Michael Moore, Meet Luis Mandoki

As we know, Bushco is crowing over the electoral defeat of Hugo Chavez yesterday in Venezuela (as Atrios noted, funny how a “dictator” seems so willing to comply with the wishes of the electorate).

In the unlikely chance that any Republican happens to be reading this, I’ll tell you what; I won’t say that the only issue that mattered in John Howard’s defeat in Australia was the Iraq war (because it wasn’t) if YOU don’t say that the razor-thin loss of Chavez in Venezuela is an endorsement of Bushco (because it isn’t). Deal?

That being said, though, I just want to note this New York Times article from yesterday that tells of the release of the film, “Fraud, Mexico 2006” by filmmaker Luis Mandoki, which portrays last year’s Mexican election which was even closer than Venezuela’s yesterday. In it, conservative Felipe Calderón edged left-winger Andrés Manuel López Obrador (pictured) by 243,000 votes out of 41 million cast.

The Times article tells how López Obrador did not receive the full recount his supporters requested, along with the allegations of fraud at the polls combined with a smear campaign run by Calderon and his people, alleging that López Obrador would become a Mexican version of Chavez (sounds like they’ve been paying close attention to our campaigns).

The Times story also tells us that 300,000 people have seen the film in the first two weeks after its release, as well as this reaction…

The film has stirred up deep emotions. Standing ovations and shouting matches were not uncommon in the 230 theaters where it is showing. On Nov. 24, a dispute broke out between employees of a Cinemex theater in Mexico City and the audience when one of the reels broke 20 minutes into the film. The audience accused employees of censoring the film. The employees shouted insults at the audience and chanted, “Calderón! Calderón!”

“I am very surprised and happy,” Mr. Mandoki said in a recent interview. “At a premiere, people often stand at the end, but here, in all the theaters, the people not only applaud but they stay until the credits are over.”

So far, Mr. López Obrador’s supporters have made up the bulk of the people going to the film. For many of them it has only confirmed what they felt in their gut last year.

“I always have thought there was fraud,” said Sandra Quiñones, a 36-year-old city employee, who saw the film in Mexico City. “I would have thought that as a documentary it was boring. But, no, on the contrary, the truth is you come out angry, the great anger of knowing they stole the presidency.”

Others with different political leanings remain in quiet thought long after the film has ended. “I voted for Calderón,” said Araceli Pliego, 23, a student, as she left a Mexico City theater. “At the time, I liked his proposal and I still say he’s not bad as a governor, but after seeing the film, I have a lot of doubts about what happened last year.”

And this should sound familiar also…

Mr. Mandoki said he had seldom had such trouble getting a film distributed. According to Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola, the head of the Warner Brothers subsidiary in Mexico, Juan Manuel Borbolla, agreed in mid-June to distribute the film and said his bosses in Hollywood were enthusiastically on board.

But Warner Brothers pulled out in late August, and Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola say the decision was political. They say Mr. Borbolla told them that he had been warned he would make enemies at Televisa, the dominant Mexican television network, if he distributed the film. Televisa owns Videocine-Distribucion, the company with which Warner Brothers has a distribution partnership in Mexico.

Televisa officials denied that they exerted pressure on Warner Brothers to drop the film, other than to warn that the documentary would not make a profit. (It has grossed about $1 million at the box office, the producers say.)

Mr. Borbolla has insisted politics played no role in the decision. “I decided not to distribute the film because it was not good business, because in Mexico, documentaries don’t sell,” he said at a news conference in September. A spokeswoman for Warner Brothers Entertainment in California, Andrea Marozas, said in a telephone interview that officials at the company’s headquarters had determined that the film would simply not be profitable.

In the end, none of the major distributors in Mexico would handle the film, the producers said. Mr. Mandoki and Mr. Arreola turned to a small company, Decine S.A. de C.V., which agreed to help the producers distribute the film for a fee, as long as the payments from the four main Mexican movie chains went directly to the producers instead of the distributor.

It sounds like Mexico has found a way to consolidate its ruling political influence through questionable means as well as we have, but I wonder if one element is missing: could there possibly be a Mexican language translation for “dittohead”?