Change Your Image
david419
Reviews
Chavez: Inside the Coup (2003)
remarkable piece of filmmaking
I just saw this last night, it was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Passionate Eye' series. It has been screened recently (Sept. 2003) at the Toronto International Film Festival as well as many others. It is a quite remarkable film. The filmmakers literally stumbled into the story, being there to make a documentary about Chavez himself. Instead, they found themselves squarely in the middle of events as the coup unfolded. They had unprecedented access to events and people and, for the most part, let the story unfold as it happens. They, of course, have their own ideological perspective (which they make evident) but they keep themselves in the background and instead try to focus attention on the events, the people, and the background and history leading up to the coup. As a film, it is not ground-breaking in a stylistic or aesthetic sense, and that is, I think, the way it should be. What we get to see what 'embedded' journalism should really be. What we get to see is a remarkable account of a country struggling to attain democracy... a charismatic leader (Chavez) who actually cares for his people... a story about power and greed as a coalition of corporate/military/media interests combine to lead a coup of a democratically elected leader... and unprecedented access to a historical event as it unfolds.
Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (2002)
a very interesting film... wish it was longer
Another very interesting film from Peter Wintonick (if you have not seen Manufacturing Consent which he co-directed, you definitely should). This film is less cinematic and deals with its subject matter in a more straightforward manner than Manufacturing Consent, but the subject matter is what counts: how the handicam (and other communications technologies) are increasingly being used by the poor, the dispossessed, and the dis-enfranchised to protect themselves and their basic human rights. Also, the film explores the way that visual technologies (and images in general) have increasingly become a weapon in modern societies and how, since the introduction of the first handicam in 1985, individuals are using video to document their struggles, document human rights abuses, and generally to empower themselves. It is a fair presentation and does not fall into the trap of over-emphasizing the technology (it is an important tool but a tool nonetheless). There is also some discussion of why these types of images rarely make it onto mainstream, network news. My only criticism was that this film was too short... but that is not really a criticism as you should really see this film in conjunction with Manufacturing Consent. I saw this broadcast on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's "The Passionate Eye" series and if you have a chance to see it you definitely should. A word of warning: a very small number of the images are quite graphic (but that IS the point... and it definitely is not gratuitous) so prepare yourself a little.