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Videocracy

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Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom · 2009
1h 25m
Director Erik Gandini
Starring Silvio Berlusconi, Flavio Briatore, Fabrizio Corona, Lele Mora
Genre Documentary

In a country where bella figura is a national pastime, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the maestro of media manipulation. Having risen to political primacy with the aid of his Mediaset empire, he now controls 90% of the country's television channels including the state-run RAI network. However, quantity, it seems, does not equal quality...

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What are critics saying?

30

Village Voice by

Videocracy is hopelessly infected with the very prurience it means to expose--again and again, Gandini returns to images of pretty women grinding away for the camera in hopes of scoring their 15 minutes.

50

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

Gandini makes it seem as if the nation of Dante and Fellini has been conquered by "Girls Gone Wild." As hyperbolic cases go, that's a pretty delicious one, but it's not quite true yet.

40

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is an ideal documentary subject, but Erik Gandini's jumbled take on Berlusconi's corrupting influence quickly shifts from good idea to wasted opportunity.

70

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Given the stakes, it’s hard not to wish that Mr. Gandini had been more ambitious: at 85 minutes, Videocracy can only scratch the surface. Even so, after watching it, you realize that even a cursory look at Mr. Berlusconi is crucial to understanding an age in which celebrity is now the coin of the realm.

91

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.

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