Lifetime Achievement Award of 24th IFFK 2019 goes to Fernando Solanas, avant-garde, anti-colonial filmmaker from Argentina.

Fernando Solanas, the Argentine filmmaker and a pioneer of the Third Cinema movement, will be presented the lifetime achievement award at the 24^th edition of IFFK.The award carries a purse of Rs5 lakh. Five films by Solanas, which chronicle the resistance against neo-colonialism in Latin America, will be screened .

Fernando “Pino” Solanas is, on the strength of the film La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Ovens, 1968) and the accompanying manifesto “Hacia un tercer cine” (“Towards a Third Cinema”), the Latin American filmmaker most recognized by the world cinephile. Made in collaboration with Octavio Getino, these works provided a model and theoretical foundation for a formally avant-garde anti-colonial cinema, but through five decades of exiles and returns Solanas has produced a varied body of work, the quality, and importance of which is recognized both in his home country of Argentina and internationally, with films such as Sur (The South, 1988), for which he was awarded the best director prize at Cannes, and Memoria del saqueo (Social Genocide, 2004), his return to militant documentary filmmaking that provided a gripping account of the political situation in his home country. Solanas films focus on the political and contemporary history of his country.

Solanas films focus on politics and the contemporary history of his country. Born on February 16, 1936, in Olivos, Buenos Aires, Solanas received his training in theater at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art and then went into the film in 1962. While working as a cartoon scriptwriter, he filmed his first short movies, Seguir andando (1962; Continue Walking) and Reflexión ciudadana (1963; Citizen Reflection). He also had great success in composing music for advertising jingles and founded a production company. In 1966, along with Octavio Getino, he began production on the film La hora de los hornos: Notas y testimonios sobre el neocolonialism, la violencia y la liberación (The Hour of the Furnaces,1968), which was filmed in secret because of the political situation in Argentina at the time. He worked for more than two years filming, in 16mm and without sound, this key work of liberation film, which was acclaimed for both its formal freedom and its political content. After completion of this film, he formed, along with Gerardo Vallejo, Octavio Getino, and Edgardo Pallero, the Liberation Film Group, which prepared a manifesto entitled Hacia un tercer cine (Toward a Third Cinema), which analyzed the relationships between film and politics. The group produced two documentaries on the life and political career of Juan Domingo Perón: Perón: Actualización política y doctrinaria para la toma del poder (1971; Perón: Political and Doctrine Update for the Taking of the Power) and Perón: La Revolución justicialista (1971)...