SOUTH OF THE BORDER (Oliver Stone 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

Oliver Stone: SOUTH OF THE BORDER (2009)


At the Walter Reade Theater September 23, 2009.
[UPI Laura Cavanaugh]

SOUTH OF THE BORDER opens Friday, June 25, 2010 at Angelika Film Center in New York and in LA July 2. I do not know of its further release schedule in the US.* When I get the chance to see it, I'll provide a review here. This is just a preview.

In this new documentary Oliver Stone travels around Latin America and interviews seven left-leaning and allied leaders: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia; Cristina Kirchner of Argentina; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; Raúl Castro of Cuba; Fernando Lugo of Paraguay; and Lula da Silva of Brazil. It premiered at Venice last year and also was shown in NYC by the FSLC with Lula and Chavez present.

Fabiola Moura wrote that "While the movie is explicitly rosy in its picture of South America's politics, it's a tonic dose of a perspective rarely seen in U.S. media coverage of the region." NPR says the film tells only one side of the story and gives "kid glove treatment" to Chavez and his allies. --Wikipedia

Stone's "Border" Shows Fall of South America's Berlin Wall
In April 2002, a U.S.-backed coup against the democratically-elected government of Venezuela collapsed. The failure of the Bush Administration's effort to overthrow President Chavez was world-historical for South America because it sent a powerful new signal about the limits of the ability of the U.S. to thwart popular democracy in the region. Following the reversal of the coup, presidents were elected across South America promising to reverse the disastrous economic policies promoted by Washington. The story of this dramatic transformation has been largely untold in the U.S.. But on Friday, Oliver Stone's new documentary, "South of the Border," opens in New York.
-- Truthout

See also: IMDb.

*Yes I do. It's here: http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/. It comes to my area of northern California July 16, 2010.

[Chris Knipp]

Mother Jones DC bureau chief David Corn reviews some pros and cons of Stone's SOUTH OF THE BORDER in a short articl. (July 7, 2010). Corn points out the NY Times writer Larry Rohter who has attacked the film supported the 2002 coup against Chavez. In a letter to the Times the filmmakers set out to show Rohter's "pervasive evidence of animus and conflict of interest in his attempt to discredit the film."

Stone and his partner in the enterprise Tariq Ali are accused by US writers of grievous errors, but perhaps their chief crime in American eyes is their sympathetic depiction of regional alliances taking shape independent of and without allegiance to the United States, and apart from Stone's too-ready drinking of the Hugo Chávez Kool-Aid there is the unforgivable gaffe, an "exaltation of Latin American socialism" (Holden, NY Times). There's an analogy to the apocalyptic terms in which Iran is viewed as a "superpower" that might commit the unthinkable crime of setting up an alliance in the Middle East that "might take shape independent of the US," as Noam Chomsky puts it in his June 28, 2010 ZNet article, "The Iranian Threat."

The release schedule shows SOUTH OF THE BORDER comes to theaters in San Francisco and Berkeley on Friday, July 16, 2010. I want to see if it's true, as there is reason to fear, given the source, that "The documentary offers little genuine information and no investigative research, adopting a style even more polemical than Stone’s earlier docus on Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat" (Weisberg, Variety). Is anybody neutral in looking at this film? Does it ruin its own case by "cheerleading" and sloppy information?

[oscar jubis]

Chris, did you watch Stone's Comandante?
I found it to be a complete waste of my time.
I have no interest in South of the Border, although I am sure that Americans with minimal knowledge of Latin American culture/politics might learn something from it.

[Chris Knipp]

While I'm trying to drum up interest, you, apparently, are trying to drum up disinterest and dismissal out of hand. You seem to have closed your mind already. I'll keep mine open, thank you. No, I have not seen COMANDANTE, but Todd McCarthy's review of it in Variety is overall favorable. Again, it sounds like a document worth observing.

It isn't often that a famous world leader, much less a dictator, makes himself available for three days of continuous scrutiny by a political gadfly filmmaker, so "Comandante," Oliver Stone's portrait of Fidel Castro, is an occasion in and of itself. Lively and compulsively watchable, Stone's first documentary benefits from a mutually respectful, borderline chummy relationship between subject and interlocutor, in that Castro seems to have let down his defenses, as much as is possible, and taken a come-what-may attitude toward his American guest's far-ranging and sometimes irrepressibly blunt questions. Conservatives, Cuban exiles and far-leftists alike may object on principle, but the open-minded and simply curious will find much of interest in this look at the planet's longest-tenured head-of-state in what one has to assume are his twilight years.

This is not to say Stone's work generally isn't highly flawed.

[oscar jubis]

Perhaps you want to drum up interest but I am not doing the opposite. I am just stating that I personally have no interest in the film based on Stone's previous film of similar form and content. I am even suggesting that Americans with minimal knowledge of Latin American politics (a huge majority) might learn something from it.

You describe these presidents as "seven left-leaning and allied leaders". "Left-leaning" is probably a vague-enough term to encompass the often divergent policies of all seven but the term "allied" is highly problematic.

I have watched several docs about Latin American politics sponsored by Latin American departments and organizations at the University. Most are not available on DVD. One that I found interesting and entertaining, which is available on DVD, is Cocalero. It received some theatrical distribution. It is about Evo Morales' presidential campaign.

[Chris Knipp]

I can watch COCALERO on Netflix.

When you say "highly problematic" I guess you mean simply highly questionable.

Your remark isn't wholly candid. Obviously the statement by somebody who knows the area well (you) that you will not even watch SOUTH OF THE BORDER is damning and could put a damper on readers' interest in being viewers. The suggestion that those of us who are almost totally uninformed will be interested in Stone's new movie is condescending toward us and him. And not logical. Why would I want to watch something that's by your lights manifestly clueless, just because I haven't your range of knowledge of the subjects?

My reason for wanting to watch this film is that it may cause controversy, and therefore influence Anglos' picture of the new Latin American leftist leaders.