Lele Mora, Simona Ventura, Flavio Briatore, Fabrizio Corona, would-be showgirls (“veline”) and showboys (“tronisti”) – these are the protagonists, sometimes aware sometimes not, of a pitiless scenery that shows the last thirty years of the Italian television (and politics), from the coming of the private televisions to nowadays.
What is the “videocracy”? According to Erik Gandini – of Italian origin and Swedish of adoption, director who more than once in his documentaries has faced some key aspects of the contemporary world, like in Surplus and Gitmo – it is a system of TV power, and Italy today represents the most substantial and emblematic example of that. Videocracy is not exactly a movie about Berlusconi, but a movie about the Berlusconian Italy: physiologically, sociologically and maybe even anthropologically Berlusconian. The same Italy in which, as Nanni Moretti says in Il caimano, “Berlusconi has already won”. A thirty-year Italy obsessed with the sexual exhibitionism and the total absence of a moral check, probably very incapable to see itself in the mirror. This Italy is shown by the careful eye of a “stranger”, whose relatively “italianness” made possible for him to have certain knowledge of the analyzed subject. But his movie doesn’t pursue the current events or a scandal effect. It doesn’t pursue neither the big news nor the gossip. It rather develops a peculiar critical distance from the events and the characters, and also from the assembled archive footage: critical distance made of estrangement and deep indignation at the same time. For the Italian audience – maybe sure to have already seen everything or sure to know even more on this subject – this film could bring about a precious therapeutic effect.