The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (documentary)

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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (also 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 awards at film festivals. Although the documentary was not widely distributed, a number of groups are distributing copies and it is available on the internet.[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.

Contents

[edit] Controversy and counterpoints

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General in Chief Lucas Rincón Romero announces the resignation of Chávez on national TV. It is argued that this key event was not shown in the documentary.
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General in Chief Lucas Rincón Romero announces the resignation of Chávez on national TV. It is argued that this key event was not shown in the documentary.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has been widely debated among both supporters and critics of Hugo Chávez. Most of the criticism says that the film omits (or misrepresents) important events, such as the resignation of Chávez publicly announced by General in Chief, Lucas Rincón Romero, resulting in a distorted version of the events as a "coup".

Another documentary, "X-Ray of a Lie", addresses the arguments in this documentary and questions the ethical integrity of the filmakers. [2]

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

An important criticism related to the manipualtion 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.

However, Venezuelan TV producers and engineers, Thaelman Urgellesa and Wolfgang Schalk, argued 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 argued 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 state it was not shot simultaniously.

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.
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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 Puente Llaguno: Claves de una Masacre, produced by the state-run TV network Venezolana de Televisión, attempts to corroborate the claims made in "The Revolution will not be Televised". Using a similar camera angle from a police handycam, they used movement synchronization to argue 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, even though "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 claims that the last death in the Avenue below was reported to happend between 30-60 minutes before the shooting was timestamped.

[edit] Awards

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Available on Google video
  2. ^ X-Ray of a Lie, available on Google video
  3. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363510/awards

[edit] External links

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