Film Review: Oliver Stone’s South of the Border or The Other Americas [VIDEO]

The theater was so full, some people sat on the floor.

Oliver Stone’s newest film “South of the Border” is a documentary, but at the end it feels more like an advertising movie in favor of Hugo Chavez and other progressive presidents of South America and the Caribbean. Mostly, it is a film with a clear message against Fox News, CNN, the Bush administration and the International Monetary Fund, mostly.

At the end of the film, the whole auditorium applauded. Actually they clapped several times during the screening. I recorded this video last night:

South of the Border can be very revealing for those people in the U.S. who don’t know much about the political reality of the countries located south of the U.S. border with Mexico, and it describes the new leadership rising in the last decade in the region -especially since Chavez won elections in Venezuela- and why this is happening.

It is a good film for its content, but I have doubts that right-wingers or skeptics in the U.S. or the rest of the Americas, will have the guts see it completely. It will be a favorite for progressive folks –watching it at the U.S. Social Forum surrounded by many Chavez supporters was a bit annoying, because of the cheerful noises they made every 10 minutes.

For those of us who read often about Latin American politics, without relying on what Fox-News and other idiotic U.S. corporate media would show us, this film has few details that we didn’t know previously, at least I knew most of its content. However, the conversations with the leaders of the Latin American leftist movements happening now, are very interesting.

Listening to the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba –in that order- confirms that all of them are moved by the same goals, and they all are inspired by the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro, and the previous revolutionaries of the continent, including Tupak Katari, Simon Bolivar and Haiti’s Toussaint L'Overture.

The words of Raul Castro are very inspirational and honest, while Bolivia’s Evo Morales participation caused many laughs among the "progressive" audience, which I didn’t share at all. Even for leftists, watching Morales and Stone chewing coca leaves is something funny. I won’t mention other details about this film, to avoid spoiling your experience if you are planning on seeing it.

The film is not everything that I expected, but it was worth seeing it for sure. At the end of it, one feels very optimistic about the new model of socialism being implemented in the Americas, a political movement that is being invented within the societies of our continent. It’s a growing current that will not go away anytime soon.

Although South of the Border doesn’t include any direct criticism against the Obama administration –it was produced right after the 2008 elections- but it makes it clear that the U.S. government policies are in the wrong direction, when it comes to the other nations of the Western hemisphere.

The message is clear: leftist presidents don’t hate the U.S., much less its people. What cause tensions among the U.S. and leftists governments in the Americas are the failed imperialistic policies created in Washington, DC, and Wall Street --which unfortunately the Obama administration is perpetuating. The film shows a historical context of the U.S. negative influence in the nations of the continent, which the audience supported with repeated applause.

The film includes footage from U.S. "news" channels, that sound so ridiculous that people laughed out loud. A moment I keep in mind, is when the former president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner states that George W. Bush told him that "wars produce progress for the U.S."

The final images and soundtrack of the film are very cheerful, especially among those of us who believe that alternatives for neo-liberal capitalism are necessary for the Americas. Undoubtedly, South of the Border is a one-sided documentary with too much of Oliver Stone walking with his new southern friends, but it has enough information that the U.S. corporate media will never broadcast, about the new Americas. Go see it.

.