Venezuela's Chavez drops in on Venice filmfest
2009-09-07

Nations Venezuela Bolivia Paraguay Category Regions Regions Central America South America People Fidel Castro Hugo Chavez Oliver Stone Event 2009 Venice Film Festival Source (AFP)

VENICE, Italy (AFP) - Hugo Chavez stole the show at the Venice film festival Monday as he turned up in the lagoon city for the screening of veteran US director Oliver Stone's documentary on the Venezuelan president.

The leftist leader is the central figure in "South of the Border", a look at Chavez's role in the bottom-up change sweeping South America to premiere out of competition at the prestigious festival at 5:15 pm (1515 GMT).

Reports began to circulate last week that Chavez would attend, which appeared increasingly likely when a large delegation of Venezuelan officials and a few military men were spotted Sunday on the Lido, the festival's outlying island venue.

Chavez, stopping off from a world tour that has taken him to Asia, Africa and Europe, does not give details of his private visits for security reasons.

His entourage has taken over the entire third floor of the luxury Hotel des Bains on the Lido near the festival venue, a Venezuelan journalist told AFP, adding that Chavez was under the protection of 26 bodyguards.

A visit by a foreign head of state to the world's oldest film festival is a rarity, unseen in at least 15 years.

Through a series of interviews interlaced with footage from US media and official statements, Stone's documentary is out to show that Chavez is not "public enemy number one" as so often depicted on US media outlets such as Fox News.

The Oscar-winning director tells the story of Venezuela's "peaceful revolution" since Chavez came to power in 1998, and how Venezuela's transformation has had knock-on effects in the rest of the continent.

Making the documentary was a "liberating experience," Stone told a news conference Monday at the 66th Mostra.

In an attempt to counter "the media's attacks on Chavez, the movie shows very clearly the level of stupidity in the kind of broad statements" that are made about the Venezuelan leader, he said.

"We saw the sweeping change in the region, which is a very important historical phenomenon that is not talked about," said Stone, 62.

"There are many problems still, but it's a wonderful change that's happened since 2000," he added. "Social improvement has been extreme in Venezuela.... The poverty rate has been cut in half, this is admitted by the World Bank."

"In South America you have social movements from below," said Tariq Ali, who wrote the screenplay.

When leaders such as Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo and Chavez "win elections and they actually start helping people, that surprises Europeans and North Americans because they're not used to that," Ali said.

Stone interviews each of these leaders, all of whom came from the bottom rungs of society, in "South of the Border".

For his admirers, Chavez, who grew up in a peasant family, is an emblematic figure of bottom-up change, says Stone, who directed the 2003 film "Comandante" about Cuba's Fidel Castro and the Central America war movie "Salvador" in 1986.

Interviewed by Stone, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner says in the film: "It is the first time in history that the leaders of so many countries look like the people they govern."

The film presents "a movement in South America to a continent (North America) that is unaware of it," Ali said.

"Why has there been so much hostility to Chavez? Because he challenged the Washington consensus, saying that the neo-liberal economy was not in the interests of the poor in South America."

Producer Fernando Sulichin said the film, which does not yet have a distributor, "is going to have a life of its own" after starting out with independent distributors and cable operators.