Red Oil

'We were not interested in making a piece of Chavez propaganda' says Director' Lucinda Broadbent.

'I want people to think about or see in the film that multinational oil companies can operate differently from the dogmatic way they normally operate. That they can be run along different lines, with different values, with the aim of sharing the wealth more equitably. I hope they see that people are trying to do that in Venezuela, on a large scale. Whether or not it is successful remains to be seen.'

The film's soap opera style, with its high drama cast of heroes and villains' pays homage to Venezuela's passion for the TV format.

It is also a reflection of how the country operates. Views are extreme, people are passionate. Either you love Chavez or you hate him,' says Scotland-based Venezuelan producer Aimara Reques, a winner of the Bafta New Talent award.

'For 100 years Venezuela's massive oil wealth has been a magnet for greed and ambition, sparking an epic feud in our soap family, the Venezuelans,'states the Red Oil narrator in a style borrowed from Aaron Spelling, circa 1970. 'The underdogs of Venezuela's divided family, led by Uncle Hugo Chavez, have seized control of the company. It's a new dawn of oil-powered socialism'.

The film premiered at the Sheffield Documentary Festival in November 2008. It centres on real-life 'oiI diva' Marianella Yanes, a former soap opera writer whose new-found Chavez-inspired political zeal drove her to volunteer as a PR at PDVSA (Petrleos de Venezuela S.A.) in 2003. This role now sees her work around the clock at the multi-national oil corporation under the slogan 'Patria, Socialismo o Muerte', which translates as: 'Motherland, Socialism or Death'.

Carrying on the soap opera theme, President Hugo Chavez is cast as the benign, generous uncle. Opposing 'characters' include Eddie Ramirez, a PDVSA manager who was sacked by Chavez on live TV with a blow of a whistle.

He now fumes from the sidelines, 'I think we will get in the Guinness Book of Records for the oil company run so badly it goes bust.'

Another dissenting voice comes from Elie Habalian, a dissident former representative of Venezuela at Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), who warns, 'Chavez without oil is NOTHING. Absolutely nothing.'

And the sacked workers are represented by Marjorie Gonzalez, a chemical engineer for 26 years at PDVSA, and one of 18,000 employees who, after a strike in 2003, was summarily fired via a notice in the newspaper and blacklisted, never to work in the oil industry again.

Now working as a 'change management consultant', Gonzalez says she has no regrets. 'I feel happy, I feel free. I am not obliged to take a political position. We are free in this company.'

It is a credit to Reques and veteran director Lucinda Broadbent, whose documentaries have won Baftas and awards at the Houston and Chicago International Film Festivals, that the account is so even-handed.

As Broadbent says, it was difficult to get both sides to participate.

'Each side does not want to participate if they know the other side is represented. The country is polarized in that way, split in two. What Chavez is doing with PDVSA is such a controversy in Venezuela.'