One of the major works of Latin America’s activist cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, the Argentine trilogy The Hour of the Furnaces was made after the 1966 coup d’état. The film is a manifesto for a political interventionist cinema in the context of acute repression and persecution. It was shown underground and intended as a film in progress that would only be completed at the time of its screening with the spectator’s direct participation – an idea that was then developed in the manifesto Hacia un Tercer cine (Towards a Third Cinema) written in 1969. Fifty years on, the film still stands as a fundamental document for understanding the spirit and projects of an activist cinema for which revolution and liberation of the Third World were a prerequisite.
José Quental
