Chavez: Inside the Coup

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.

Before I saw this film, I'd only followed the situation in Venezuela on a cursory level. I knew Hugo Chavez was better than the presidents that preceded him in Venezuela, but I had also bought some of the right-wing propaganda against him. After seeing The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, I've become a "true believer" in Chavez and Bolivarian Revolution.

The myths the film dispelled for me were:

-Chavez is a brutal leader

-Chavez doesn't allow dissent

-Chavez is a megalomaniac who may be insane

To the contrary, President Chavez seems to be a quite ordinary, working class, non-white man, but an extraordinary leader. His first comments captured on film after he is returned to the Presidential Palace after the coup were something like, "I knew that we, the people, would win." It wasn't about him. It was about what the will of the majority wanted. It was about what the constitution demanded.

His first broadcast to the people of Venezuela after the coup was directed toward calm and reconciliation. This was amazing for me to see. If he was as brutal as US media portrayed him, he would have incited his followers to go after those who supported the coup. Instead he said to those who dissented, "go ahead and disagree with me." No squashing of dissent there.

The film has a number of candid moments with Chavez. One of the most striking was his recalling his grandfather, who was deemed a "killer" by his grandmother. As Chavez studied who his grandfather was, he found out he was not killer - he was a revolutionary. And that is what Chavez has striven to be.

A terrific documentary that once again shows you can't trust the corporate media.

My rating: 9

It was a very unique insight into the coup that was obviously engineered by the United States. Western news media never even bothered to report on it and it was just a speedbump on the way to the Iraqi war. It was unbelievable to see the level of corruption in Venezuela, where the State's oil riches mysteriously don't make it to the public, but instead reside the hands of a few wealthy venezuelan individuals. It is truly ironic that the Venezuelan oil crisis was not a strike by Chavez, but a lockout by the powerful oil industry leaders there to force a crisis.

The dark ambitions of the coup leaders combined with the private media collaboration really makes you angry. Watching a democracy get toppled as easily as a child's lincoln log house demonstrates the true fragility of a government for the people, especially if the people become complacent.

As a patriotic American, I am saddened to see that our government conspired to overthrow a democratic ALLIED nation. I could understand a conspiracy to get rid of the government of an enemy, but an ally? What is going on in Washington?!?

The movie is truly an eye-opener into the dirty dealings that we get into when we perceive that our oil supplies are threatened.

This movie is a must. With all the abuse that oil companies have foisted upon the world, it is inspiring to see an oil industry coup defeated by the people. It provides a clear contrast between the arrogant coup instigators and the humble people who turned out by the hundreds of thousands to support the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, and to cut short the oil interests greedy coup. The filming and editing is excellent, and the motive for making the film is honest and enlightening. People who don't like this movie are probably thinking that it is America's God given right to control the entire world's oil supply, while not sharing the profits with the people from whom those profits are derived --- land with oil. This movie should encourage all honest people of the world to rise up and fight the imperialistic, colonialistic hegemony of global corporate abuse. This is an A++ movie.