ABSTRACT
This article considers a series of documentaries revisiting the Venezuelan coup of 11 April 2002. These documentaries have attempted to reconstruct the event, relying on witness testimony, television coverage and on-the-ground reportage and home movies. The documentaries' appropriation of televised footage allows us to reassess the so-called 'media coup' and to discuss the theoretical implications of reusing televisual footage to re-articulate historical traumatic events. The events of April 2002 provide a rich site to examine: first, the evolving national mediascape and the contestation of public and private spaces; secondly, the changing paradigms of political filmmaking in the Latin American context, suggesting how uses of television and new media help us expand the theater of the political documentary; and, thirdly, the medium-specific challenges of revolutionary cinema where political testimony becomes (re(mediated in a political space that conflates physical and virtual political space.
