Videocracy by Erik Gandini

Commercial TV in Italy is reputed as being the worst in Europe and has become a power factor for the current prime minister and media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi. Behind a backdrop of laughter-packed entertainment and scantily-dressed women lies a frightening organisation.

Film director Erik Gandini was born and raised in Italy. He belongs to a generation that has experienced more than 30 years of experiments in TV entertainment. The idea behind the explosion of images in bright colours, with music and dancing by young, curvaceous women, is that viewers should be entertained, not made to think. But what happens when television shapes the norms for reality and the abnormal becomes normal? When the funny programmes just aren’t funny any more? Videocracy portrays a society where the image long ago superseded the word, and where surface and appearance rule the roost.