An amazing documentary that feels more like a political thriller, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is also something of an accident: Bartley and O’Briain, a pair of documentarians working for Irish television, arrived in Venezuela in April 2002 to cover populist leader Hugo Chavez, whose left-leaning politics had begun to arouse the ire of the Bush administration. While following Chavez around the grounds of the presidential palace during their visit, the filmmakers suddenly found themselves – along with Chavez and his cabinet – in the midst of a military coup. Spearheaded by high-ranking generals in the Venezuelan army, with the backing of rightist oil interests and the mainstream television media, the coup was initially successful, and Chavez was spirited away by the army while businessman Pedro Carmona was declared the new president on the nation’s seven private television stations. However, the people of Venezuela took to the streets, the regular army sided with the populist Chavez, and a second, pro-Chavez coup swept through the capital and reinstated Chavez back in power 24 hours later. That a pair of documentarians just happened to be shooting footage at the palace as the present suddenly slammed smack-dab into history was an astonishing stroke of luck, and Bartley and O’Briain wisely keep their narration to a bare minimum, allowing the events unfolding on camera to speak for themselves. Venezuela is the fourth largest producer of petroleum in the world, and one the United States has long relied on for imports, and there’s a strong sense that the CIA was involved in the Chavez coup. South America has always been a revolutionary hotbed, but Venezuela is no banana republic, and one of the most important lessons offered up by The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has less to do with south-of-the-border politics than something else much closer to home: media consolidation. Venezuela has some eight television stations, seven of which are owned by private business interests while the other is the official government station. In the context of the film, this means that during the coup (and even before), the flow of information to the people of Venezuela was near completely in the hands of anti-Chavez media outlets – only the lowly palace TV, looking very much like a low-budget cable-access outlet, complete with folding chairs and production chaos, was broadcasting anything remotely resembling the reality of the situation. Bartley and O’Briain cull clips from the various news agencies and then run them up against footage of what actually happened; the blatant smear campaign against Chavez is shockingly blunt, but the outright lies propagated by Carmona’s backers were the ones that the populace at large heard, while Chavez and his supporters finally had to circumvent the situation by calling CNN on the telephone(!). As riveting as a documentary can possibly be, this slim (74-minute) film is also one of the most politically aware films of the year, and a thinly veiled warning to nations facing the sort of massive media consolidation the U.S. is now experiencing. Viewer beware: The revolution will be televised. (For an interview with the directors see austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-03-07/screens_feature4.html).
This article appears in January 9 • 2004.