Interviews

Charles Gervais is the dir­ector of ¿¡Revolución!?, which exam­ines the prin­ciples of polit­ical revolu­tion through what’s hap­pening today in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. I spoke to Charles at this year’s Hot Docs. The film opens in Toronto on Friday May 25th, at the Royal Cinema. If you’re at all inter­ested in what’s going on in Latin America these days, you should def­in­itely see this film. Check out the web site here.

James McNally (JM): I saw a film a few years ago called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (TSS Review). Have you seen it? Was it some­thing you were aware of before you made the film?

Charles Gervais (CG): In fact, when the pro­ject started, when I read this art­icle in the news­paper saying that Chavez would dis­tribute a mil­lion Don Quixote books, I tried to get the most inform­a­tion I could have on Chavez and Venezuela, because I was familiar with the Latin American situ­ation, but not so much about Venezuela and Chavez, but I found this movie and I man­aged to watch it one hour before taking the plane.

JM: That was a huge eye opener because of the way the media presents Venzezuela here and what was going on. That film cap­tured a move­ment, it was there for all the his­tor­ical events, and yours is very dif­ferent, it’s struc­tured dif­fer­ently. Did you impose the struc­ture on the film or did you let it come out of the film?

CG: Well, after two times in Caracas, I under­stood that my judge­ment, my opinion on the revolu­tion was chan­ging, so I reflected on a struc­ture that could sur­vive whatever path the revolu­tion would take. So I thought about a fic­tion­al­ized nar­rator which had the voice of some Latin old guer­riero, I don’t know, I don’t define it really.

JM: Sort of a Don Quixote?

CG: Yeah, sort of a Don Quixote, Cervantes, guer­ri­eros, maybe the phantom of Bolivar or Che Guevara, and this person is presenting his ideal revolu­tion, so it’s not the Chavez one, but it’s…

JM: The theory.

CG: This is the theory, and also maybe because I found the pro­ject really fas­cin­ated me, really charmed me, but I was afraid that it would go out of con­trol, so I said well maybe I’ll do my part in order to help keep the pro­cess moving in the right dir­ec­tion (laughs). I’d be happy if Chavez could listen to the movie, in fact I’ve sent it to him.

JM: Did you take the titles of each sec­tion from one par­tic­ular source?

CG: No, this was really invented. I’ve read lots about dif­ferent revolu­tions, some inspired in part by this Venezuelan revolu­tion. But I wanted to make sure that these guidelines would be cor­rect for the audi­ence, but also for scholars, so I val­id­ated all these steps with spe­cial­ists of revolu­tion theories.

JM: I enjoyed the tie-in with the American revolu­tion and the French revolu­tion, it’s all the same principles.

CG: In fact, one of my experts is doing a degree thesis in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. Her name is Marieve de Rosier. And she’s doing her thesis on revolu­tion theory, and she was amazed, “Wow, I read books of 400 pages and this is a great sum­mary” so she helped me also to cor­rect some parts and make sure it was credible.

JM: So when did the struc­ture emerge?

CG: The struc­ture was there while researching but before shooting. It was dif­fi­cult because my struc­ture was a bit rigid, I needed stories to illus­trate every theme, which was a bit difficult.

JM: How much time did you spend in Venezuela, and how many times did you have to go back and forth?

CG: I’ve been back and forth six times in a year and a half. The first time I went to see the dis­tri­bu­tion of the Don Quixote book was just seven days, I put it on my account. I shot the event and I made a five-minute demo film which helped me to start the movie. But other times I’d stay five weeks, a month and a half. In total about three or four months. I’ve also lived for more than a year in Latin America, so I’m really close to their Latin passion.

JM: And you speak Spanish? So you didn’t have to use translators?

CG: It wouldn’t be pos­sible to use trans­lators in Venezuela, because the society is so divided that if you asso­ciate your­self with someone, you will be in one clan or another. You would be asso­ci­ated with either Chavez or the oppos­i­tion, so you’re done, you cannot talk to the other side. I was just on my own, and I was working hard to pro­tect my “observer” status.

JM: Did you get to meet with Chavez?

CG: Personally, I would have loved to, but it would have been more for per­sonal interest than for the doc­u­mentary, because the film is based more on the actors of the revolu­tion, and also Chavez, but in rela­tion to the people.

JM: There’s another film showing at Hot Docs called Orange Revolution (TSS Review), which is an inter­esting film to com­pare because that film ends up being less about the politi­cians and more about the people, and I think this is what your film is trying to accom­plish, seeing whether the people will keep the principles.

CG: Yes, I def­in­itely want to see that film.

