“It’s like preaching to the choir,” said Lorena Melgarejo. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts was packed on a Thursday evening for the advance screening and panel discussion of Oliver Stone’s new film “South of the Border.” According to Melgarejo, most of the people present — including herself — were from Latino community organizations.
In the film, Academy-Award winning director Oliver Stone travels through South America interviewing leaders like Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Raúl Castro (Cuba). His intent is to, as the film’s website puts it, “explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America.” The website also mentions that Stone gained “unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region.”
It’s safe to say that “South of the Border” is not an objective movie. Stone portrays the leaders he interviews as good guys and blames the U.S. government and “private media” for vilifying these South American governments.
During the panel discussion, an audience member suggested that the audience would be better served if the film tried to be objective — perhaps by including some of the criticisms of the governments whose leaders were interviewed.
“I think the objective of the filmmaker was not to be objective,” said panelist Roberto Lovato, a journalist affiliated with New American Media. The film, Lovato said, is intended to “illustrate the colossal imbalance, the infinitesimal difference between 78 minutes of what Oliver Stone did and what Fox News, CNN and the New York Times do on a daily basis, year after year.”
He had a point. Much has been said about supposed inaccuracies in the movie, but the fact remains that you will never see this side of these governments in any other U.S.-made film. For that alone, it’s worth a look.
The challenge, as the Venezuelan consul general and screening panelist Martin Sanchez said, is to get people to see the film who don’t already know about it, and who aren’t necessarily sympathetic to its spin.
There was something really strange about a Venezuelan official encouraging a room full of progressives to go see a film that praises president Hugo Chávez. But maybe I consume too much mainstream media.
“South of the Border” opens next Friday at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
