The Revolution will NOT be Televised. Required Viewing
Required viewing for all Progressive DUers!!!! (yeah, yeah, so sayeth I for the first time ever!))
Absolutely amazing from a cinematographic/artistic point of view and the story! -I just can't say enough! :bounce: You
MUST see it!
On April 12th 2002 the world awoke
((Remember Older DUers??)) to the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new interim government. What had in fact taken place was the first Latin American coup of the 21st century, and the world's first media coup...
The violence was sparked by a Supreme Court decision---
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Documentary Feature
Screening in Special Screenings
US Premiere
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a feature length documentary on Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. Over the course of 7 months, from January to July 2002, the filmmakers secured unprecedented access to film Chavez in his daily life. During this time, there was a coup and the filmmakers were the only crew inside the presidential palace at the time. They were also the first there for his triumphant return some 48 hours later. On the 11th April 2002, the world awoke to the news that President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new self-appointed "interim" government. News report after news report carried stories of the mayhem in Caracas, where 11 people had been killed in what were alleged to have been bloody street battles between Chavez supporters and an opposition march. Viewers all over the world were led to believe that Chavez had ordered the killings, and had therefore been forced to resign. What had in fact took place was the first coup of the twenty first century, and the world's first media coup. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a thrilling insight into President Chavez and the power of globalized media.
Total program length: 74 mins
http://www.sxsw.com/film/screenings/index.php?dvsearch=show&dvserialnum=933 SYNOPSIS
IN THEATRES: NOVEMBER 5, 2003 (NY)
"Don't be poisoned by their lies," says Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the last line of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED, referring to the way that the media corrupts the truth for the purpose of political persuasion. And thus the immediacy of this documentary--which consists of
fast-moving footage captured during a two-day period in April 2002 when Chavez was kidnapped from the presidential palace in Caracas and the media announced a successful coup--serves simply as a good example of media manipulation. Using television news clips, the film shows how the privately owned Venezuelan media attacks Chavez, comparing him to Fidel Castro and accusing him of mental instability. Washington chimes in, accusing Chavez of being in cahoots with Columbian narco-terrorists. But the documentary also establishes Chavez's position as the people's president. He
put in place a democratic constitution and promised to redistribute the nation's significant wealth--Venezuela is the world's fourth largest exporter of oil--
to benefit the poor, who represent 80 percent of the population. And from there, the media reports against him sound like cards being played in the oil game.
The Irish filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian, were inside the palace making a routine documentary about Chavez when the coup began. Meanwhile, a million Chavez supporters gathered in the streets outside demanding that their leader be restored. Within 48 hours, their pleas were answered and Chavez was president again. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED offers a
fascinating inside perspective on both Chavez's popularity and the way that media can bastardize the truth for political gain.http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheRevolutionWillNotBeTelevised-1127535/about.php The Banff Rockie Awards 2003 were announced in Canada last night and the Global Television Grand Prize / Grand Prix Global was awarded to Chavez - Inside the Coup, Power Pictures Ltd. in association with RTÉ/ The Irish Film Board/BBC/ZDF/ARTE/NPS/CoBo/ YLE.
The documentary, which depicted the overthrow and return to power of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a coup in 2002, was directed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain and produced by David Power of the Galway-based independent company. The company had secured unique access to President Chavez for an observational documentary and were with him in the Presidential Palace in Caracas when the coup took place.
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/banff_release.htm----
<snip / good info re oil & Venezuela>
Washington's hostility towards Venezuela became more pronounced, with senior officials questioning President Chavez' 'commitment to democracy' – this from a US administration that required the intervention of the Supreme Court to enjoy 'electoral' success!Nonetheless, President Chavez' domestic opponents - driven by the kleptocracy that ran PDVSA - had found new friends abroad.
After the coup, it would emerge that
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an agency of the US government, had quadrupled its funding for Venezuelan 'democrats' (the opposition) in the year leading up to the coup. NED funding of the opposition totalled $877,000.<snip / oil>
US Oil Supply Threatened
But it was events in the Middle East that may well have compelled the coup plotters to act when they did. Israeli actions in Occupied Palestine, during the early months of 2002, resulted in widespread international condemnation and anger. Attention focused on the United States – Israel's chief source of financial and political support.
<snip / oil>
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/backgrd/oil.htm US officials have been glaringly faint in their praise for Chavez's triumphant return. Condoleezza Rice, US national security adviser, expressed her hope that Chavez "takes this opportunity to right his own ship which has, quite frankly, been moving in the wrong direction for some time."http://www.mediamonitors.net/gamal15.html ---
Of course, a US state department official is trained to hear the sound of an oil well tap turning from several thousand miles away.
