The South

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.

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

Lengthy interviews, exclusive to this movie, with Juan Peron, describing his military career and the reforms he instituted as leader of the Argentine government.

The epic of popular resistance to the privatization of oil in Argentina and its tragic consequences: thousands of layoffs, poverty and environmental pollution. It was one of the biggest scams and failures of national history: the country was self-sufficient in oil and gas reserves and twenty years later, you must import them.

A series of interviews with Juan Domingo Perón in Madrid, where he was exiled. Filmed between June and October 1971, Perón talks about the current situation of the Justicialist movement and the steps to be taken to win the presidential elections again.

The history of the Argentine railways, from 1857 until the crisis of the current transport system. The closing of branches of the railway lines turned towns whose main source of work was the train into ghost towns. The privatization of the lines caused the dismissal of tens of thousands of workers as well as the deterioration of public service, causing in turn the increase of motor transport and the multiplication of automobile accidents.

In the midst of a profound economic, political, and social crisis, in April 1982, the armed forces led by the then de facto president, the alcoholic General Leopoldo Galtieri, launched the reconquest of the Falkland Islands. This marked the beginning of a military adventure in the South Atlantic against a world power that laid bare the errors and horrors of the Argentine military regime. This documentary depicts the final act of a bloody dictatorship.

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.

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

Documentary with staged events about a poor rural family in Argentina.

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 Journey to the Fumigated Towns is the final episode made by Fernando Solanas in a series of 8 films dedicated to the Argentinian’s crisis in the 21st century. Based on testimonies, re-creations, archives and photos, this investigative documentary reveals not only the after-effects of the soya’s model and other GMO’s grain productions with agrochemicals, on the health of the Argentinian people, but also the global and environmental consequences.