died fighting neo-colonialism, cues the viewer to think of the parallelisms between contemporary liberation struggles and Latin American wars of independence in the nineteenth century; namely, a voluntarism and a nationalist anti-imperialism that effectively trumped other epistemological categories. In this regard, the film's strong bias against validating questions of power that fall outside the realm of political economy is a reflection of its times. At the same time, however, this limitation should not blind us to the film's greatest strength: the clear articulation of a revolutionary discourse through an equally revolutionary means of representation." --Paul Schroeder,

Note - La Hora De Los Hornos is a long film; it runs close to three hours. But rest assured there will be plenty of space in our lounge should viewers need a break or even better, a place to discuss the ideas brought up in this historic work. See you there!