The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003).
Still startling fly-on-the-palace-wall documentary on strange but frightening 2002 coup attempt.
Dismissed by anti-Chavezites. Regularly shown on Venezuelan telly.
By Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain. Produced by Power Pictures, Galway.
At first, the president’s staff treated the filmmakers with suspicion and made filming difficult. After numerous delays, Bartley and Ó Briain finally got through to Chávez. They calculated that they needed to “press the right buttons” to gain his support, so they presented him with an old edition of the memoirs of [Cork-born] Daniel Florence O’Leary, who had fought alongside Simón Bolívar. Inside, they had written a quote from the Irish socialist playwright Seán O’Casey. Slowly, Bartley and Ó Briain gained their subjects’ trust, “dissolving any self-consciousness as a result of their cameras”.
Watch the full documentary here:
Earlier: Hugo Chavez Has Died
