Like Mussolini and Stalin before him, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has erected his very own movie studio. Welcome to Hugowood.
In the balding foothills just east of Caracas, a sprawling glass-and-concrete structure bakes in the equatorial sun.
The bleached façade and tinted windows have the look of a strip mall or generic suburban office block. But La Villa del Cine—"Cinemaville"—is the headquarters for Hugo Chávez's latest campaign in the struggle for Latin America's hearts and minds: a state-owned film studio that's the Venezuelan strongman's answer to what he denounces as the "tyranny" of Hollywood.
His loyalists hail it as a "platform" to "revolutionize consciousness." Many Venezuelans just call it Hugowood.
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