The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Thu.-Wed., Feb. 12-18, $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700) A substantial part of good documentary filmmaking is being in the right place at the right time, but it's what the filmmakers do in that moment that really tells the tale. Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain were undoubtedly blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime when they found themselves inside the presidential palace during an attempted coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. But the luckiest camera crew in the world would have been tossed out on their ear had they not, as Bartley and O'Briain did, spent the previous six months making themselves a part of the scenery -- so much so that when Chávez's staff are swept from the building and replaced (briefly) with a new regime, the two stay right where they are, taping all the while. The result is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind document: an up-close-and-personal view of a coup in progress.

As Revolution's title indicates, Venezuela's media play a central role in the coup attempt, as well as the conditions leading up to it. As the filmmakers describe him (in terms effusive enough to automatically inspire skepticism), Chávez is a hero of the proletariat, an unabashed class warrior and Castro ally whose policies have, not surprisingly, drawn the unremitting enmity of the country's ruling class -- not to mention the U.S., which is none too happy about the world's fourth-largest oil provider falling into the hands of an avowed enemy of globalization (or, as Chávez calls it, "neoliberalism"). The privately owned TV networks keep up what we're told is a ceaseless barrage of attacks on the president; the rhetoric on display -- including an reference to Chávez's "sexual fixation" with Castro -- is excessive by any standard. Chávez counters with a weekly call-in show on state-owned Channel 8, though he seems more likely to dispense rhetoric to the viewers of "Aló Presidente" than announce concrete solutions to their problems.

After a televised threat from opposition generals, the privately owned networks urge anti-Chávez citizens to gather in the streets; the crowd is diverted to the presidential palace, already surrounded by pro-Chávez demonstrators, thus setting the stage for a confrontation that would necessitate the army's "intervention."

According to the private networks, pro-Chávez demonstrators opened fire on unarmed opposition protesters; the same footage of men shooting over the edge of a bridge replays endlessly. But a former Venezuelan TV journalist points out that the footage was edited to avoid showing that the men on the bridge were ducking sniper fire, and Bartley and O'Briain unearth a bombshell of an alternate angle which shows the street below -- the street reports said was full of peaceful protesters -- completely empty. Should that not provide convincing enough evidence of the power of media manipulation, check out the moment where Chávez's staff, once they've regained control, flick on the TV and see his briefly installed replacement assuring CNN that he's still in power. Guess it depends which channel you're watching.

As Revolution illustrates, democracy doesn't mean much without equal access to the media, making the film an ideal vehicle for Media Tank's Communication Rights Forum, which kicks off the film's run at the Prince. An abbreviated version of the film will be shown Thursday at 7 p.m., along with Chris Marker's Prime Time in the Camps, and followed by a panel discussion with local activists.

Three by Patrice Chéreau (Fri.-Sun., Feb. 13-15, 10 p.m., Sundance Channel) The three features in Sundance Channel's mini-retrospective -- Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, Intimacy and Son Frère -- show that Patrice Chéreau understands the nuances of human relationships as well as any director working today. The 60-year-old Chéreau spent most of his early career in the theater, and the films share a strategy of dramatic confinement, either in space or in time. Those Who Love Me transpires on the train to an old artist's funeral, and at the funeral itself; much of Intimacy takes place in the small basement room where a man and a woman tryst in nameless silence; and Son Frère (which never made it past the festival circuit in the U.S.) is set during the last months of a young man's life, as he reconciles with his estranged brother. Chéreau has a weakness for melodramatic entanglements, but it's matched with a coolness of tone, not detachment so much as hindsight.

If the films have a collective weakness, it's the reliance on extreme situations to throw characters into conflict; a director as skilled as Chéreau ought to be able to find more subtle ways of coaxing his characters to reveal themselves. That's why Intimacy (also recently released on DVD) is his most satisfying feature (and, coincidentally, the only one in English). Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox's sex scenes are among the greatest ever filmed, not just for their realism, but for their frank depiction of the sex act as an ongoing negotiation, not a relationship's end, but its middle.

Marooned in Iraq (Wed., Feb. 18, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6575) International House's weeklong series of Kurdish films kicks off with this second feature by Bahman Ghobadi (whose A Time for Drunken Horses is one of its highlights). Marooned is a somewhat scattershot comedy that grows darker as the story progresses -- more ambitious than Time, but also less coherent. In a filmed interview (part of the program, and available on the recent DVD), Ghobadi lays out the necessity of fostering a film culture for the world's largest stateless ethnic group (30-40 million), creating a homeland on film where none exists in fact -- which lays the groundwork perfectly for what's to come.

Lola/Bay of Angels ($24.98 each DVD) If Jacques Demy had had his way, his first feature, Lola (1961), would have been a musical. As recounted in The World of Jacques Demy, the charming documentary by Demy's wife, Agnûs Varda (who paid more idiosyncratic tribute to her late husband in Jacquot de Nantes), Demy wanted 250 million francs to realize his vision; his investor offered 35 million (3 more than the budget for Breathless). Demy would make his musicals later (among them The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort) but Lola is just as light on its feet. In the title role, Anouk Aimée appears as a Dietrich-esque vision, a nightclub singer in a black corset, complete with her own theme song. As Demy turned the musical to quotidian issues as well as universal ones, so Lola is no mere object of lust: Off the job, she's a mother with a son to support, rebuffing the advances of a childhood friend and an American sailor while waiting for a lover who may never return. "To want happiness is to already have a bit of it," she says, befitting a movie whose greatest pleasures are those just out of sight.

Bay of Angels, Demy's second feature, is a more low-key affair, about a pair of obsessive gamblers (Claude Mann and a platinum-blond Jeanne Moreau) whose passion for each other pales next to their lust for the next win. Their self-destructive dreams link them to Demy's other characters, but the film feels comparatively constrained in a way that doesn't suit Demy's expansive tastes. Both are newly released on DVD, and though each includes the appropriate excerpt from The World of Jacques Demy, the documentary is well worth watching in full, especially since it contains tantalizing excerpts from films that haven't been sighted in years. Une Chambre en Ville, anyone?

Misc Picks: The Prince cues up Casablanca (Sat., Feb. 14, 10 p.m.) and Wings of Desire (Sun., Feb. 15, 5 and 7 p.m.; Tue., Feb. 17, 7:30 p.m.) for Valentine's weekend, while Small Change Film steps out with its debut event, an evening of experimental shorts titled "An Invitation to Stand Me Up," with reduced admission for the well-dressed (Thu., Feb. 12, 9 p.m., $5-$7, The Parlor, 1170 S. Broad St.). On the teevee are the Bush-bashing doc Horns and Halos (Wed., Feb. 18, 8 p.m., Cinemax) and Charles Burnett's Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (Sun., Feb. 15, 11 p.m., WHYY).