By Massiel Bobadilla
HollywoodNews.com: Filmmaker Oliver Stone’s latest piece, “South of the Border,” has already come under fire for issues with accuracy, but now actress Maria Conchita Alonso is taking aim at the documentary, blasting Stone’s portrayal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Criticizing Stone for what she calls “selective storytelling,” Alonso is planning a media blitz to protest the film as much as the filmmaker, even going so far as to produce her own documentary to challenge Stone’s
A spokesperson for the Cuban-born, Venezuela-raised Alonso said, “Missing from the light-hearted moments of a dictator (Chavez) riding a bike are the questioning of the alarming and growing rates of poverty, kidnapping and murder.”
South of the Border chronicles Stone’s road trip through Latin America, and his attempt to understand its sociopolitical state of affair. But according to Alonso, essential elements of life in Latin America, and particularly Chavez’s Venezuela, are left out.
“Oliver Stone is a gifted storyteller who has lent his considerable prowess to crafting a cinematic lie,” she said, adding, “Why not tell the truth about the conditions in Venezuela, where the middle class has shrunk from a third to five per cent, kidnapping has risen to the top five in the world and murder rates are higher than in Baghdad resulting from pillaged oil wealth, increased drug running and exportation of political unrest?”
“I challenge Mr. Stone to answer these questions and explain where he got the funding for the production, distribution and marketing of this lie. Oliver Stone has become Hugo Chavez’s Minister of Propaganda.”
Alonso, along with activist group Venezuela Awareness, will be picketing tonight’s 7:20 p.m. screening of South of the Border in Santa Monica. Stone, expected to do a Q&A after the premiere, will definitely have his work cut out for him.