Chavez: Inside the Coup

There are three reasons to interpret this film cautiously. First, it was made by people whose roots are far from Latin America. Second, the filmmakers were in Venezuela as guests of the Chavez government, and had been filming a documentary about Chavez for seven months before the coup. Third, we are never told anything specific about the people who orchestrated the coup. The film identifies two leaders, Pedro Carmona (who was sworn in as President during the 2 day coup) and Carlos Ortega, but doesn't say who they are (Carmona was head of the national Chamber of Commerce; Ortega still heads a federation of labor unions). No opposition motives or reasons for the coup are put forward, even for the purpose of discrediting them. Indeed, the film offers no analysis whatsoever of any of the events it depicts.

Chavez comes across as an energetic, gregarious, intuitive sort who is comfortable touching and hugging people everywhere he goes. He disdains free market economic doctrines. We witness demonstrations for and against the government, and exchanges of gunfire, in the days leading up to the coup attempt. Private media sources are portrayed as mouthpieces for the opposition. We are shown how one private television station uses selective footage from a particular camera angle to distort the account of a gun battle in the streets, suggesting that pro-Chavez gunmen are firing at unarmed opposition protesters, when footage from another camera angle (shown in this film) seems to refute this interpretation.

Events during the coup attempt move briskly. The pace, tension, and grainy handheld footage - all remind one of a Costa-Gavras docudrama. The filmmakers are able to shoot up close - close to both pro-Chavez officials and opposition leaders after they take over the palace. (Chavez is taken into custody and driven elsewhere, but we don't see this occur). What lingers are impressions of the grim, quiet, calm of people within the palace, even in the midst of political chaos and noisy crowds at the palace gates. The smug cocksure demeanor of Carmona and his senior associates as they announce the coup. The coolly improvised efforts of the palace guard, who, after two days, bloodlessly seize opposition leaders and retake control of the palace on behalf of the pro-Chavez faction, as Chavez officials reemerge from hiding. Finally an uncharacteristically fatigued, subdued Chavez arrives by helicopter from the place he had been detained. He speaks on state television and in the quietest possible manner tells everyone to `be calm and go home.' It is absolutely the right thing to say delivered in exactly the right tone. This man does have exceptional gifts as a leader.

Taken at face value, this film portrays Chavez as a sunny populist champion of the little guy who's struggling against international fat cats and their domestic puppets to do the right thing for his country. My partner and I left the theater almost feeling infatuated with this warm and earnest man. A majority of Venezuelan voters obviously like him. Chavez was elected to a 5-year term as President in 1998 with 56% of the vote, and two years later, after an overhaul of the constitution, he ran again and won with 59%. It's no secret that the Bush administration doesn't like Chavez: they fear that with him in power Venezuelan oil supplies might become too unpredictable and pricey, and they also worry about Chavez's leftist agenda and hearty embrace of Fidel Castro. The C.I.A. may have aided the coup attempt. Diego Cisneros, who heads the largest private media conglomerate in Venezuela, is an old fishing buddy of George Bush the elder. The ("W") Bush government rushed to recognize Carmona's coup less than 36 hours after it began, and CNN continued to run disinformation bulletins, announcing the coup's success, well after Chavez had reestablished control. I learned on the filmmakers' website that Amnesty International pulled this film from a Human Rights Film Festival in Vancouver B.C. recently because of reports from its Venezuelan affiliate that screening the film could cause harm to some people, presumably associated with AI, in that country. Harm by whom? Certainly unlikely from pro-Chavez people. They couldn't hope for better propaganda than this film offers.

But a darker side of the Venezuelan President emerges from other sources. Information available at the Human Rights Watch (HRW) website and from Reporters Without Borders (RWB) indicates serious compromise of freedom of the press in Venezuela throughout 2002 and 2003, troubles perpetrated both by anti-Chavez and pro-Chavez forces. In 2002, 1 journalist was killed, 58 were physically attacked, and another 16 were threatened. In January, 2002, shortly before the coup, a bomb exploded in offices of a daily newspaper that had published anti-Chavez views. In July, 2002, just three months after the coup, a private TV station was bombed. RWB states that Chavez supporters `.staged many protests designed to intimidate privately-owned news media and repeatedly attacked journalists covering demonstrations.[these events were] spurred on by the President's verbal attacks on the press and the radically anti-Chavez stance adopted by privately owned news media...' In February, 2003, HRW reported that four opposition journalists had been abducted or murdered. In July, 2003, HRW wrote to Chavez, asking him to investigate `critical threats to freedom of the press.'. Journalists whose work supports opposition views `.have been the victims of aggression and intimidation by Chavez supporters,' HRW claimed.

