SOUTH OF THE BORDER Q&A at The Phoenix
With Doug Williamson and Francisco Dominguez
SOUTH OF THE BORDER (15)
Director: Oliver Stone. USA 2009. 78 mins.
In 2009, Oliver Stone travelled to Venezuela to interview President Hugo Chavez and examine the way Chavez has been portrayed in the U.S. media. Was Chavez really the ‘anti-American’ force that the media claimed him to be? But Stone and his crew found themselves going beyond Venezuela to several other countries, and interviewing seven presidents in the region, telling a larger and even more compelling story. In a series of casual conversations, Stone sits down with presidents Chavez, Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina) - as well as her husband and ex-president Néstor Kirchner - Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Raúl Castro (Cuba).
Doug Williamson is an active member of the trade union Unite, who participated in a delegation to Venezuela last year.
Francisco Dominguez is Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and head of the Centre for Brazilian & Latin American Studies at Middlesex University. A left-wing activist in Chile, Francisco moved to Britain during the Pinochet dictatorship.
