One month ago, Venezuelans authorities arrested U.S. filmmaker Timothy Hallet Tracy for ‘fomenting post election violence’ and charged him with being a spy. Last week, in this petition signed by Venezuela’s leading filmmakers published in El Universal, the artists implore the government of Venezuela to quickly release Tracy, who they believe was arrested simply for pursuing his craft by documenting one of the most tumultuous periods in their nation’s history.
The petition from Venezuelans filmmakers starts off this way:
The detention of filmmaker Timothy Tracy infringes the right to free expression in Venezuela.
From the beginning, the detention of U.S. citizen Timothy Hallet Tracy by Venezuelan authorities caught the attention of the national cinematography community, because it was reported he was a filmmaker who for several months had been making a documentary about the socio-political situation evolving in our country. We have, however, waited several days before speaking out, pending more detailed and reliable information about the case, because the circumstances of his arrest and the reports issued by police and judicial authorities were confusing and needed to be better investigated for the sake of reliability and adherence to the truth.
Today, all information we have been able to collect about Timothy Tracy is that he is a 35-year-old filmmaker who has been in Venezuela for several months, and that during his stay, he has carried out intense and extensive work preparing a record of the political developments taking place in this country. Since the regional elections, held before the October 7, 2012 presidential election and the outcome of the illness suffered by President Chavez, up to the new campaign that ended April 14, Tracy had been relating all of the factors on both sides of our politically-polarized divide. He visited many communities at opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum, all with the aim of recording their activities and points of view, using his only resource – his video camera.
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