Interview: Charles Gervais

Words like ‘charismatic’, ‘persuasive’ and ‘influential’ belong to a set of adjectives that carry both a positive and negative connotation when describing the current leader of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.  Many people exhort a great deal of time demonizing and/or idolatrizing the man who once tried to swindle his way into presidency.

He may not be (as John Lennon’s song once said) “carrying pictures of chairman Mao”, but Venezuelan president Hugo Rafael Chávez methods of democratizing a nation especially from an American point of view is of a tremendous concern.

Though it doesn’t produce the billions of barrels a day like that of the Saudi Arabians, the U.S. government is concerned about how this trading partner might change the pacts that ultimately fuel the numerous SUV and Hummer drivers of America.   

Thanks to those who live economic hardships, this controversial figure has stayed in power and has permanently altered the economic, cultural landscape of his country. The ongoing debate is: is it for the best or for the worst. This all depends to who you talk to. 

Curiosity killed the cat is not a proverb that former journalist, and now documentary Canadian filmmaker Charles Gervais abides by in his docu subjects. His previous portrait Quand la vie est un rêve documented a youth’s desire to flee his obliterated country of Haiti, and though his current doc is not exactly set in a ‘hot zone’ in the true meaning of the term, this Latin American country is far from simmering down. 

Among one of the more enticing entries at this year’s Hot Docs film festival in Toronto is ¿¡Revolución!? – a doc offering that provides viewers with an evenhanded view of the shifting socio-political transformations currently taking place in and outside of the capitol city of Caracas. Mostly spoken in the Spanish tongue, Gervais captures the vibe of the city and illustrates the fervent inhabitants that are concerned by the future outlook. From sidewalk salesmen and those living in the Invasiones (impoverished dwellings) to today’s youth and the affluent neighbors with readied suitcases, we get a better sense of those that Hugo Chavez claims are having their best interests defended.
 

Gervais coats his film with a creative narrative strategy that draws comparisons of the literary cult figure character of Don Quixote to a man that likes to speak to the masses on Sunday, loves to wear the color red and has inspired entrepreneurs to make bobble heads from his larger than life image. Quixote comes to us animated and with a ten step program to ‘starting and maintaining’ a revolution and the doc manages to put a human face on a man of many faces.
  

Produced by Seville Pictures, this boosts a soundtrack that energizes the text, a soothing narration that reminds viewers why there is cause for reflection and perhaps concern and offers different shades of society with beautifully lensed compositions. Gervais does more than bookmark this democratic evolution – he allows viewers to take a part of it.

I meet with Charles Gervais before his departure to the festival in Toronto. 

Eric Lavallee: What is it about Venezuela, Chavez, and/or the Bolivarian Revolution that inspired you to make this doc?  

Charles Gervais: It all started on a Monday morning. In spring 2005. I read an article in the newspaper saying the Venezuela was going to give away 1 million novels of Don Quixote de la Mancha – the novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and I thought it was really unique and “unseen”. Three days after, I flew down to Caracas shooting the event without knowing if it was going to be a film or not. But the energy from the people, the liveliness convinced me that something special was going on.

EL: How did you come up with the narrative strategy – did you script the 10 steps to a revolution prior to, during or after filming? 

CG: After doing my research I wasn’t quite sure on where the revolution was headed, so I tried to find a structure that would give my movie sense no matter if Chavez would have gone mad or if the revolution would not have succeeded. I tried to evaluate my vision of what should be a good and peaceful democratic revolution and what is developing in Venezuela is only a study case. So you can compare the theory and the practice.

EL: Did you set out on getting a balanced view by interviewing pro and anti-Chavez folks or is this a balanced representation of the classes? 

CG: I had absolutely no aim in putting things in “balance”. In fact, what I wanted to do is bring the spectator in Caracas and make them feel what the first hours of a revolution are like. This is the sense you get once you arrive there – people are arguing from one side or the other.  

EL: You offer a vast supply of talking heads for your doc – over time, was it harder to find people willing to speak out against Chavez? 

CG: (Laughs). There are a lot of people willing to speak against Chavez. The difficult part was to find people who had a rational way of their political point of views and position. They either hated it or loved it and that is why I find the girl [one of the more prominent talking heads in the doc] interesting because she is from the poorer neighborhoods and she understands that the revolution can bring hope for her people but she still has some reservations on the possibility of it collapsing.
  

