MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Stone promises to keep exposing the “white man” but with a doses of entertainment

The controversial US filmmaker Oliver Stone

“It’s always a simple repeat of what happens in Iraq, Afghanistan or South America. It’s the white man who fights people he believes are inferior”, confessed US filmmaker Oliver Stone talking about his recent “South of the Border”.

“It’s something I’ve seen over and over, and if there’s something I would like to do in the years left is to make it public and expose it, hopefully with a sufficient doses of entertainment so that people will want to see it”, confessed Stone during a Sunday interview with the London press.

Part of that effort is precisely “South of the Border”, which is centred on the figure and personality of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and his XXI Socialism.

In the interview Stone expresses his sympathy for the Venezuelan leader: “he’s very warm and charming. And he looks like a bear. I’ve always said that if he looked like Woody Allen he would be far more attractive for the international press. I think his physical aspect turns many people down”.

As to how he compiled the latest film on Latinamerican leaders Stone said he went to Caracas and talked about the project with Chavez, “and he told us not only to believe him, but go and talk to other presidents, and that is what we did”.

During the film “South of the Border”, Stone chews coca leaves and talks about Socialism with Bolivia’s Evo Morales and later on interviews Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, Ecuadorean Rafael Correa and Cuban leader Raul Castro.

“I’m no interviewer but a film director. When I go to those places I take advantage of my status as filmmaker that allows me to talk as an equal with world leaders” said Stone.

He added that “I’m not hostile, I let them talk. In the United States we don’t even know their names”.

The controversial and most political of US film directors, Stone is preparing another south of the border documentary but on Fidel Castro.

This year should also see the release of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” while he works on his major project: a 10-part documentary series for HBO, Oliver Stone's Secret History of America.