Videocracy
Directed by Erik Gandini (Italy, Sweden, 2009)
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." 85 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles.