Beyond Citizen Kane

Beyond Citizen Kane
Directed by Simon Hartog
Produced by John Ellis
Written by Simon Hartog
Distributed by Channel 4
Release dates
  • September 1993 (1993-09)[1]
Running time
 105 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Brazil
Language English

Beyond Citizen Kane (1993) is a British documentary film directed by Simon Hartog, produced by John Ellis, and first broadcast on Channel 4.

It details the dominant position of the Rede Globo media group, the largest in Brazil, and discusses the group's influence, power, and political connections.[2] Globo's president and founder Roberto Marinho was criticised and compared to the fictional newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, created by Orson Welles for the 1941 film Citizen Kane. According to the documentary, Marinho's media group engages in manipulation of news to influence public opinion.[2]

Rede Globo objected to the film's position and tried to buy Brazilian rights, but Hartog had already made agreements to give non-TV rights to political and cultural groups in Brazil. While it is often claimed in Brazil that exhibiting the documentary in Brazil was forbidden by the justice, John Ellis claims that there are no legal restrictions in place, but the documentary can't be broadcast on TV in Brazil since it contains large sections of footage owned by Globo. [3]

However, copies sold in Britain reached Brazil in the 1990s and circulated widely there. In addition, since the Internet boom of the early 21st century, the film has been released on sharing networks and had hundreds of thousands of views, as measured on YouTube and Google Video.

Plot

The documentary tracks Globo's involvement with and support of the military dictatorship; its illegal partnership of the 1960s with the American group Time Warner (at the time Time-Life); Marinho's political manoeuvrings (which included airing on Jornal Nacional, the network's prime time news program, highlights of a 1989 presidential debate edited in a way as to favour Fernando Collor de Mello); and a controversial deal involving shares of NEC Corporation and government contracts. It features interviews with 21 people, including noted Brazilian politicians and cultural figures, such as politicians Leonel Brizola and Antonio Carlos Magalhães, singer-songwriter Chico Buarque, former Justice Minister Armando Falcão, politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who later was elected as president; and former employees Walter Clark and Armando Nogueira.[4]

The title refers to the 1941 American film, Citizen Kane, whose fictional newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane was created by the director and actor Orson Welles. He was believed to have been based on the American publisher William Randolph Hearst, noted for creating yellow journalism and exploiting the press. The 1993 British documentary criticised Globo's president and founder Roberto Marinho for his close ties to the military dictatorship and suggestively compared him to the Kane figure for manipulation of news.[2]

Dispute with Globo over British rights

The documentary was first shown in September 1993 in the United Kingdom. Broadcast of the programme had been delayed for a year as Rede Globo disputed the programme makers' right under British law to use short extracts from Globo programmes without permission, for the purposes of "critical comment and review".

During this period of legal manoeuvring, Simon Hartog, the director, died after a long illness. The process of editing was taken over by his co-producer John Ellis. When the film was eventually broadcast, the production company sold copies in the UK at cost. Many individuals in the Brazilian community in Britain sent copies to associates and friends in Brazil.

Censorship in Brazil

The film was also to be shown at the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS) of São Paulo. The MIS copy was confiscated after two screenings, according to a later account by Anhaia Geraldo Mello, then coordinator of the TV and Video Museum. He said the order came from the governor of São Paulo, Luiz Antonio Fleury Filho. The official story at the time was that the film was cancelled because of technical problems.[4]

Through the 1990s, the film was illegally screened by universities, political groups and unions, as copies were made available informally.[4] In 1995, Globo requested in court to confiscate copies of the film available at the library of the University of São Paulo, but it was overruled. The film was officially restricted to university groups until the 2000s (decade), when the internet boom in Brazil[2] made it impossible to control access, as people could put it on the web (and did). (Brazil is the 5th country internationally by number of web users and 1st in time spent by individuals on internet use month.[2]

Screenings and internet phenomenon

At the time of release, Rede Globo sought to buy the Brazilian rights to the programme, presumably seeking to suppress it. But, during production, as part of his working with groups in Brazil, Hartog had made agreements to give them the non-TV rights in order to ensure wide showing of the programme by both cultural and political organisations. Globo lost interest in buying the programme when they learned this, and as of 2015, it had not been broadcast on TV in Brazil.

But numerous VHS and DVD copies have circulated, and the documentary has become available on the internet, via peer-to-peer networks and video sharing websites, such as YouTube and Google Video (where it has been watched nearly 600,000 times). Contrary to popular belief, the movie is also legally available in Brazil, though copies are difficult to find, mostly buried in libraries and private collections.[4]

On August 20, 2009, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that the network Rede Record bought the broadcasting rights of the documentary from producer John Ellis (media academic) for less than US$20,000. This happened after the Globo and Record attacked each other through their media during an investigation conducted by the Public Ministry against Edir Macedo and other high profile members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Macedo has owned Rede Record since November 9, 1989.[5][6] On February 14, 2011, the newspaper Jornal do Brasil (quoting the network's spokesperson) reported that Rede Record would broadcast the documentary in 2012, on a date to be determined.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Entry at the British Film Institute
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Folha Universal. "Crença na impunidade", Arca Universal. (27-09-09).
  3. ↑ "Produtor de documentário antiGlobo diz que TV pública vem tarde demais - 24/02/2008 - Poder - Folha de S.Paulo". www1.folha.uol.com.br. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Documentário polêmico sobre a Globo completa dez anos" (Controversial documentary about Globo celebrates ten years) Archived February 24, 2010, at the Wayback Machine., O Estado de S. Paulo 8 August 2003 (Portuguese), accessed (on Google Translate) 23 June 2013
  5. ↑ "Documentário vira arma de Record contra Globo" (Documentary becomes Record's weapon against Globo), Terra, 21 August 2009
  6. ↑ , 20 August 2009
  7. ↑ "Muito além do cidadão Marinho" (Far Beyond Citizen Marinho), Jornal do Brasil, 14-02-11, accessed in translation 24 June 2013

External links

Video

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.