Chavez is no friend to the US. He went on television to denounce the US bombing of civilians in Afghanistan, brandishing pictures of dead children. He is a public friend to Fidel Castro. It wasn't mentioned here, but he has had his meetings with Saddam Hussein and Gadafy.
In Bush's list of those "either with us or against us", he's with the axis of irritants. "We are concerned with some of the things said by President Chavez, and his understanding of what a democratic system is about," said Colin Powell, with the hemmed in anger of a boss who has an employee he wants to sack, but the union won't let him.
<snip>
The world's press carried reports that could have been written by the coup leaders themselves, and, because they were based on these pictures, to a certain extent they were.
This film punctured every lie. The world accused the pro-Chavez crowd of carrying out the shootings; O'Briain and Bartley's camera proved it wasn't so, filming the victims almost before they hit the ground. The coup leader Pedro Carmona's speech about this "profoundly democratic process" and Colin Powell's parroting of Carmona's lie was inter-cut with film of the police shooting at protestors. As Carmona was on CNN declaring that the "the country is in a state of total normality", the camera was in the palace from which he had just been ousted. It followed the palace guard as they moved to strategic positions, took the building back and reinstated Chavez.
<snip>
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/review.htm Hours after Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez had been ushered from his office into military detention, his successor, Pedor Carmona Estanga, a former oil executive and head of the country’s largest business organization, committed a series of monumentally authoritarian acts.
With the stroke of a pen, without a mandate from the public, backed only by the authority vested in him by the country’s generals, Carmona dissolved the congress, disbanded the Supreme Court, closed the Attorney-General’s and comptroller's offices, repealed 48 laws that shifted some of the country’s wealth from the elite and oligarchs to the country’s poor, and ripped up the constitution. Were there ever a model for autocratic rule, this was it.
President George W.
Bush remarked, "Now the situation will be one of tranquility and democracy." The New York Times, doing its best to mimic the Newspeak of George Orwell’s 1984, declared, "With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be-dictator."
<snip>
In November, the US foreign policy establishment convoked a meeting to decide what to do about Chavez. He had chastised Washington for fighting terrorism with terrorism, cozied up to Cuba, refused to cooperate in the US war on Colombian guerillas, and committed a monumental heresy: He resisted the IMF, and wondered why a country with the Western hemisphere’s largest oil reserves, should be teeming with poor. The IMF let it be known that it would support a transitional government.
<snip>
With the stroke of a pen, Carmona, a man no one elected, cancelled
land reform, cancelled
free health care and
education up to university, and cancelled a
constitution that had taken away the oligarchs’ power to dominate the country at the expense of the majority, 80 percent of whom live in poverty, the country’s massive oil wealth beyond their reach.
<snip>
Before the generals ousted Chavez, US Secretary of State
Colin Powell demanded Chavez correct "his understanding of what a democracy is." Apparently, democracy isn’t rule by the people.
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans49.html <snip>
Venezuela is the fourth largest producer of oil, and the corporate elites whose political power runs unfettered in the Bush/Cheney oligarchy appear interested in privatizing Venezuela's oil industry. Furthermore, the establishment might be concerned that
Chavez's `barter deals' with 12 Latin American countries and Cuba are effectively cutting the U.S. dollar out of the vital oil transaction currency cycle. Commodities are being traded among these countries in exchange for Venezuela's oil, thereby reducing reliance on fiat dollars. If these unique oil transactions proliferate, they could create more devaluation pressure on the dollar.
Continuing attempts by the CIA to remove Hugo Chavez appear likely. <snip of really excellent article>
http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamclark1.html Here is a list of BBC articles from that period:
http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/Rec_Read/Dictator_In_The_Making.htm For the past few years, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been meeting with the enemies of the United States including Libya and Iraq. His behavior otherwise is disturbing as well. Below is a small timeline of recent events in Venezuela.
Here is a complete, albeit Anglo, rendition of the happening…..
