I watched them in the order you posted them...and that makes a difference...or perhaps it doesn't.

The glaring holes in the second documentary were glaring because of how they minutely--yet sometimes bizzarely (in my opinion)--analysed the first.

So thanks again for posting them.  I like the idea of longer video format via the internet.  I found the time to watch (two hours out of my weekend) and it was worth it.  Thoroughly recommended (though I realised early in that I'd seen the first doc. before, on the BBC--still, it was well worth a re-watch.)

So...

What I hope to stimulate here is not so much another debate on the pros and cons of Chavez, as a debate on how media and art are used to shape perceptions and attitudes.

What I felt was that the second one was an attempt at a deconstructionist analysis but without quite understanding the role of deconstruction.  They accused the first video (= the makers) of deliberate falsifications, sins of ommission etc., without seeing that their video, too, could and would be deconstructed in a similar manner.  (No mention in the second of the next-day television segment where some people explained how the coup was set up, etc...)

So, it felt sorta like the powerful suddenly feeling beaten by those annoying arts graduates--being ripped off!  They lied, the bastards!  Without quite seeing that the first film was about exposing lies and structures--and telling a historical narrative, a strange kind of serendipitous moment, the camera crew in the palace as the coup develops...

And I suppose art trumps truth in some ways...so beware of propaganda with good artists...

One of the elements of the second doc. was about how people far away, who had no local knowledge, would make certain assumptions based on the images they saw...ach...

It'd be interesting (honestly!) to see yet another film, a witty film about, say, the dispute over the bridge...the example with the torch but no comment about how the various shots of the bridge changed perspective so shadows grew or shrank...and then a huge blue arrow appears and sweeps across the screen...yet the points about the street having had protestors...and who did do the shooting?  I suppose it could go on and on.  Maybe the key is the...wit?...of the makers.  Someone no doubt famously said that women ask for AGSOH (A good sense of humour) in their Singles Ads because AGSOH shows quick-wittedness, which shows intelligence (the ability to think on one's feet.)  Maybe audiences pick up on that?

But in an interesting way, the second video wasn't wrong, so much as an early tentative struggling to come to terms...  I can imagine some of the young kids coming out of that auditorium (there were lots of pics of serious--and attractive (well, sez me ;)--young women taking notes, looking pensive...  Well, I can imagine one of them, Manuela, coming out, having had a realisation:

"They're making this shit up!"

Then looking at all the adverts outside...then seeing the ads on the bus...then the ads on the TV...then the programmes...

Ach, Trond Ove, I'm not helping the analysis, but I wanted to do two things by posting (if I wrote anything interesting, that would be a third thing):

1) Thank you again.  So thanks.

and

2) Point out (for anybody reading this) that Tond Ove's diary has almost dropped off the Recent Diaries list and, unless anyone catches this reply in Recent Comments, then... the kind of time spans needed for hour plus video diaries...are not currently supported by the ET setup.  Just an observation, no judgement.  It takes three or so days to get through a couple of hour-long videos...but I very much enjoyed watching them and I would enjoy reading other people's (much more interesting and erudite) analysis.

And finally....just in case...well...just for the record (so to speak.)

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.