Lights! Camera! Revolución!

But despite all the talk of purging the "imperialist" aesthetic, Cinemaville goes gaga over Yanqui screen-idol visitors like Tim Robbins, Kevin Spacey, and Danny Glover. Last year Sean Penn spent six days in Venezuela and was squired around the country by Comandante Hugo himself. The crowning glory was an announcement in 2007 that Chávez would give $9 million to Glover's project to make a film about Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture (though nothing has come of the project to date). The adulation appears to be mutual. Chávez was a guest of honor at the Venice Film Festival in September, where Oliver Stone premiered his newest title, South of the Border, a flattering documentary about El Comandante.

The fact is that Hollywood isn't so much the enemy as it is the benchmark for Hugowood. The studio's directors, actors, and studio technicians have to please audiences that are accustomed to blockbuster standards. Zamora, Free Land and Men, released in July, employed 62 actors and 5,000 extras to tell the story of a 19th-century landowner turned freedom fighter. The studio's biggest hit to date, Miranda Returns, retells the life of Francisco Miranda, a forerunner of Bolivar himself. With Glover in a cameo role as a Haitian pirate, the title character sprints across four continents and four decades in his quest to free Venezuela from Spanish rule. Played by TV idol Jorge Reyes (perhaps better known for his role in an erotic video that leaked onto the Web a few years back), Miranda seduces Catherine the Great, fights in the French Revolution, calls on Thomas Jefferson, and defies the Inquisition before dying a martyr in a Spanish prison. There's plenty of swashbuckling and paeans to liberty and independence, but after two hours and 20 minutes, viewers may find themselves rooting for Spain.

You were expecting a Venezuelan Triumph of the Will? The totalitarian cineastes of the 20th century relied on like-minded artists and intellectuals to remake society. Eisenstein spoke of building a new "Soviet Man," while Mussolini founded a magazine and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a professional film school that still exists. But Chávez has little use for thinkers and artists, and Venezuela's students are his sworn enemies. Accomplished painters and sculptors have abandoned or been expelled from public museums and exhibition halls (Chávez closed down the Caracas Atheneum in May) and taken refuge in private galleries. The president recently banned independent -theater troupes from the public stage, and he even scrapped the logos that famous artists had created for each of Venezuela's 35 official museums and theaters, replacing them with a primitivist stencil drawing of a dog and a frog.

Chávez supporters argue that he's knocking down walls that kept the arts cloistered in the hands of a small, wealthy cabal. But the results have been less than encouraging. Caracas once boasted some of the richest fine-arts collections in Latin America. Now the Chavista-run museums have stopped acquiring "elite" works, and attendance has withered. Illiteracy is on the rise. The one uncontested triumph of bringing culture to the masses, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, which has taught music throughout the shantytowns, was started a quarter century before Chávez came to power. "This may be the one revolution in history without intellectuals, students, or poets," says Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations. "People don't realize it, but this is not a socialist government. It's a military government."

He'll get no argument from Jonathan Jakubowicz. In 2005 the young Caracas director produced Kidnap Express, a harsh but highly acclaimed depiction of Venezuelan street crime and corruption. The film was distributed by Miramax, grossed $2.4 million, and was touted as a candidate for a foreign-film Oscar. But Chávez saw things differently. His government sued Jakubowicz for "undermining our revolution." Jakubowicz took the cue and headed to Los Angeles, where he is directing a new film, Queen of the South, with Ben Kingsley and Eva Mendes. "Chávez's only goal is to stay in power for life," Jakubowicz says, "And his entire propaganda cultural machine, including filmmaking, works toward that goal." Chávez's critics speak openly of a country heading toward a "Cuban model" of absolute control.

At least Venezuela still hasn't been ostracized like Castro's Cuba. The day I called on Cinemaville, the buzz was all about the pending accreditation by Dolby Surround Sound 5.1, Hollywood's tool of choice to amplify explosions and disaster audio to skull-rattling proportions. "We are nearly certified," says Villa techie Armando Silva. "This will allow us to show our films in the Cine-plex." The revolution will be digitized.

But hold that Oscar. A taxi driver hired to take Cinemaville staffers back to work in Guarenas recently marveled at the studio's portentous façade. "When are you going to start showing movies?" he asked. "This isn't a movie theater. We make movies here," replied Silva, who went on to list some of the studio's titles. The taxi driver hadn't heard of a single one. For now, at least, Tinseltown is safe.

© 2009