A 35-YEAR-OLD filmmaker from California has been arrested by Venezuelan authorities who are accusing him of fomenting post-election violence on behalf of the US government.

President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday that he personally ordered Timothy Tracy's arrest on suspicion of "creating violence in the cities of this country".

Venezuela's interior minister said Tracy was working for US intelligence, paying right-wing youth groups to hold violent demonstrations in order to destabilise the country after Maduro's narrow election win last week.

Friends and family of Tracy told The Associated Press that he had been in Venezuela since last year making a documentary about the country, which is bitterly divided politically as the socialist heirs of the late President Hugo Chavez struggle to maintain control of a country beset by economic and political turmoil.

The Georgetown University English graduate was a story consultant on the 2009 documentary American Harmony, about competitive barbershop quartet singing, and produced the recent Discovery Channel program Under Siege, about terrorism and smuggling across the US-Canada border as well the History Channel series Madhouse, on modified race-car drivers in North Carolina.

"They don't have CIA in custody. They don't have a journalist in custody. They have a kid with a camera," said Aengus James, a friend and associate of Tracy's in Hollywood, California, and director of American Harmony.

James described Tracy as "fearless" but also somewhat quixotic.

"This whole thing came about with him at a party in South Florida," he said. "He met this cute girl who says, 'If you really are a documentary filmmaker you'll come tell the story of what is happening in Venezuela,' and if you say something like that to Tim he goes, whether or not he knows a single person there or knows anything about the political situation or the consequences."

Tracy had been detained at least twice before by Venezuela's SEBIN intelligence police. The last time was five days before the April 14 presidential election when he was taking video of a pro-government rally in the port city of Puerto Cabello, said an associate who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to endanger people inside Venezuela.

The US embassy in Caracas declined immediate comment, citing citizen privacy.

In Washington, State Department spokesman William Ostick said US consular officials in Venezuela are attempting to meet and speak with Tracy. He declined to discuss details of the man's arrest.

Ostick rejected Maduro's repeated allegations that the United States is attempting to undermine Venezuela's government.

Prosecutors said Tracy was arrested on Wednesday evening as he tried to fly out of Simon Bolivar International Airport outside the capital, Caracas.

The prosecution said he would be brought to a court hearing on Thursday to be formally charged under Venezuela's anti-terrorism laws.

The police had been friendly to Tracy during the previous incidents, with some even agreeing to appear in his documentary, the filmmaker's father said. Emmet Tracy said, however, that the family had begun urging his son to leave the country in light of the volatile political situation.