DVD: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
$30.00 $23.00 On Sale!
DVD-RWNBT
The filmmakers were able to remain in the presidental palace wih Chavez administration members and supporters, while opposition forces violently overtook the government and dismantled Venezuela's democratic institutions, including the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and the offices of Ombudsman and Attorney General, and the kidnapping and detention of the President. The film exposes the human rights violations committed during the coup. This included the extrajudicial killing of more than fifty people; the arbitrary arrest, persecution and torture of pro-government supporters and government officials.
This documentary has rarely been shown in the U.S. and is not distributed by any other source in the U.S. You won't find it at Netflix or Blockbuster. There is a well-coordinated disinformation campaign to prevent the film from ever being broadcast or shown theatrically in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The opposition to Chavez is led by people such as Venezuelan billionaire and media magnate Gustavo Cisneros who isone of the Latin American owners of AOL, Coca-Cola, DirecTV and Pizza Hut corporations, as well as Univision in the U.S. and Venezuela's largest TV network Venevision. Cisneros is one of the main leaders and financiers of the anti-Chavez movement inside that country. He is also a personal friend of George Bush, senior.
For evidence of U.S. involvemnet in the coup, see a compilation of articles "The U.S. and the Coup in Venezuela" at www.thirdworldtraveler.com
You may also want to read the (April 2007) book "Cowboy In Caracas: A North Amercan's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution" by Charles Hardy. Enter BK-CIC on the website's homepage search engine to go directly to the book.
• Film review from VARIETY (New York's film and theatree industry daily newspaper):
"A superior example of fearless filmmakers in exactly the right place at the riught time, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain's "The Rervolution Will Not Be Televised" begins as a portrait of embattled Venezuelan President Hugio Chavez that is dierted mid-stream when a militry coup attempt occurs. The result is a startling record of blood-stained revolt, pumped up with the immediacy of a camera crew awash in live, dangerus news. The latest critical documentary on U.S. agencies supporting questionable South American regimes, and probably the bst of the lot, pic should become a quick favorite of festival programmers...
Democraticallty elected in 1988, former army officer and self-proclaimed "Bovilarian revolutionary" Hugo Chavez immediately initiated an ambitious slate of reforms for the country where 80percent of the people live in poverty. Including a wholesale revision of Venezuela's constitution, Chavez'splan focused on a "redistribution" of the massive wealth generated by hius country's national ol company.
Chavez, whio had been in office for three years when Bartley and O'Briain arrived to film him, is no shrinking violet. Althogh the filmmakers arrive in Venezula a full seven months prior to the April 11, 2002 coup, they find a country rife with opposition and a regime that has already withstood several attempts at overthrow backed by the wealthy minority. On television, here the private media outnumbers the public by a ratio of five-to-one, (which is actually better than thre nine to eight to one newspaper ratio), Chavez is regularly singled ourt [in U.S. mainstream media] as the heir to Castro (at best), Saddam Hussein and Hitler (at worst) – a power-mad dictator driving his country and his people into the ground.
That's a very different Chavez than the one Bartlet and O'Briain capture with their cameras, and it's not because Chavez charms and diverts them in teh way of Castro and Oliver Stone in 'Comandante.' Rather, the filmmakers build their own case for Chavez – based largely on their own research – that contrasts with the information provided by thE Venezulan [commercial] media and CNN and other international broadcasters...
So, the title, "The Revolutio Will Noit Be Televused" becomes not just a glib appropriation of Gil Scott-Heron's enduring lyric, but a pungent warning about the veracity of TV news broadcasts. And Bartley and O'Briain suggest (and provide fairly compelling evidence) that the Venezuelan coup is merely the latest in a string of U.S.-backed insurgencies in Latin America dating back to the era of the Monroe Doctrine. Can it be merely coincidental, they posit, that the Bush administration has been highly critical of Chavez's nationalistic agenda when Venezuela is the[world's] fourth largest oil-producing entity?
Documntary moves to yet another level when Bartley and O'Briain find themselves surrounded by the coup, traped inside the presidentual palace right alongside Chavez and his top advisors, with the military (the same military that would soon switch back to Chavez's side) rapping at the door. These sequnces (along with the tumultuous street clashes between pro- and anti-Chavez factions also captured by the filmmakers) spark with a vibrant tension and uncertainty. It's true cinema verite.
Technical package is exemplary, particularly the dirdctors' own agile lensing and the sharp editing of Angel Hernandez Zoido."
– Scott Foundas, reviewed at the Cinevegas Film Festival, Las Vegas Juner 17, 2003.
br>
Another excellent film about a South American coup by the right to destroy a popularly-elected president was the 1973 coup d'etat of September 11th in Chile. Pinochet's rightwing forces in the military – aided and supported covertly by the U.S. – bombed their presidential palace killing President Salvadore Allende. The junta rounded up and murdered 6,000 Chilean citizens, and subjected Chile to 19 years of authoritarian, anti-democratic rule. (See the 1982 DVD "Missing" also available from us, for a true account of that period) To go directly to the film, enter DVD-MISSING on the website's homepage search engine. Organize a free public showing in your neighborhood, community, school, college, church, union or organization. It is true that the revolution will not be televised in the U.S. by corporate media. But you can show it! Alternative media survives, thrives and grows outside corporate-owned and controlled media. But it's up to individuals like you to make another worldview possible.
