South of the Border (2009 film)
Encyclopedia
South of the Border is a 2009 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...

. The documentary premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival
66th Venice International Film Festival
The 66th annual Venice Film Festival held in Venice, Italy, was opened on September 2, 2009 by Baarìa - La porta del vento. International competition jury, led by Ang Lee, awarded Leone d'Oro to Lebanon...

. Writer for the project Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...

 calls the documentary "a political road movie". Stone stated that he hopes the film will help people better understand a leader who is wrongly ridiculed "as a strongman, as a buffoon, as a clown."

The film has Stone and his crew travel from the Caribbean down the spine of the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 in an attempt to explain the "phenomenon" of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...

, and account for the continent's "pink tide
Pink tide
Pink tide is a term being used in contemporary 21st century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception that Leftist ideology in general, and Left-wing politics in particular, is increasingly influential in Latin America.In 2005, the BBC reported that out of 350...

" leftward tilt. A key feature is also Venezuela's recent Bolivarian revolution
Bolivarian Revolution
The “Bolivarian Revolution” refers to a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement...

 and Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

's political progress in the 21st century. In addition to Chávez, Stone sought to flesh out several other Latin American presidents whose policies and personalities generally get limited, or according to Stone, biased media attention in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, notably: Evo Morales
Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma , popularly known as Evo , is a Bolivian politician and activist, currently serving as the 80th President of Bolivia, a position that he has held since 2006. He is also the leader of both the Movement for Socialism party and the cocalero trade union...

 of Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

; Cristina Kirchner and former president Néstor Kirchner
Néstor Kirchner
Néstor Carlos Kirchner was an Argentine politician who served as the 54th President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Previously, he was Governor of Santa Cruz Province since 10 December 1991. He briefly served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations ...

 of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

; Rafael Correa
Rafael Correa
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado born is the President of the Republic of Ecuador and was the president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations. An economist educated in Ecuador, Belgium and the United States, he was elected President in late 2006 and took office in January 2007...

 of Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

; Raúl Castro
Raúl Castro
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008; he previously exercised presidential powers in an acting capacity from 2006 to 2008...

 of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

; Fernando Lugo
Fernando Lugo
Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez is the current President of Paraguay and a former Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of San Pedro.-Early life:...

 of Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

; and Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...

 of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

Production

Oliver Stone spoke of his move to balance the media reactions to other pink tide
Pink tide
Pink tide is a term being used in contemporary 21st century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception that Leftist ideology in general, and Left-wing politics in particular, is increasingly influential in Latin America.In 2005, the BBC reported that out of 350...

 leaders in the region: "... the project started as something about the American media demonizing Latin leaders. It became more than that as we got more involved. The press in America, I think you're aware, has divided the Latin continent into the 'bad Left' and the 'good Left'. "

US economist Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is an American economist, columnist and co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. As a commentator, he contributes to publications such as New York Times, the UK's The Guardian, and Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de S...

 advised Stone on the documentary and was credited as one of the writers alongside Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...

.

In May 2010, Stone began a Latin American tour to promote the film, with screenings planned in Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. The documentary was also being released in some cities in the United States and Europe later in 2010.

The Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...

 site reports that as of August 2010 the film had grossed $198,600 domestically.

The documentary was released in the U.K. at the end of July 2010 by Dogwoof film distributors.

Content

The documentary examines the free-market economic policies of the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...

, and how they have largely failed to alleviate Latin America's chronic income inequality. The film suggests that financial calamities such as the Argentine peso collapse of 2001, combined with Latin suspicions of U.S. drug-eradication efforts
Plan Colombia
The term Plan Colombia is most often used to refer to U.S. legislation aimed at curbing drug smuggling and combating a left-wing insurgency by supporting different activities in Colombia....

 and resentment over the selling off of natural resources through multinational companies, have contributed to the rise of socialist and social-democratic leaders across the region.

According to the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

, "Stone said he didn't see it necessary to present the opposition's case in his film."

Reception

The film received a score of 45 out of 100 on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, based on 19 film reviews collected.

United States

Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 magazine described the film as a "slapdash effort", "amateur night as cinema, as lopsided and cheerleadery as its worldview".Ref name=Time/>
He raises no tough issues, some of which are summarized in Amnesty International's 2009 report on Venezuela: "Attacks on journalists were widespread.

Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

 said, "The docu (sic
Sic
Sic—generally inside square brackets, [sic], and occasionally parentheses, —when added just after a quote or reprinted text, indicates the passage appears exactly as in the original source...

) offers little genuine information and no investigative research, adopting a style even more polemical than Stone’s earlier focus on Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat." Reuters said Stone "deliver[ed] a strong endorsement of Chavez's socialist agenda, and question[ed] the tenets of what he calls U.S. 'predatory capitalism,'"

Fabiola Moura described the film as "rosy in its picture", while a "perspective rrely seen in U.S> media coverage of the region, and:
The movie doesn’t mention Chavez’s blacklisting of millions of people who signed a petition seeking a recall vote against him in 2004; the persecution of political rivals; the creation of a new "Capital District" to usurp power from the opposition-led Caracas city government; and the refusal to renew the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Television, the country’s oldest station.