The next elections are scheduled for December, 2006, but under the new constitution Chavez helped create, a referendum can be called for, half way through any presidential term. As of late January, 2004, such a referendum is formally being sought, with nearly 3 ½ million signatures collected. If the petition is validated in February by the government, this would mean a vote in May to either oust Chavez early or support completion of his term. (I gave this film two grades: A- for rare fly-on-the-wall reportage of history in the making, and C- for lack of balance in content and superficial or absent analysis.

Sometimes it's enough to be in the right place at the right time to make a great documentary. 'Chavez: Inside the Coup' AKA 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' is astonishing in that way. It covers a South American coup from inside the presidential palace. And when the people take back control and restore the popular leader, the filmmakers are still on hand with cameras rolling.

There he is as the film begins: Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, the former military officer and admirer of Bolivar who years earlier attempted his own coup and was imprisoned for it.

Hugo Chavez is a hugger. He hugs and pats and grabs the hand of everyone he meets. He looks young guards in the eye and pats them on the chest as he walks by. They're like his young reflections: they're innocent boys with the same dark Indian face and classic profile he has.

Chavez speaks in a confidential tone. He expresses his loathing of globalization, his disapproval of the US bombing of Afghanistan, his faith that his grandfather was not an 'assassin' but someone who killed another man for honor. Reviewing a film, he stops to tell aides they must use the local media wherever they go in the country to maintain visibility and contact.

He meets crowds in the streets, crowds of the poor, smiling at him, optimistic about their government for the first time in their lives.

He receives hundreds, perhaps thousands of notes and letters, sometimes scribbled on scraps of paper, from poor people who adore him and ask him for help, and he has staff to read all these requests. He has his own weekly call-in radio show where he addresses people directly for all to hear.

Chavez is a big bull of a man, warm but without visible subtlety. He's one of the people, Nasser of Egypt without Nasser's paranoia. Even after being temporarily deposed from the presidency he won by a landslide vote of the 80% poor population of Venezuela, he refuses to prosecute the perpetrators of the coup and many remain in the country as opposition leaders. And for a reason: unlike Nasser, he was popularly elected and by an overwhelming majority. Chavez has a certain populist bravado. His presidency gives the poor hope and he shares that hope.

What we don't see is what specific actions Chavez takes to accomplish political changes in Venezuela. Except for describing his effect on the oil industry, the film isn't specific about the legislative changes of his early presidency. What we do see is a man who plays his role of people's leader and friend of Fidel to the hilt.

Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain came to Venezuela to simply cover Chavez's presidency, obviously sympathetic to his democratic rule and hatred of neo-liberalism and globalization and aware of the Nortenos' jaundiced picture of him emanating from the Bush administration speaking through Colin Powell. The US doesn't like Chavez's greater taxation of the oil companies - Venezuela is the world's fourth largest producer and the US's third ranking source of the substance. They don't like his indifference to the wealthy and to global corporations either.

Colin Powell isn't Chavez's only opposition. In Venezuela the 20% who didn't vote for him, the rich and the bourgeoisie, consider Chavez their enemy and organize for his removal. We see one of their meetings and follow some of their leaders into the street. We also see clips to show how this opposition freely uses the country's privately owned TV stations (only one, Channel 8, is government controlled) to attack Chavez daily as insane and insist he be ousted.

The Chavez opposition arranges a public confrontation that makes his supporters look like killers. Broadcasting this falsification on the privately owned TV stations, they tarnish his image badly and then stage the coup by force where leaders are trapped and Chavez himself forced to flee as a prisoner to save the others' lives. Public outcry swiftly leads to mass opposition of the new coup government though, and the Chavez supporters regain the presidential palace and bring him back. Amazingly, we see all this firsthand.

This documentary is more exciting than any fiction. It's terrifying and sad when the coup happens and we see it from the inside, knowing this was a popular government. It's exhilarating when the elected leaders are able to come back. This has to be some of the most amazing footage of history in action ever filmed.

Except for some information on what happened to Carmona and the other opposition figures after their ouster -- many staying, because of their freedom from reprisals, but Carmona turning up in Miami, no doubt to be coddled by the US and held for future use -- there is nothing further about the situation in Venezuela, which is reported to be very revolutionary and unstable.

'Chavez: Inside the Coup' isn't political analysis but impassioned engagé reportage and as such it has enormous meaning and impact. They were there. It recalls the slogan Granada's revolutionary government used before the Bush (I) takeover: 'Come see for yourself.' Through these Irish filmmakers, that's what we get to do.