JM: Did you have any prob­lems get­ting people to talk freely in the film? Did anyone try to stop you from filming or approaching cer­tain people?

CG: No, liberty of the press is total. I could enter the air­port at Caracas with 12 packs of equip­ment, and cus­toms was just, “Hi.”

JM: Do you think it was because you were Canadian?

CG: No, no. It’s just that they are not shy about any­thing going on right now. It might change in the years to come, but right now, they think that the more the press will come, the more they will look good. They think that what they are doing is good, they don’t have any­thing to hide, they say just come and shoot. Even Chavez and the people close to power say go ahead, shoot every event, you want to shoot in the barrio, go ahead. And they knew I was talking to oppos­i­tion leaders and they didn’t care.

JM: How did you find the people you fea­ture in the film, the street vendors, the woman from the barrio?

CG: It was really sort of invest­ig­a­tion work. When I first arrived in Caracas, the only con­tact I had was a journ­alist from the national radio sta­tion, a friend of a friend told me go see this person. This person wasn’t there but they told me I could see her assistant, and this person finally opened lots of door. But the street vendor, and the girl, was just from walking around. I was living in a poor neigh­bour­hood and talking to everyone, having cof­fees, and the girl [from the barrio] I met her in a Youth Forum that was held before the World Forum.

JM: What about the politi­cian, during the elec­tion, the woman who was going around with her posters?

CG: With her it was more through the first con­tact at the national radio. And I’ve done a lot of inter­views for the national broad­casters, so they knew me. My objective was to be known by everyone in power. They knew that there was a Canadian team doing a doc­u­mentary, that it was ser­ious, that I would keep coming back, that it was big. At the end, everyone knew that I was doing some­thing. Even the guard of Chavez knew that we existed.

JM: The oppos­i­tion leader, Marta, seemed the most anti-Chavez. But at the end you find out that she had been working for him, you feel that the oppos­i­tion doesn’t seem very well-organized. I know that in 2002, at the time of the coup, they seemed very powerful. What’s happened since then?

CG: They have made so many attempts to kick out Chavez, with this coup, also they cut oil pro­duc­tion for two months, they’ve also tried to seize one public place for I don’t know how many months, so they’ve tried so many times to kick Chavez out and it hasn’t worked. And the ref­er­endum [which they lost]. After that it’s kind of col­lapsed. It’s really really dis­or­gan­ized, and there’s kind of a resig­na­tion, let’s just wait until he goes.

JM: Chavez talks a lot about the Americans, hinting that they’re going to invade the country. Do you think that’s just rhet­oric to try to get people to sup­port him?

CG: I think it’s a classic way to get your base of sup­port tight and active. While listening to his speech, there’s only a small extract of his speech in the movie, but it’s always four or five hours long. Every ten minutes or so I would notice that he would bring back the enemies, and people would start clap­ping their hands, without noti­cing why they’re all happy at this moment. But they’re happy because he’s men­tioning the enemies. You can see how important it is to always remind them that there’s an enemy threat­ening them. It keeps the base of sup­port active.

JM: At the same time, he’s made some friends in other coun­tries (like Iran) that are maybe not so smart? How do people feel about some of the decisions he’s made?

CG: His base of sup­port are not that edu­cated to judge who Ahmadinejad is, or even Fidel Castro. They’ve never been there, they don’t know. Chavez will present Fidel Castro as a hero and the Cuban system as beau­tiful, and they can’t judge if it is or not.

JM: But Venezuelan media wouldn’t cover the same things? Would they talk about Iran’s pres­ident pur­suing nuc­lear weapons?

CG: Well, 90% of the Venezuelan press is private, so they bring a lot of inform­a­tion and cri­ti­cism of Chavez, but his basis of sup­port is more the masses of poor that were for­gotten by the pre­vious regimes.

JM: So they are pretty unthinking about whether this is a good idea or not?

CG: They would believe that Chavez is doing the right thing.

JM: Do you think he will leave office at some point? Is he thinking about someone to suc­ceed him?

CG: People say that he is says he wants to stay in power until 2021. To do this, he needs to change the con­sti­tu­tion. The new con­sti­tu­tion gave him access to two man­dates of six years.

JM: But he was behind that new constitution.

CG: He changed it already because pre­vi­ously it was one man­date of four years, and after that you had to go away. Venezuela had a lot of his­tory of dic­tators before the 1960s. So, two man­dates of six years was not so bad, but he’s already said he’s going to hold another ref­er­endum to give him­self the oppor­tunity to present him­self [for elec­tion] indef­in­itely. But they say that in 2021, his daughter would be ready. (laughs)

JM: Oh, no. (laughs)

CG: To enter power. She’s the one who really helped him during the coup in 2002. She helped a lot with Castro, to dis­tribute tracts, to organize the people, so she’s already known by the people.