NPR says the film tells only one side of the story and gives "kid glove treatment" to Chavez and his allies.

The Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

gave the film a favourable review. The reviewer stated, in regards to the film's criticism that "... those criticisms ironically validate another theme of the documentary: the media's often biased coverage of Latin American politics."

Foreign Policy Magazine said Stone asked softball questions of the South American leaders and

Larry Rohter
Larry Rohter
William Lawrence Rohter, Jr. — known as Larry Rohter — is an American journalist who was a South American bureau chief for The New York Times from 1999 to 2007...

 wrote in the New York Times accusing the film of "misinformation." On June 28, 2010, Oliver Stone responded to Rohter by rejecting the reporter's criticisms, saying they were not founded in fact, and criticizing the Times for its editorial board’s endorsement of the military coup of April 11, 2002 against the elected government of Venezuela, which he argued was "embarrassing" to the newspaper. Stone said that Rohter had written an article on April 12, 2002 which strongly endorsed the coup in Venezuela and other anti-Chavez articles previously. Stone's rebuttal concludes with the statement: "It is not surprising that someone [Rohter] who supports the military overthrow of a democratically elected government would not like a documentary like this one, which celebrates the triumphs of electoral democracy in South America over the last decade." Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is an American economist, columnist and co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. As a commentator, he contributes to publications such as New York Times, the UK's The Guardian, and Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de S...

 added that: "... he [Rohter] failed to find any factual errors in the film – despite some rather desperate attempts." Rohter replied and reiterated that a number of economical and historical facts were either omitted or changed by the filmmakers in Chavez's favor. He called the accusations levied against him by the film's creators a "smokescreen" and a "smear campaign". The film's creators claimed similar treatment from Rohter.

Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh is an American writer, professor, historian, former Marxist, and neoconservative. He is known for his work on the Cold War espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and his advocacy of the state of Israel....

 has criticized the film in both the Wall Street Journal and Pajamas Media
Pajamas Media
PJ Media is a media company that uses the Internet to present and comment on the news.Founded in 2004 by a network primarily, but not exclusively, made up of conservatives and libertarians led by mystery writer, screenwriter, and blogger Roger L...

 

Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is an American economist, columnist and co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. As a commentator, he contributes to publications such as New York Times, the UK's The Guardian, and Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de S...

, who worked on the movie, wrote: "It's nice when you make a documentary about how the major media outlets misrepresent reality, and the media response to the film proves your point. In fact, the media's response to Oliver Stone's South of the Border, which I wrote with Tariq Ali, really completes a number of the film's arguments."

United Kingdom

The documentary received mixed reviews from the mainstream press. The Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

described the film as "ramshackle but passionate and enjoyable," while Steve Rose wrote in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

that it was "unashamedly partisan and unintentionally hilarious – both of which make it highly watchable." Rose praises Stone for correcting the partisan view of the US media, but criticises Stone's interview approach, saying: "Full credit to the director for correcting the view perpetrated by the US media: that the continent's new leftist presidents, particularly Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, are 'dictators' bent on America's destruction, rather than democratically elected leaders..." And that "Stone goes on to shoot himself in the foot with a series of clumsy, sycophantic interviews. He thinks he's being Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...

 but he's more Alan Partridge
Alan Partridge
Alan Gordon Partridge is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour...

." The film received a rating of one star out of five from The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

 reviewer who said "it becomes clear that Stone is ill-equipped to conduct a serious political analysis of the continent. He gets amazing access to national leaders and yet, face to face with them, he doesn't even look interested in what they have to say."

The film received four star reviews from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

magazine and Time Out, and two out of five stars from the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

.

Latin America

In Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

, the film grossed US$18,601 on 20 screens after 12 days. The film was criticised by Leopoldo López
Leopoldo López
Leopoldo López Mendoza is a Venezuelan politician and economist. From 2000 until 2008, López was the mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas. A 2006 Los Angeles Times article describes López as an immensely popular leader of the opposition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, as well as a...

, an opposition leader, for ignoring and not mentioning a number of very serious problems in Venezuela such as escalating crime, inflation, food scarcity, housing, and access to water and electricity which has (according to López) worsened under Chavez's rule. He disagrees with Stone's argument that "most peoples' lives in this country have improved under Chavez". Stone responded that presenting the second party opposition's case in the documentary was not his main goal. He also said that: "People forget that he cut the poverty rate by one half...People in Venezuela are getting an education, they are getting health care and welfare. [Chavez] actually delivered on what he said he would."

Other

Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...

 who collaborated with Stone to make the film remarked that: "These changes that are taking place are not coming about through armed struggle or guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

 or Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...

. All these changes have come about through democratic elections">}}

External links

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