Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sept. 8 evening public screening in the festival's Sala Grande - for which there was less visible security than for an inner-city high school - began about 25 minutes late. The delay simply amped up the suspense: Would Chávez show? He did, with Stone, both wearing dark jackets, white shirts and red ties. As is customary for the evening screenings, the festival's female announcer slowly read off the names of a half-dozen members of the movie's production team, standing in front of their seats in the front mezzanine. Polite applause for each...
...American nations into "friends, whose leaders do what we tell them to do, and enemies, whose leaders occasionally disagree with us." His film is no more nuanced. He sees the geopolitical glass as all empty (the U.S. and its world-banking arm, the International Monetary Fund) or all full (Chávez and his comrade Presidentes in South America). But there's an undeniable fascination in the project, even some inspirational value, in Stone's conversations with a half-dozen leaders of nations struggling to emerge from under the shadow or boot of the U.S. (Read Mary Corliss' review...
Stone extends his rigorous dichotomy to the film's structure. The first half focuses on Chávez, the second on other South American heads of state who tilt to the port side: Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Bolivia's Evo Morales and the grand old man of social revolution, Raúl Castro. (Stone profiled Raúl's brother in a similarly indulgent 2003 poli-doc, Commandante.) The only missing socialist leader is Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua...
...film's first section briefly synopsizes Chávez's life from his mud-hut birth in Sabaneta to his rise through the Venezuelan military, to his abortive coup attempt in 1992 and his election seven years later to lead the world's third-largest oil provider - increasing the standard of living for many of his country's poor while denying many rights to those, especially in the media, who would oppose him. In the movie's rose-colored lens, the President comes across as an outsize personality, equal parts machismo and charisma. He sounds more sensible than menacing when...
...side. He raises no tough issues, some of which are summarized in Amnesty International's 2009 report on Venezuela: "Attacks on journalists were widespread. Human-rights defenders continued to suffer harassment. Prison conditions provoked hunger strikes in facilities across the country." Referring to the 2006 election in which Chávez won a third term, Stone tells viewers that "90% of the media was opposed to him," and yet he prevailed. "There is a lesson to be learned," Stone says. Yes: support the man in power, or your newspaper, radio station or TV network may be in jeopardy...