Militant Movie Night: The Hour of the Furnaces (Part 1: Neo-Colonialism and Violence)

Nostalgic for Nothing Cinemas's December screening is THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES (La hora de los hornos, 1968), the classic of revolutionary and anti-colonial Argentinian cinema.

Made under the guise of the Cine Liberación Group in the years preceding what came to be known as the Dirty War, The Hour of the Furnaces was simultaneously groundbreaking cinema and a guerilla-style call for the overthrow of Argentina’s dictatorship. Newsreels depicting the country’s sociopolitical fury between 1945 and 1968 interweave powerful testimonies of Peronist Resistance fighters and everyday people with the words of revolutionary heroes including José Marti — whose phrase referring to Cuba’s liberation from Spanish colonialism lends its title to the film — Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and José Carlos Mariátegui, a Peruvian Marxist philosopher who advocated for revolution rooted in local practises.

Shown clandestinely to sympathetic audiences that would interrupt screenings to debate, The Hour of the Furnaces is…