Fernando E. Solanas

An impassioned three-part documentary of the liberation struggle waged throughout Latin America, using Argentina as a historical example of the imperialist exploitation of the continent. Part I: Neo-Colonialism and Violence is a historical, geographic, and economic analysis of Argentina. Part II: An Act For Liberation examines the ten-year reign of Juan Perón (1945-55) and the activities of the Peronist movement after his fall from power. Part III: Violence and Liberation studies the role of violence in the national liberation process and constitutes a call for action.

As the third installment in an ongoing series of muckraking documentaries by Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas that investigate various sociological aspects of South America's second-largest nation (following 2004's Memoria del saqueo and 2005's La Dignidad de los nadies), Latent Argentina springboards from a truth little-known to most of the titular country's residents: Argentina owns more wealth and more innate natural resources than almost any nation on its continent. The possessor of a bountiful shoreline, endless acres of tillable farmland, the fourth largest metal reserves on the planet and a remarkable space program (the fourth in the world to send a human being into space), Argentina nevertheless remains a prisoner of backward and disadvantageous economical, political and social systems.

A young man living in a cold southern village in South America, decides to start a trip looking for his father. By doing this he discovers unexpected facts about his Latin American essence.

After Memoria del saqueo, La dignidad de los nadies, Argentina latente and La próxima estación, Solanas begins with Oro puro a diptych on the plundering of mineral resources (metals and hydrocarbons). This remarkable and powerful documentary denounces the open-pit cyanide mining operations carried out by multinationals in the northwest with the support of politicians, exposes the progressive contamination of soil and water, and exalts social resistance movements through moving individual and collective examples.

After the fall of the military dictatorship in 1983, successive democratic governments launched a series of reforms purporting to turn Argentina into the world's most liberal and prosperous economy. Less than twenty years later, the Argentinians have lost literally everything: major national companies have been sold well below value to foreign corporations; the proceeds of privatizations have been diverted into the pockets of corrupt officials; revised labour laws have taken away all rights from employees; in a country that is traditionally an important exporter of foodstuffs, malnutrition is widespread; millions of people are unemployed and sinking into poverty; and their savings have disappeared in a final banking collapse. The film highlights numerous political, financial, social and judicial aspects that mark out Argentina's road to ruin.

Some Argentinians, exiled in Paris, decide to put on a tango-ballet, dedicated to Carlos Gardel, a legendary Argentinian tango star.

A bourgeois family reluctantly watches a home documentary about the horrors of the Second World War.