Tag Archives: freedom-of-speech

Variety: RCTV’s “El Señor Presidente” film challenges Chavez

An interesting article in this week’s Variety highlights the production of the film “El Señor Presidente” by RCTV, based on Miguel Angel Asturias, a Guatemalan Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Read the complete article on Variety’s website.

‘El Señor Presidente’ challenges Chavez

By Anna Marie De La Fuente

RCTV, the 53 year old Venezuelan terrestrial network that was yanked off the airwaves in May for its anti-government stance, is again defying the populist regime of President Hugo Chavez by producing a pic that openly describes a dictatorship in a Latin American country. This is RCTV’s first film production in some 20 years.

Written, produced and helmed by RCTV’s VP of Development and New Media, Romulo Guardia, “El Señor Presidente” (The President) is a film adaptation of the novel by Guatemalan 1967 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Miguel Angel Asturias. Guardia’s production company, Angostura Films, co-produced the pic.

“Aside from exploring a variety of genres, we are looking to recreate Spanish classic literature that will appeal to a broad Latin American audience,” Guardia says. RCTV’s next pic is a horror thriller based on a Venezuelan legend. The web aims to make three pics next year and to eventually build up its feature film production output to 12 a year.

Leading distrib/exhib Cinematografica Blancica, which distributes pics from Sony Pictures and Warners in Venezuela, will release the drama by the end of November on 20 prints, a high count for a local pic.

Guardia shot “El Señor Presidente” in hi-def for less than $1 million in Caracas and other locations. “We had to film in secret in order to avoid being shut down,” says Guardia, a former exec at Discovery Latin America.

“El Señor Presidente” is set in a fictitious Latin American country living under a fierce dictatorship. In the story, the president uses his influence to destroy his rival and enemy, General Canales, the father of the young girl he fancies. “We plan to market the film as a Guatemalan story to avoid any problems with authorities,” says Blancica prexy Antonio Blanco.

RCTV lost its terrestrial broadcasting rights last spring when Chavez’s democratically elected government opted not to renew the web’s license, accusing it of siding with the opposition and allegedly violating broadcast laws. As of July, RCTV has been broadcasting on cable and satellite systems under the moniker RCTV Intl.

The Chavez government has been backing a slew of pics that local industryites and government watchdogs label as outright propaganda films, some shot in the new state-of-the-art studio facility outside Caracas, La Villa del Cine. Chavez has recently been hosting visits from Hollywood activists including Danny Glover, Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey.

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Quick Guide to Configuring GnuPG on your Mac (OS X)

This is a quick-and-dirty guide to installing and configuring GnuPG (PGP) on you Mac. If you want a more detailed guide, explaining every step, visit http://fiatlux.zeitform.info/en/instructions/pgp_macosx.html

For a detailed explanation of how PGP works, visit the Getting Started page of the GNU Privacy Handbook at http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/c14.html

For a nice tutorial on selecting a strong passphrase, read http://fiatlux.zeitform.info/en/instructions/passwords.html

Step 1: Download all the necessary software

You’ll need to download the following software (or packages) which will allow you to create encrypted messages on your Mac, import and export encryption keys, and configure everything through a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Mac GnuPG

GPG Keychain Access

GPG Preferences

Step 2: Install and configure

Double-click on the Mac GnuPG file you downloaded to launch the installer. Launch the “GnuPG for Mac OS X 1.4.7” package (this was the version at the time of writing this article) and follow the instructions to install GnuPG on your computer.

Launch the Terminal application and open a command-line window. Type:

gpg --gen-key

and follow the instructions to generate your keypair. Choose “1” for the kind of key (DSA and Elgamal), “4096” for the key size, “0” to make your keypair valid indefinitely (if you think your key should expire after a certain length of time, you may use the following code: 2 for 2 days, 3w for 3 weeks, 6m for 6 months, or 12y for 12 years).

For your User-ID, enter your name, your e-mail address (this is the address you’ll use to send and receive encrypted emails) and an optional comment. You may use the optional comment field to state an opinion (“Live Free or Die”), to further identify yourself (“Company Name”) or however else you see fit – just remember that the comment field will be tied to your User ID and will show up in your public key. Enter “0” to okay all the information.

You must now enter your passphrase. Your passphrase is the one thing standing between your private key and anyone keen on misusing it or learning your secrets, so choose it wisely.

  • Do not use ordinary words that appear on any dictionary.
  • Do not use the names of your loved ones, hated ones, pets or family members.
  • Do not use personal dates such as birthdays or anniversaries.
  • Do not use short passphrases.
  • Use upper- and lower-case letters.
  • Use numbers.
  • Use punctuation marks.
  • Use something you can remember.

For a nice tutorial on passphrases, read http://fiatlux.zeitform.info/en/instructions/passwords.html

You must now enter your passphrase twice (it’ll be hidden from view) and generate your keypair (it’ll take a long time).

Congratulations… you’re now ready to communicate securely (well, almost ready).

Now install GPG Keychain Access and GPG Preferences.

GPG Keychain Access will let you manage your private and public keys through a nice GUI interface. It also allows you to manage your contacts’ public keys, import and export keys, and publish your public key to a key server.

GPG Preferences installs into the System Preferences panel and lets you select the key server to use to search for public keys. If someone sends you an encrypted messages, you’ll need to know their public key to decrypt it. They can send you this key or you can search for it on a key server (if they published it).

Step 3: Configuring GnuPG to work with your applications

Ok, so now that you have GnuPG installed and a keypair, you need a way to use GnuPG from within your applications.

The following applications will let you seamlessly use GnuPG:

ABKey

ABKey will integrate GnuPG with your Address Book, adding fields for public keys to every address card.

GPGMail

GPGMail will let you encrypt, decrypt and sign messages from within Apple Mail. It’ll automatically recognize if a contact has a corresponding public key.

GPG DropThing

GPG DropThing allows you to encrypt and decrypt chunks of text and files through a drag-and-drop interface.

Enigmail

Enigmail will let you encrypt, decrypt and sign messages from within Thunderbird, Mozilla or Netscape email.

EntourageGPG

EntourageGPG will let you encrypt, decrypt and sign messages from within Microsoft Entourage.

EudoraGPG

Eudora GPG will let you encrypt, decrypt and sign messages from within the Eudora email program.

FireGPG

FireGPG will let you access GnuPG functions from within the Firefox browser. It’s great if you use Gmail for email as it’ll let you encrypt and decrypt messages from within Gmail and even adds buttons to Gmail’s interface to access common encryption functions. It’s still a little buggy, but works well enough.

Sometimes, FireGPG’s options dialog takes forever to appear or won’t appear at all. You need to indicate the path to the GPG executable file. If the options dialog does not appear, simply type “about:config” on a new tab, filter on “firegpg” and change the following keys:

  • Set “extensions.firegpg.specify_gpg_path” to “true“.
  • Set “extensions.firegpg.gpg_path” to “/usr/local/bin/gpg

and restart your browser.

That’s it… you’re now ready to send and receive private messages.

If you want to send me a private message, look for my public key on the key servers. My email address is “granier” at Google’s Gmail service.

Feel free to add comments, suggestions or corrections via the comments form below.

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