The Hour of the Furnaces(Forum 50)

Produced under the banner of the film collective Cine Liberacíon, The Hour of the Furnaces is a piercing documentary, a powerful political manifesto, and a prime example of how cinema could play an active role in the fight for justice and freedom. Drawing from the thoughts of a wide array of revolutionaries – from Jose Marti and Che Guevara, and from Frantz Fanon to Aime Cesaire – Argentinian filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino deliver a distinct analysis of dictatorships in Latin America, and ways they could be undermined. The pair use wildly varied approaches throughout this four-hour-plus epic, where cinema verité meets collage on screen and classical music clashes with pop numbers on the soundtrack. But the fury and the urgency remains constant: divided into three parts, with each of these sections split further into chapters, the film is meant to be one open for discussion and debate.