The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (documentary)

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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup ) is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

A television crew from Ireland's Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002. Shifting focus, they followed the events as they occurred. During their filming, the crew recorded images of the events that they say contradict explanations given by Chávez opposition, the private media, the US State Department, and then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The documentary says that the coup was the result of a conspiracy between various old guard and anti-Chávez factions within Venezuela and the United States.

The film has won twelve awards at film festivals and has been nominated for another four.^[1] A Spanish language documentary, Venezuela Bolivariana: People and Struggle of the Fourth World War, covers much of the same subject and uses some footage from The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

1 Controversy and counterpoints
2 Awards
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Controversy and counterpoints

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has been widely debated among both political supporters and critics of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The film has won twelve documentary awards^[2] worldwide, has been nominated for four more^[1] and has been subject to various independent reviews. Among other prizes, the documentary won the Silver Hugo award for the Best Documentary in the Chicago International Film Festival (2003), the Banff Rockie Award as Best Information & Current Affairs Program at the Banff Television Festival (2003) and the International Documentary Association's IDA Award (2003).^[1]

Frank Scheck, for The Hollywood Reporter, says about 'The Revolution will not be televised, a.k.a Chávez: Inside the Coup:

While the filmmakers were necessarily limited to filming what was in their immediate orbit, their close proximity to the events at hand results in often gripping footage, and the finished product resembles a taut if at times confusing and inadvertently comic political thriller. One might have hoped for a little more in the way of analysis and historical context, but on the other hand, with its mere 74-minute running time, the film earns points for brevity and succinctness.^[3]

Portraying a recent political and highly controversial event, which has been in the heart of a media battle that raised strong feelings on both sides, the film has also been severely criticized by opponents of Hugo Chávez, who say that it omits (or misrepresents) important events, such as a televised announcement of Chávez's resignation by General-in-Chief, Lucas Rincón Romero, resulting in a distorted version of the events as a coup.

However Chávez says that he never resigned and that he refused to sign the resignation letter that the coup plotters handed him.

Another documentary providing counter viewpoints to those portrayed in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is called "X-Ray of a Lie". This documentary was made to "address the arguments in the Irish film and to question the ethical integrity of its filmmakers".

Frame 1 (33m13s). Shooters over the bridge of "Llaguno". A red line shows the size of the shadow.

An important criticism related to the manipulation of images is based on a conflicting series of scenes reporting the actions of a group of Chávez supporters shooting towards Baralt Avenue (Frame 1). These scenes were originally taken by a journalistic team from Venevisión, which was awarded the King of Spain’s Journalism Prize for this report.

The documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" argues that the shooters were shooting back at snipers and not towards the location of the opposition rally (33m13s), because images from an amateur video (34m55s) show the streets below to be empty, except for an armored riot vehicle of the Metropolitan Police.

Venezuelan TV producers and engineers Thaelman Urgellesa and Wolfgang Schalk argue in "X-Ray of a Lie" that calculations of the shadows on the bridge show that the two clips were not shot at the same time of the day. They initially argue that the first scene of the shooters shown in the documentary happened between 4:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon (Frame 1) when the crowd was nearby; while the second scene, when the streets were empty, happened about 1:00 to 1:30 in the afternoon before the crowd had arrived (Frame 2). They later note the existence of blood stains on the bridge and human shadows explicitly stating that the time of the video showing the empty street was most likely taken about 5:30 in the afternoon, whether it be 1:30 or 5:30 they claim it was not shot simultaneously.

Critics argue that, considering that the bridge runs east-to-west, the claim of the shadow as an indicator of the time of day is dubious, because the length of the railing shadow would not change much over the course of an afternoon.

On another hand, Nick Fraser, Storyville Series Editor for BBC - UK, on his Commissioner's Comment over "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" said:

The result is a brilliant piece of journalism but it is also an astonishing portrait of the balance of forces in Venezuela. On one side stand the Versace wearing classes, rich from many decades of oil revenues, and on the other the poor in their barrios and those within the armed forces who support Chávez.

The media, who ought to be merely reporting the conflict splitting the country down the middle, are in fact adjuncts of the coup-makers.

Watch this film and you may truly for the first time in your life understand the term media bias.^[4]

Frame 2 (34m55s). The documentary voice over narrates: "What the TV stations did not broadcast was this camera angle, that clearly shows that the streets below were clearly empty". This shot was taken by the Metropolitan Police. A red line shows the size of the shadow where the shooters were located.

Another documentary, Angel Palacios's Puente Llaguno: Claves de una Masacre, which appeared on Venezolana de Televisión, presents a corroboration of the arguments shown in "The Revolution will not be Televised". Using a similar camera angle from an amateur handycam, the film uses movement synchronization to show that both the Venevisión video and the handycam were shot at the same time: the second pans out showing shooters on the other side of the bridge firing at a Metropolitan police armored vehicle. The documentary Puente Llaguno presents testimony from the shooters in which they claimed they were not firing at the marchers but only to the Metropolitan police. "X-ray of a Lie" argues that the armored vehicle was part of the "police force protecting the marchers retreat" (35m57s, "X-Ray of a Lie"). The documentary Puente Llaguno also argues that the last death in the Avenue below happened 43 minutes before the shooting was timestamped.

[edit] Awards

Banff Rockie Award, Banff World Television Festival, Best Information & Current Affairs Program.
Grand Prize, Banf World Television Festival.
Chicago International Film Festival, Silver Hugo, Best Documentary.
EBU Golden Link Award.
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Seeds of War Award.
International Documentary Association, IDA Award, Feature Documentaries.
Leeds International Film Festival, Audience Award.
Prix Italia, TV Documentary - Current Affairs.
Seattle International Film Festival, Documentary Award.
Seattle International Film Festival.^[1]

[edit] See also

Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002

[edit] References

[edit] External links

BBC UK Chavez: Inside the coup.

Official website

Chavez: Inside the Coup at the Internet Movie Database

venezuelasolidarity.org.uk - Website distributing the three films: Llaguno Bridge, Keys to a Massacre; People and the Struggle in the Fourth World War; and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.