For the past few years, President
Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela has been meeting with the enemies of the United States including Libya and Iraq. His behavior otherwise is
disturbing as well. Below is a small timeline of recent events in Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez
2003 01/05/2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2628203.stm">Political violence scars Venezuela
01/04/2003
Two shot dead in Venezuela clashes 01/04/2003
In pictures: Venezuela strike chaos 01/03/2003
Country profile: Venezuela 2002 12/24/2002
Venezuela strikers reject 'truce' offer 12/21/2002
Britons warned to leave Venezuela 12/16/2002
Violence flares in Venezuela protests 12/15/2002
Chavez opponents mass on streets 12/12/2002
Venezuelans living on the brink 12/11/2002
In pictures: Venezuela panic 12/11/2002
Venezuela crisis deepens 12/06/2002
Strikes threaten to cripple Venezuela 12/05/2002
In pictures: Venezuela on strike 11/30/2002
Venezuelan dissident generals sacked 11/19/2002
Troops disperse Venezuela protest 11/07/2002
Chavez fights referendum plans 11/05/2002
Dozens injured in Caracas clashes 10/23/2002
Army officers urge Venezuela rebellion 10/20/2002
Chavez 'foils assassination plot' 10/06/2002
Another Venezuela coup attempt 'foiled' 09/08/2002
Chavez pushes through oil for Cuba 08/19/2002
Chavez vows to fight opposition 08/03/2002
Street clashes engulf Venezuela's capital 07/10/2002
Carter's Venezuela bid fails 06/25/2002
Chavez warns against more coup plots 06/21/2002
Chavez defiant in face of protests 05/27/2002
Venezuelan coup leader given asylum 05/12/2002
Venezuelans march against Chavez 05/07/2002
Rift in Venezuelan society 05/06/2002
Venezuela president names new cabinet 05/03/2002
Venezuela minister warns of new coup 04/20/2002
New boss for Venezuela's oil giant 04/17/2002
Chavez opposition sceptical of change 04/15/2002
Currency plunges on Chavez return 04/14/2002
Analysis: After the would-be coup 04/14/2002
Analysis: Venezuela's crippled economy 04/14/2002
In pictures: Chavez defies opponents 04/14/2002
Chavez poised for comeback 04/14/2002
Venezuela interim president resigns 04/13/2002
Latin America ambivalent over ouster 04/12/2002
Venezuela press condemns 'autocrat' Chavez 04/12/2002
Venezuela's political disarray 04/12/2002
Analysis: Venezuela's crippled economy 04/12/2002
Venezuela president forced out 04/12/2002
Venezuela military challenge president 04/07/2002
Venezuela president sacks oil executives 03/21/2002
Clashes erupt on Venezuela streets 02/27/2002
Venezuela divided over Chavez 02/14/2002
Venezuela's currency in freefall 2001 12/16/2001
Chavez forces capitulation of banks 12/10/2001
Venezuela's Chavez faces labour wrath 08/12/2001
Castro visits Venezuelan ally 08/11/2001
Castro visits Venezuela05/25/2001
China urges stronger ties with Venezuela04/17/2001
Venezuela backs China in US/China aircraft collision 04/16/2001
Venezuela supports China's human rights record 04/15/2001
Venezuela welcomes Chinese President Jiang 2000 12/05/2000
US looking into alleged Chavez mischief 10/26/2000
Castro arrives in Venezuela 10/15/2000
Army general named as head of Venezuelan federal oil company 09/29/2000
Iran-Iraq talks in Caracas 09/21/2000
Chavez seeks more power09/03/2000
Chavez supports Bolivia against Chile08/19/2000
Venezuela's Chavez sworn in again 08/13/2000
Chavez visits Iraq [br />07/31/2000
Cuba delighted at Chavez victory07/15/2000
Chavez military critic arrested03/01/2000
Retired Venezuelan military officers denounce Chavez' political use of military forces 02/02/2000
Chavez demands international respect for Venezuela as a sovereign country 01/14/2000
Venezuela rejects US military aid after disaster 1999 12/23/1999
In pictures: Venezuela's devastation 12/19/1999
In pictures: Venezuela's flood chaos 12/16/1999
Venezuela backs new constitution. - Opponents say authoritarianism on it's way 12/13/1999
Venezuela Cardinal says Chavez is ''like Mussolini'' 11/11/1999
Venezuela suspends scores of allegedly corrupt judges
11/05/1999 [link:|Venezuela votes to extend presidency>
10/25/1999 Venezuela's Chavez defends his reforms. Critics say he is too powerful 08/27/1999
Venezuela's Congress vows defiance after being stripped of power 08/03/1999
Constitutional rewrite begins in Venezuela 07/12/1999
Cuban foreign minister visits Venezuela 02/05/1999
Venezuela's Chavez wants coup officers reinstated1998 10/01/1998
Anti-Chavez alliance in Venezuela fails 06/17/1998
Venezuela jails are worst in worldPlease go see this film!!!