Videocracy, 2009
Sweden, DVD, Color, 80’
Director: Erik Gandini
Language: English, Italian
Screening: Sunday April 7, 13:00, Friday April 12, 17:00
Erik Gandini's Videocracy is an intriguing, mordant look at the world of the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi: an acrid Dolce Vita for the modern day. It is ostensibly about Berlusconi's TV empire and its crassly sexified world of stripping housewives and endless reality shows, which has engendered in Italy an infatuation with celebrity that perhaps even outstrips Britain or the US. The documentary, examines how privately owned television – an area in which the Italian head of government maintains a virtual monopoly – has changed Italy over the last 30 years.