2002: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: A Coup Documentary in Real Time

Hugo Chavez was elected President of Venezuela in 1998 and reelected under a new Constitution in 2000. In April 2002, dissident Generals arrested Chavez and removed him from the Presidential Palace.

Two Irish filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain, had spent seven months filming in Venezuela for a biography of Chavez. They had access to the Presidential Palace and filmed Chavez and his staff. During the coup, they filmed inside the Palace and on the streets. They had access to film the coup participants as they took over the Palace.

Bartley and O’Briain shot more than 200 hours of film which was edited into a 76-minute documentary called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (named after a song by Gil Scott-Heron). First shown on television in Europe and Venezuela in 2003, the film later appeared at film festivals and had a limited theatrical release. The film is regularly shown on Venezuelan television and is often broadcast during political events. The film was favorably reviewed:

·        “The Revolution Will Not be Televised gets viewers inside these tense, emotional and occasionally terrifying events with immediacy and, given the confusion of the time, remarkable clarity.” Washington Post [1]

·        Roger Ebert called it a “remarkable documentary” full of “astonishing shots.” [2] Peter Scheck writing in The Hollywood Reporter said the film “resembles a taut… political thriller.” [3] In Variety, Scott Foundas wrote that the film was a “superior example of fearless filmmakers in exactly the right place at the right time.” [4]

The Film has been the subject of books and articles in academic journals:

·        “It is not an exaggeration to say that the screening and discussion of this single film had a significant effect on that pivotal moment of Venezuelan politics.” [5]

·         “Revolution portrays Caracas’s poor as the historical protagonist determining the revolutionary direction of Venezuela. Revolution tells a gripping story about how the poor -who stand in as the ‘people ‘of Venezuela-had the collective power to shape political outcomes.” [6]

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised can be viewed on YouTube.

Video Link Below

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH5nzZU0qCc


  

        

1. Washington Post, In Venezuela, A Filmmaking, & Political, Coup, December 11, 2003.

2.Ebert, Roger, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Chicago Sun-Times, October 31, 2003.

3. Shenk, Frank, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The Hollywood Reporter, April 1, 2003.

4. Foundas, Scott, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Variety, July 10, 2003.

5. Stoneman, R., Chavez: The revolution will not be televised, a case study of politics and the media, Wallflower Press, 2008.

6.Schiller, Naomi, Framing the Revolution: Circulation and Meaning of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Mass Communication and Society, October 2009.

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