EL: Can you tell me more about the 28 year old girl – at first she appears like the voice of Chavez’s new – but in fact she is critical of certain facets of the revolution – was this apparent in her from the beginning?  

CG: No she was a free thinking mind, but it is perhaps the way I choose to present her sort of like the other character ….

EL:…the lady who has a personal history with Chavez and shows pictures of her taken with the leader before she resents him…

CG: I tried to place the viewer in Caracas, but I also wanted to make the viewer understand how you can be charmed by Chavez – the more you learn about him and the more you go in-depth you then start to have suspicions about the process and I tried to build my movie this way. He helps the poor and blocks the rich, but in the middle of the film you notice that some things aren’t going well and in the end you have a sense that things can go out of control and he is close to being an egomaniac.  

EL: Can you discuss the animation – the technique that was employed and when or how did it come about?

CG: I always loved animation and I found that this was a great opportunity to mix it with celluloid. I think with the doc form you should always try to create new forms and try to push the form. I thought that this mix was rarely seen and not often employed and by putting the theories with the animation was a way to separate it from the study case. Revolution theory and practice mixed together is built with the drawings of Don Quixote….so you can take this story out of the movie and it still remains an illustrated story/book.

EL: The colors in your film are particularly vibrant – can you discuss the coloring process and why you choose to tint it in such a manner. 

CG: The aesthetic that was put forth in City of God and Traffic was a washed out amber-color …it is like you put a newspaper in the sun it gets burned… you get this tired, warn out color. When you go in these neighborhoods you get a feeling that people have been “crushed” – it’s a way to give an emotional relation with the barrios and it people who’ve been crushed over time.

EL: Can you discuss the film’s soundtrack – it had an Amores Perros-like vibrancy and felt like it was very specific to the environment. 

CG: The soundtrack for me is really important, it is also a way to live the revolutionary – whenever you go into Latin America music is always present from small ghetto blasters, and everyone in the neighborhood listens to music from one person’s car. In the beginning of my film we have a high-beat Reggaetown song about life in the barrios. The first images you arrive in the city traffic and the more you travel outside the city you get a sense of the other music they listen to more folky style – called “janero” or salsa music. It is a trip through Latin America with music. The film ends with a really important political rebellion song called “gimme the power” written in the 90’s – it’s a song that puts young people together and tells them to rise up against the power, the infrastructure and the state – it had a big impact for these people and I was really happy to get the rights to music.

EL: Does a Canadian documentary filmmaker encounter many obstacles when filming within such a close range to a figure like Chavez – were you on a first name basis with the body guards?

CG: I had some problems, infact, I have a pretty interesting anecdote on this. One day we were trying to shoot in the first hour of the legislative elections. It started at 4 o’clock and they booked fireworks and put signs to get the people to go out and vote. So I tried to shoot this from my hotel and since we were staying close to the presidential office – after 5 minutes of shooting we had 30 bodyguards that seized our equipment, and they searched our room and notebooks and we had all different forces the equivalent of the FBI , CIA, border control, personal body guards and they were getting excited to know if we were agents with the CIA – they noticed that we flew in from New York. They did some big time research with the RCMP and they had to release a statement that we were really Canadian citizens – it was the big story in the news “the radio said that they arrested 3 false journalists”. But they told us to take our stuff and continue filming. We had a lot of liberty on filming anything, except for this little incident, many people helped out in getting close to the president and to follow his events.   

EL: What are your predictions for Venezuela? 

CG: It all depends on if Chavez succeeds on making an alliance with other Latin American countries, because lately he has radicalized himself and people on other left power countries are afraid to be associated with Chavez and plus he was treating the Iranian president as a friend…he needs to understand that it is unity that will help bring his idea further. But I can predict that power leads to corruption and this is starting to have an effect.

EL: What are you working on now?

CG: I’m working on a script for another doc on the left movement in Latin America, based on a political thinker Eduardo Galliano and I’ve started to work on a project about people from the jungle.  

¿¡Revolución!? gets it English-Canada premiere today at the Toronto Hot Docs film festival. The doc then receives a limited Canadian release shortly after. Look for the film on the international film festival circuit.