I first saw Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised about six years back, the day after a very late night, “heroically” hauling myself out of bed and dragging myself up the road to the local cinema before sinking deep into a generously cushioned chair for the afternoon screening. If my viewing neighbors were delighted to be watching a film alongside what must have smelled something like a six-foot tall bottle of booze, their joy can only have redoubled when – approximately thirty-five seconds into the screening – this rancid alcohol-human hybrid (talking about myself, here) burst into tequila tinged sobs that rang out for the entire film…

Transpires, of course, that my extravagant and half-cut sentimentality was in aid of one of the most controversial documentaries of all time, one that has since even inspired a dedicated effort at debunkery, X-Ray of a Lie, which takes the unmistakable partiality of the filmmakers to task and accuses them of all sorts of questionable editing and bias.

What seems ultimately incontestable, however, is that the film captures – and from the eye of the storm – the attempted military overthrow of a democratically elected government, and its reversal by a popular uprising. And it is this – a familiar story with a less-familiar ending – that gives The Revolution Will Not Be Televised its awesome emotional pull, late night or not.

Whatever can be said against him, give me Hugo Chavez’s backslapping humanity (he appears to cuddle about a third of Venezuela in the course of this documentary alone) over the baby-kissing misanthropy of our own political class any day. Congratulations to him on winning another six year term. I hope he survives it.