This is an exclusive interview between Pure Movies Editor Dan Higgins and Italian filmmaker Erik Gandini. Listen to it in full by downloading the Pure Movies podcast here. Videocracy stars Silvio Berlusconi, Flavio Briatore, Fabio Calvi, ick Canelli, Fabrizio Corona, Samantha Crippa, Marella Giovannelli, Nina Heric and Lele Mora. With the release of Videocracy, an in-depth look at the Italian television culture that Silvio Berlusconi has presided over, Erik Gandini caused quite a stir. The state broadcaster in Italy banned the trailer and lawsuits were threatened. Gandini talks to Pure Movies about the reaction to Videocracy, Silvio Berlusconi and the problems that are dominating Italian culture.
- 7/7/2010
- by Dan Higgins
- Pure Movies
A disturbing look at the TV empire of Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi and the cult of celebrity. By Peter Bradshaw
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. But it's a very different kind of film-making from that of Berlusconi's most famous critic, the satirist Sabina Guzzanti, whose docu-polemics are influenced by Michael Moore. Gandini's film is more like a dreamy, mesmeric and highly disturbing psychogeography of 21st-century Italy, or perhaps a meandering, anthropological study of a dysfunctional cult, ruled by a thin-skinned, self-pitying leader.
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. (Berlusconi publishes many gossip magazines.) Everyone wants to be a...
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. But it's a very different kind of film-making from that of Berlusconi's most famous critic, the satirist Sabina Guzzanti, whose docu-polemics are influenced by Michael Moore. Gandini's film is more like a dreamy, mesmeric and highly disturbing psychogeography of 21st-century Italy, or perhaps a meandering, anthropological study of a dysfunctional cult, ruled by a thin-skinned, self-pitying leader.
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. (Berlusconi publishes many gossip magazines.) Everyone wants to be a...
- 6/23/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
By Harvey Karten - Early this year, the United State Supreme Court-which has become more of a political body than a neutral, judicial one-ruled that corporations can spend all the money they desire to promote their candidates during our usual protracted campaigns. The black-robed body overturned a bevy of precedents that limited their contributions, which had been a wise policy to prevent Big Money from swamping independent voices and presumably third-party candidates. In Italy, the system takes this reasoning a couple of steps further. The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, doesn't have to spend money to get his face on TV and in the print media. He owns most of them! Yes, at least seventy percent of TV stations and something like ninety percent of the magazines are actually controlled by the prime minister, who spent the last thirty years building up an empire that even Rupert Murdoch could envy. In...
- 2/3/2010
- Arizona Reporter
On our last day in Denmark, a few of us in the Cph:dox American contingent stopped by Christiania, Copenhagen's hippie paradise and self-proclaimed autonomous zone. In stark contrast to the cobblestones and slick Scandinavian design of the main city, Christiania is dirt paths and Diy housing, a neighborhood based around abandoned military barracks that were taken over by squatters in the early '70s.
It was too early for much to be going on, but on the main drag the cannabis market that's made the area a favorite for backpackers and a constant source of controversy was already open, with stalls displaying giant blocks of hash for sale, while a few nearby stands offered rasta wear. A dog trotted by, and a few dreadlocked Danes warmed their hands over a trashcan fire.
"Maybe it's just me, but this all seems incredibly 'Children of Men,'" I said.
Or maybe...
It was too early for much to be going on, but on the main drag the cannabis market that's made the area a favorite for backpackers and a constant source of controversy was already open, with stalls displaying giant blocks of hash for sale, while a few nearby stands offered rasta wear. A dog trotted by, and a few dreadlocked Danes warmed their hands over a trashcan fire.
"Maybe it's just me, but this all seems incredibly 'Children of Men,'" I said.
Or maybe...
- 11/19/2009
- by Alison Willmore
- ifc.com
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