Venezuela: A bitter debate is raging in Venezuela over the integrity of the award-winning Irish documentary, Chavez: Inside the Coup, which tells the inside story of a failed coup against President Hugo Chavez.
The documentary, made by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, has won a string of awards abroad, but was withdrawn from an Amnesty International (AI) film festival last week because Amnesty staff in Caracas said they feared for their safety if it were to be shown.
John Tackaberry, an Amnesty spokesman said the withdrawal had nothing to do with the film's politics, as Amnesty did not endorse any of the films at its festivals.
However, Wolfgang Schalk, a Venezuelan TV producer and engineer, has carried out a five-month investigation into the documentary, which he claims distorts and manipulates images to give a biased view of events.
"There is no doubt it's a very well-made film," he acknowledged, "but it's a propaganda exercise, which seems to have been commissioned by Hugo Chavez's government."
Mr Schalk assembled a public film forum with a general, a news executive of a private television station and the chief of police to analyse the documentary, something akin to calling up Donald Rumsfeld to analyse allegations of excessive US military force in Iraq.
"This campaign is more about planting doubt about the documentary than with correcting supposed inaccuracies," said David Power, whose Galway-based Power Pix company produced it.
As someone who has visited Venezuela frequently in the past four years, I watched the documentary evolve over time. The two film-makers spent several frustrating months in which they hardly turned a camera on, unable to make direct contact with the Chavez administration.
There was virtually no funding in the beginning and no access to Chavez until a brief encounter led to several months of trust-building and the opportunity to observe the government at work from inside the presidential palace.
The presence of the film crew inside the palace during the attempted coup in April 2002 was a remarkable stroke of luck. On the morning after the coup, which lasted 47 hours, this reporter made contact with Kim and Donnacha, who had buried their material in a safe location as a witch-hunt was launched against suspected Chavez sympathisers.
The terrified film-makers, certain that the coup had succeeded, were on their way to the airport when crowds of government supporters, demanding the return of Chavez, convinced them to turn round and continue their work.
The gamble paid off handsomely as the film-makers returned to the presidential palace and filmed the new administration as it suppressed democratic institutions, including the constitution, parliament and the ombudsman.
President Chavez's supporters besieged the palace that day, while loyal army units secured the safe return of the kidnapped leader on April 14th.
Mr Schalk is correct when he accuses the film-makers of peddling "propaganda" of use to Chavez as the documentary reveals a sinister plot to overthrow a democratically elected government. It is not surprising that Fidel Castro, a close ally of Chavez, made thousands of copies to give away.
The media justification for the coup lay in several seconds of shocking footage in which prominent Chavez supporters fired shots at unseen targets beneath the Puente Llaguno Bridge, on the afternoon of April 11th, 2002.
Venezuelan TV stations repeated this footage constantly over the following hours, days and months, juxtaposed with images of a massive and peaceful crowd, supposedly marching just underneath the bridge.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's private television stations will not air the video and have ignored its success at film festivals worldwide.
While there are middle-class Venezuelans who support the Chavez administration, the overwhelming support for the government lies in the forgotten overpopulated Caracas hillsides. By the same token thousands of poor Venezuelans have participated in anti-Chavez protest marches, but the bulk of the demonstrators are white, well-heeled citizens.