Beyond Citizen Kane is a 1993 British documentary film directed by Simon Hartog, produced by John Ellis, and first broadcast on Channel 4. It details the dominant position of the Globo media group, the largest in Brazil, and discusses the group's influence, power, and political connections. Globo's president and founder Roberto Marinho was criticised and compared to the fictional newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, created by Orson Welles for the 1941 film Citizen Kane. According to the documentary, Marinho's media group engages in manipulation of news to influence public opinion.
TV Globo (known as Rede Globo at the time of filming) objected to the film's position and tried to buy Brazilian rights, but Hartog had already made agreements to give non-television rights to political and cultural groups in Brazil. However, the documentary cannot be broadcast on television in Brazil since it contains large sections of footage owned by Globo. Nevertheless, copies sold in Britain reached Brazil in the 1990s and circulated widely there.
In addition, since the internet boom of the early 21st century, the film has been released on video-sharing websites such as YouTube and Google Video.
Plot summary
The documentary tracks Globo's involvement with and support of the Brazilian military government; its illegal partnership of the 1960s with the American group Time-Life; Marinho's political connections (notably its owner's connections with Antonio Carlos Magalhães, Minister of Telecommunications) and manoeuvres (such as airing in Jornal Nacional, the network's prime time news programme since 1969, highlights of a 1989 presidential debate edited in a way as to favour Fernando Collor de Mello); and a controversial deal involving shares of NEC Corporation and government contracts. It features interviews with 21 people, including noted Brazilian politicians and cultural figures, such as politicians Leonel Brizola and Antonio Carlos Magalhães, singer-songwriter Chico Buarque, former Justice Minister Armando Falcão, politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (who would serve as President from 2003 to 2010 and again since 2023); and former employees Walter Clark, Wianey Pinheiro and Armando Nogueira.
The title refers to the 1941 film, Citizen Kane, whose fictional newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane was created by the director and actor Orson Welles. He was believed to have been based on the American publisher William Randolph Hearst, noted for creating yellow journalism and exploiting the press. The 1993 British documentary criticised Globo's president and founder Roberto Marinho for his close ties to the military dictatorship and suggestively compared him to the Kane figure for manipulation of news.
Controversy
Dispute with Globo over British rights
The documentary was first shown on 10 May 1993 in the United Kingdom, broadcast of the programme had been delayed for a year as Rede Globo disputed the programme makers' right under British law to use short extracts from Globo programmes without permission, for the purposes of "critical comment and review".
During this period of legal manoeuvring, Simon Hartog, the director, died after a long illness. The process of editing was taken over by his co-producer John Ellis. When the film was eventually broadcast, the production company sold copies in the United Kingdom at cost. Many individuals in the Brazilian community in Britain sent copies to associates and friends in Brazil.
Censorship in Brazil
The film was also to be shown at the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS) of São Paulo. The MIS copy was confiscated after two screenings, according to a later account by Anhaia Geraldo Mello, then coordinator of the TV and Video Museum. He said the order came from the governor of São Paulo, Luiz Antônio Fleury Filho. The official story at the time was that the film was cancelled because of technical problems.
Through the 1990s, the film was illegally screened by universities, political groups and unions, as copies were made available informally. In 1995, Globo requested in court to confiscate copies of the film available at the library of the University of São Paulo, but it was over-ruled. The film was officially restricted to university groups until the 2000s, when the internet boom in Brazil made it impossible to control access, as people could put it on the web (and did). (Brazil is the fifth country internationally by number of web users and first in time spent by individuals on Internet use monthly.)