Irish Film Institute -Revolution Shall Not Be Televised, The

Revolution Shall Not Be Televised, The

Director: Kim Bartley Donnacha O'Briain

Ireland 2003. Colour. 74mins.


What was to be an up close and personal profile of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, turned out to be something completely different
On the 11th April 2002, the world awoke to the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been removed from office and had been replaced by a new self-appointed ‘interim’ government. News report after news report carried stories of the mayhem in Caracas, where 11 people had been killed in what were alleged to have been bloody street battles between Chavez supporters and an opposition march. Viewers all over the world were led to believe that Chavez had ordered the killings, and had therefore been forced to resign. What in fact took place was the first coup of the twenty-first century, and probably the world’s first media coup. Just over 12 months ago two Irish documentary-makers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain travelled to Venezuela to make a film about this charismatic and unorthodox world leader.
Winner of the Global Television Grand Prize BANFF Festival 2003, Best Feature Documentary Award, Galway Film Fleadh 2003, this film is a thrilling insight into Chavez, charting the last seven months in the run up to the coup and his dramatic return to power some 48 hours later. Never has such a range of footage of Chavez, the new icon of the left and the thorn in the side of the US Administration, been assembled in one documentary.

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