20130827: Documentary Review--Videocracy

Videocracy

1. Italian live action feature length film, documentary, 2009, 85 minutes, NR.
2. IMDB: 6.4/10.0 from 1,325 users. 'A look at segments of the Italian population who are consumed with celebrity worship.'
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 68% from critics, but 'no consensus yet'; 42% of 425 audience members liked it.
4. Directed, written, and narrated in English by Erik Gandini.  Budget: an estimated 700,000 euros.
5. Features Silvio Berlosconi, Flavio Briatore (created the Billionaire brand), Lele Mora (a top agent), Morella Giovannelli (Berlosconi's neighbor), Fabio Calvi (field leader in live video stage handling), Fabrizio Corona (leader in gossip magazines) as themselves.
6. Television brings immortality.  Television brings opportunities.  Television brings attention, advertisers, and money.
7. Italians often follow celebrities closely, even some American reality shows.
8. Put all those together.  Silvio Berlosconi was president of a television company.  He leveraged that into becoming the president of the country called Italy.
9. More themes: 
1. a factory worker tries to become a star, and the reasons he has no traction so far
2. attractive young women getting many jobs in television, but few of these jobs are as stars; most are as eye-candy
3. striptease--more of this than I would have expected, from the opening sequence up to auditions for current positions
4. successful agents are much sought after and have some clout; their success often comes from connection to Berlosconi
5. pro-Mussolini elements in the 21st century
6. Money, political power, and television stardom seem to go together.
7. The next-door neighbor of the president, Morella Giovannelli, makes considerable money selling still photographs of the guests at the parties at the president's villa. She has quite the rogue's gallery of famous guests, mostly from the entertainment and the political arenas.
8. Scandals, extortion, court appearances, turning jail sentences into profits as a celebrity (Fabrizio Corona).


10. There are three commercial channels in Italy, plus the national TV.  In this setting, Berlosconi controls about 90% of the programming that makes the air.  He also owns all the large gossip magazines.  If the film is to be believed, Corona sold pictures of the president's daughter since the daughter found them unflattering; the family bought the photos, and Corona was done with it.  Then later Berlosconi published them himself in his gossip publications to get more media churn.
11. The large musical numbers that were 100% political adulation were a bit of a surprise.  The film stated that 120 million gossip magazines are sold per year in Italy.
12. I was relieved when this long laundry list of descriptions of malaise was over.
13. Three stars of five. 

Cinematography: 6/10 Lots of the video is mediocre; some of it is poor.

Sound: 8/10 Much of the speech other than the narration is in Italian, so the subtitles are essential.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 6/10 The film certainly described aspects of a couple of layers of current Italian society, but it has an unfortunate ax-grinding feel to it.  I came away from watching this film knowing more than I did from just Internet news accounts, but I did not feel it is a substantial difference.