Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the documentary films that Fernando Solanas has made since the Argentine crisis of 2001, analysing them in relation to Solanas’ ground-breaking "La hora de los hornos" (1969) and his position as a politician in contemporary Argentina.

Paper long abstract:

The Argentine documentary "La hora de los hornos" (1969, dir. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino) is one of the most emblematic examples of radical cinema. The film constituted the foundation of the Third Cinema movement and was conceived as an instrument to help in the struggle for social emancipation. Eventually, Solanas and Getino collaborations were interrupted by forced exile. Only Solanas would go back to directing documentary films in Argentina, but not before the economic collapse of 2001. Although much has been written about "La hora" and the Third Cinema movement, less attention has been paid to Solanas' recent series of documentary works, which include "Memoria del saqueo" (2003); "La dignidad de los nadies" (2005), "Argentina latente" (2007), and "La próxima estación." The objective of this paper is to explore this corpus of films. I will argue that, having abandoned the rhetoric of decolonisation and revolutionary struggle that informed "La hora", these works still retain a utopian core as its basis - even in the case of a film like La próxima estación, which is closer to a dystopian rather than a utopian text. I will then discuss the tensions present in Solanas' films, considering his position as a political figure (founder of the Proyecto Sur party and a key member of the left-wing coalition Unen) and the collisions between the Peronist-inflected rhetoric that characterised his early works and that of his recent documentaries.