THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

There's a coup d'etat happening in Venezuela against Chavez in 2002, and these Irish documentary filmmakers are right inside of it. The documentary is a historical masterpiece, shot from the center of the action, acute and totally embarrassing for the prime supporters of the coup: the US.

Highly entertaining and exciting. What we get to see is a remarkable account of a country struggling to attain democracy, a charismatic leader (Chavez) who actually cares for his people, and unprecedented access to a historical event as it unfolds.

Kevin Thomas, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, wrote on July 24, 2003 in his review of this film for the L.A. Times:

Quote:
In a classic instance of being at the right place at the right time, Irish documentarians Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain were in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez had given them full access to profile him. Consequently, they were in place when on April 11, 2002, the news media reported that Chavez had been removed from office, arrested and replaced by a self-appointed transitional government composed of the high military command and backed by the country's wealthy elite.

Hugo Chavez, a stocky, virile former soldier with a forceful intellect and charismatic personality, had been democratically elected to office by a landslide in 1998. Said to be close to Fidel Castro, Chavez set about attempting to redistribute the wealth of the country, the world's fourth-largest supplier of oil. The oil industry is state-owned but controlled by the rich and the powerful, while 80% of the population lives in poverty.

While establishing an open government, Chavez held to the principle of free expression. Thus the country's five privately owned TV channels, representing the interests of the Chavez opposition, were free to mount attacks on him, branding him a communist. Chavez used the one state-owned channel that was at his disposal to get out his message.

Ultimately, the army's dissident generals, widely believed in Venezuela to have had U.S. support, were by April 2000 able to foment a sizable anti-Chavez street demonstration in Caracas. A march on the oil industry administration was redirected to the presidential palace to drive Chavez from office. In the meantime the dissidents managed to cut the signal of the single state TV channel and orchestrate their version of the growing clash between anti- and pro-Chavez supporters. Chavez, while refusing to resign office, surrendered to the military in order to avoid the palace being bombed.

This overthrow of a democratically elected government has been called "the world's first media coup," in which Chavez's enemies invented their version of the turmoil to justify their takeover. But Chavez supporters were able to get the state TV channel operating again, and the already outraged masses, once informed of what was going on, mounted another march on the presidential palace, restoring Chavez and his administration to power in a mere 48 hours.

Somehow Bartley and O'Briain and their crews seem to have been everywhere at once, and they bring both excitement and clarity to a series of complex, rapidly developing events. They made the most of their extraordinary opportunity to record history, and the way in which they revealed the role the electronic media played, both for better and for worse, carries implications as obvious as they are profound.