I've been surprised at how negative--and vehemently negative--most of the comments posted about this film have been. I saw the film for the first time last night, and if I had time, I'd go again today. This film is a fascinating documentary, affording us a rare, perhaps unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall look at a coup in progress.

Most of the complaints I've seen about this film are ideological in nature--i.e., reviewers who oppose Chavez are upset that the film presents him so sympathetically. Though I myself am not a Chavez fan, neither am I moved by complaints that this film is one-sided, propagandistic, etc. When I go to see an arthouse film--especially one with a title like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"--I'm not really expecting to see the kind of conscientious effort at even-handedness I'd expect from, say, PBS's "Frontline." I don't mind that the filmmakers have constructed a view of events that's sympathetic to Chavez, given that the whole point of the film is to challenge an already widely disseminated anti-Chavez representation of those same events. It's not as if the pro-Carmona folks who run Venezuela's private news stations haven't had a chance to air their version, no?

Besides, I'm not convinced that this documentary *is* unreservedly pro-Chavez. Particularly at the beginning, the film does not shy away from showing Chavez as a second Peron--another Latin American colonel turned populist demagogue. We see how he promotes a personal cult; we see how he encourages the poor to view him as their benefactor, someone who might buy them cement or intervene in their personal legal entanglements. The scene on the plane where Chavez discusses globalization doesn't exactly make him look like a sophisticated analyst of current events. And after that bizarre scene where he quotes poetry to explain how he came to know his grandfather was a freedom-fighter, not a murderer (with Simon Bolivar casting what look like incredulous, sidelong glances from where he stands framed in a painting on the wall), it's not hard to see why the opposition has questioned Chavez's sanity.

That said, the film clearly invites us to root for Chavez and his people during the coup attempt. And it clearly wants us to hiss at Carmona, and the privileged wealthy, and the fat cats who used their control of private media outlets to suppress the truth about what was going on in the presidential palace. One of the points that this film drove home for me is how important the media have become in shaping--not just reporting--events, and how frighteningly easy it is for a few people to control the public's understanding of events. That this film itself is an example of trying to control the public's understanding of an event is ironic but not scandalous. (Welcome to postmodernity.)

In any case, the film's point about media manipulation is well taken and powerfully made. If nothing else, the film offers an exhilarating ride, well worth the price of a non-matinee ticket, and it will provide plenty of conversation material for afterwards at the coffeehouse. Do not miss this film!

This documentary's attempt to catch the reality of the President of this country, Mr. Chavez, I must say, was a total failure, not to mention theirs unfortunate approach to register the facts surrounding the strike of April 2002.

The filmmakers say at the beginning of the movie that they came to Venezuela approximately 7 months before the events of April 2002. They (or their government's guides) were too careful to extract from the discourses of Mr. Chavez all the smiles, all the kids he carries, and a whole interview where he offended no one. This must have cost them a lot of work, because, in almost five years as a president, listening to him every day (plus a couple of years of campaign before that) we had never had the opportunity of seeing a so peaceful and beloved Mr. Chavez. It's amazing how these filmmakers protest against the role of the media's corporations in the Venezuela's current situation, while they serve the same kind of lies, all dressed up as a `documentary', but for the benefits, willingly or not, of the opposite side.

As for the events of April 2002, the directors only failed in one small thing: they were never out of Miraflores Palace (Presidential Palace of Venezuela) and they attended to all the details of the process that were given to them by the same persons that had nailed Venezuela into these unfortunate events. Out there was the massacre, were the outrageous murders of dozens of innocent people, ordered directly by Mr. Chavez, and that were never mentioned in this vindication of the so-called revolution.

Images don't lie. But too few images, along with a couple of directed commentaries, may become the biggest lie of all.

Never before and never after has there been a documentary like this. What you get here is the most fascinating and unique look at historical events ever captured on film: you get to be inside a coup d'état in Venezuela while it is actually happening.

What happens before your eyes is stunning, shocking - and if it weren't for the very real events of similar nature in the past in other Latin American countries, unbelievable. The footage shown is brutal, but as to what we are actually seeing and what we are led to believe by clever construction - as Chavez' opponents are claiming - has to be decided by the viewer.

The heated debate this documentary has started is nearly as interesting as the coup itself, and I certainly won't give my personal opinion about what I believe to be the truth. But whether it's the best propaganda film ever or the most compelling capture of true events on celluloid since the footage of the JFK assassination - this is essential viewing.

See it, read about it - and then make up your own mind. 10 out of 10.

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