Documentary's elegant rhetoric uncoils plant politics

On June 30, 2007, presidential elections will be held in Bolivia. This is not a fact of vital importance to many people, but it is critical to the release and distribution of the new documentary The Real Thing: Coca, Democracy and Rebellion in Bolivia, which premiered at Concordia's DeSeve Theatre last Friday.

The Real Thing was filmed, produced and written by a team of three Canadians: Jim Sanders, Andre Clement and Lucien Read. Under their independent production company Dada World Data Production, a crash course on Bolivian coca politics is presented. The film takes the audience on a ride, opening with a cocaine deal in a broken down bathroom. The story unfolds, told through varying mediums: voice-overs, flashback sequences, narration, computer graphics, subtitles and interviews. Authorities on the subject, such as renowned scholar and MIT professor Noam Chomsky, accentuate its credibility.

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