JM: With regard to Cuba, because of what’s going on with Castro’s health, what do you think might happen when Castro dies? Will the Americans try to have more influ­ence in Cuba, will Chavez take that as a threat?

CG: It will be inter­esting to see that because I think Fidel is also trying to con­tinue his achieve­ments through Chavez. Chavez is the one he’s chosen to con­tinue his work. And when Chavez stepped out of prison in 1994, he was invited to Cuba and received as a great leader by Fidel Castro. And he was nothing at that time. It was Castro that said to him, don’t do it the same way as I’ve done it. Try to go on a demo­cratic path. Maybe it was him who also told him not to use so much cen­sor­ship, you don’t need it so much today. He’s the ref­er­ence and even Chavez has presented him as a spir­itual father.

JM: I think the dif­fer­ence of course is that Venezuela has oil. If you have money, it’s easy to make friends. These pro­grammes are helping a lot of people. The pres­ence of oil makes their real­tion­ship with the United States a very important one. Canada is also men­tioned a few times in the film. I don’t know very much about Canada’s rela­tion­ship with Venezuela.

CG: For Chavez’ gov­ern­ment, we’re part of the Empire. He refers a lot to the Empire.

JM: Sometimes he would say we don’t want to be a North American colony. So you’d think he’s not just meaning the U.S., but other times he says Venezuela needs new trading part­ners, which is very true, because Latin America has always just been America’s sup­plier of raw mater­ials. Does Canada have any sort of influ­ence there? Did you get a dif­ferent recep­tion there as a Canadian?

CG: I was better received than if I was an American, that’s for sure. There’s still a dif­fer­ence. Canada used to have a good repu­ta­tion, that could change, I don’t know.

JM: There’s a strange scene in the film where there’s an American guy at some demon­stra­tion. He says “I’m not a com­munist and I’m not a liberal.”

CG: It was a detail, but it’s a detail about what kind of people you could encounter in an oppos­i­tion march. Is he an American or is he just pro-American? He just says that he fears the threat of com­munism, and for a lot of Americans, lib­eral is a syn­onym for perdition.

JM: One of the things in the earlier film (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) was that all of the tele­vi­sion sta­tions were owned by the oppos­i­tion. Is that still the same?

CG: What has changed is that just a week ago, Chavez didn’t renew the licence of one of the biggest private broad­casters, so some sort of cen­sor­ship is starting. He has been really cri­ti­cized for this, but he jus­ti­fied it by saying that this net­work was really bad, that they were involved in the coup d’etat of 2002, and that society didn’t need this kind of thing. It’s sort of an author­it­arian beginning.

JM: I’m prob­ably like you in that I sym­pathize with what he is trying to do, but I worry about his personality.

CG: His per­son­ality is neces­sary to do what he’s doing. You have to invent a system. He’s the only one who could do what he’s doing. You need to be really strong and powerful and have this cha­risma that he has. But after­ward, you need to build a system and then leave the system.

JM: And I don’t know if he’ll do it. I hope so.

CG: This is what Castro never suc­ceeded in doing.

JM: And you have sent the film to him? Have you heard any­thing yet.

CG: Yes, right now it’s in the Vice President’s office. And I hope they’re going to take the time to look at it.

JM: I think the film is largely sym­path­etic but it has some good cri­ti­cisms. And you point out some things that maybe he doesn’t see.

CG: I think I believe in his pro­ject, but I’m really afraid about how it has already started to get out of con­trol and how it could con­tinue to spiral out of control.

JM: The problem is that he has a lot of influ­ence in the rest of Latin America now, so he can easily say he needs to stay to help these coun­tries, Ecuador and Bolivia, for example, they’re all dis­ciples of Chavez now.

CG: But he can’t enlarge his coali­tion like he was doing before. And go with Lula [in Brazil] and go with Kirchner [in Argentina] and all these other leaders that cannot asso­ciate them­selves any­more with Chavez because he’s too radical.

JM: I think the good thing is that he started the ball rolling.

CG: He gave the pos­sib­ility for all these move­ments to exist. Because before, every social move­ment was des­troyed in the Cold War, and he’s the one in 1998 who proved that is was pos­sible to create social change without being repressive and that it works. What he’s done is working. The poor are in better con­di­tion than they were before. He’s already changed the his­tory of Latin America.

Tagged as: chavez, Directors, Documentaries, Interviews, politics, venezuela

{ Comments on this entry are closed }