Now!
1965 · 6m · Cuba
Directed by Santiago Álvarez
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: provocative, tense
A pioneering agitprop montage film that sets found footage of racial oppression, civil rights protests, lynchings, and police brutality in the United States to Lena Horne's banned protest song "Now!" — creating one of the most powerful political documentaries of the 1960s.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
1965, no camera, no sound recorder, just an editing table, newsreel scraps, and Lena Horne's banned song — Santiago Álvarez basically invented the music video while making the most furious civil rights montage of the decade. Mandatory.
Santiago Álvarez prefigured the music video by two decades by assembling found newsreel to Lena Horne's banned protest song — a foundational montage object and one of the great agitprop shorts. Essential.
ICAIC production, 5:26 — Álvarez built one of the most influential agitprop montages in cinema history from morgue photos and a banned Lena Horne song, with no camera and no sound recorder. The fact that he prefigured the music video by two decades while assembling civil-rights protest footage is craft as political weapon.
Reviews
Using morgue photos, newsreel footage, and a recording by Lena Horne, Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez fired off 'Now!', one of the most powerful bursts of propaganda rendered in the 1960s.
Regarded today as a seminal work made in the agitprop montage tradition, which blurs the distinction between documentary, newsreel and experimental film, as well as a prototype of the music video format.