- The Guardian
- Issue #2178
What makes two first-time film makers chronicle Venezuela’s challenge to the US empire? Guardian editor Floyd Kermode sat down with film makers Rodrigo Acuña and Nic Ford after the Canberra premiere of their documentary Venezuela, the cost of challenging an empire to find out.
FK: So, how did you get into this situation?
Rodrigo: I did my Phd on Venezuela’s foreign policy and I’ve been writing about Latin American politics for about twenty years since then.
Nic: I did journalism. I’ve written a few articles, but I’ve always been drawn to the visual side of things. I have a lot of stuff on TikTok and that kind of thing. Rodrigo was my Spanish teacher at uni. We kept in touch. When I started writing about Venezuela, he reached out.
FK: We’ve just seen your documentary. Venezuela has been under- or misleadingly reported.
Nic: Across the board
Rodrigo: That’s part of the reason I’ve been writing on the country for the past twenty years. But there’s only so many articles you can write. I can tell you that the government has handed over 4.5 million new apartments to Venezuelans, and that might not mean anything to you, but if you actually see those apartments as you do in our film, that’s different.
Rodrigo: It’s an ideological position to just ignore all the programs that were introduced by Chávez and Maduro after him. The government with all its faults, errors, corruption and contradictions has also invested a substantial amount of public funds into health, education, and sports. In the area of sports, that’s obvious because Venezuela has obtained more medals during the Bolivarian revolution than in the previous 80 years.
FK: It was good to see that athlete in the movie winning and then jumping for joy.
Rodrigo: She’s the current Olympic record-holder for triple jump, and she is a product of the government’s programs in health and education. Because she’s a Chavista, and because she’s always spoken in favour of the Bolivarian revolution, she’s ignored and absolutely loathed by the political right.
FK: Can you tell us something about the contrast between before and after the Bolivarian revolution? That’s another thing not much reported on.
Rodrigo: The country up until that point had about 132 different police forces. In 2005, when the ‘metropolitanos,’ the Caracas police force was still in operation, I was warned to avoid them at all costs. I actually saw them robbing someone. The government created the national Bolivarian police force; one standard of training. The new police force were actually approachable. You could ask them for directions. Did they completely get rid of corruption? No. Did they make a serious effort to get rid of corruption in the police force? I think the answer is ‘yes.’
Before Chávez came to power in 1999, the country had close to 60 per cent of people living on or below the poverty line. It was around 12 % towards the end of the Chávez presidency.
In the Open Veins of Latin America Galeano said that in 1970s Venezuela, you could die of hunger or from indigestion. A very unequal society.
Nic: When I was there, the people I talked to from the upper classes all despised Maduro. In the poor neighbourhoods a lot of people really liked him, or their attitude was “Life is hard because of sanctions, but he’s doing the best he can. We know life is better because he’s in power.”
FK: Did resources make it harder to make the film?
Nic: Well it took about a year and a half to edit. We were both doing other jobs. A lot of Sundays we had to meet up and edit together. It was certainly a challenge putting it together. I learned everything from watching how-to videos.
Rodrigo: Caracas is a very difficult city. In Melbourne or Sydney, no one is going to say “I’m going to be two or three hours late because there’s a bus strike, or a train strike. You can plan to meet three people and wind up only meeting one.
FK: And what’s next for you?
Nic: I’m working on a documentary about the International Monetary Fund. That’s one reason I went to Venezuela. The riots that inspired Chávez and others to try to change the country were the first of the ‘IMF riots.’
Rodrigo: I’m doing something on the latest revelations about Australia’s role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile.
