Directed by Erik Gandini
Videocracy
Directed by Erik Gandini
In Silvio Berlusconi's Italy, if you're not on television, you're nobody. In VIDEOCRACY, director Erik Gandini reveals the seedy underbelly of the country's high-glitz, lowbrow, celebrity-obsessed culture promulgated by the near-monopoly of Berlusconi's media empire. Gandini gains unparalleled access to the halls of power, following a fascistic TV agent, narcissistic paparazzi, glassy-eyed reality "stars," and the young men and scantily-clad women auditioning to debase themselves on camera. All yearn to be FOB (friends of Berlusconi), from the "Italian Van Damme" to whit-suited billionaires, eager to please the president by actively shaping public opinion to his financial and political benefit. Utilizing a wide variety of damning footage, including a trivia show striptease, local TV girl auditions (they dance but are not allowed to talk), and a garish election campaign video ("Thank God for Silvio"), Gandini proves that Italy invests new meaning in the term "boob tube."
Reviews More Reviews
"Brilliantly pulled off...a documentary horror sci-fi set in the present." - Screen International
FIVE STARS - Time out NY
Videocracy makes spooky comedy of a nation’s addiction to fame. - The Boston Globe
Pulsing with incredulity and dread, it's less a fully developed argument than the seed of one. The central notion — the power of the image — is old but ever-relevant, and the particular players in this telling are the stuff of a satirist's dream. - The LA Times
Videocracy is a queasy-funny and unapologetically biased look at the televisual world that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has created." - The New York Times
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Technical Info
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Color: Color