Oliver Stone's Documentary South of the Border Travels South

South of the Border, Oliver Stone’s “political road movie” on Latin America’s new breed of progressive leaders, itself headed south on May 28 with an inaugural show at Caracas, where President Hugo Chavéz was present, as he was at the September 2009 debut at the Venice film festival. The documentary crew, including Stone and script writer Tariq Ali, will travel through Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay to revisit the leaders of these countries featured in the documentary, which will be screened in all these countries. The documentary will be screened from June in the USA and soon afterwards in Britain.

The principal protagonist of the film is Latin America, President Chavéz said at the screening night. The story of Latin America standing up to the USA and charting its own future was still unfolding, he said. Oliver Stone said he had a modest project to start with but, as it so happens with Hugo Chavéz, it kept growing. The Venezuelan President asked President Obama to see the movie if he had not had the time to read Eduardo Galeano's book, The Open Veins of Latin America, which the former had gifted to him at a regional summit some time ago.

The documentary form is experiencing a big impulse in Venezuela and other Latin American nations where filmmakers can now count on the support of some of their governments. Some outstanding documentaries have been made in Spanish on the recent Honduras coup sponsored by the USA, which is seen in the continent as a throwback to the dark days of the Seventies. Hopefully some of these documentaries will be translated into English and make their way over here.