12.14.2009

Berlusconi Doc Says 'Forget your nose, have you seen Videocracy?'


...the old-fashioned way today

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UPDATE (video) Ex-porn star La Cicciolina: Brains, Politics, AIDS, Divorce, Teddy Bears


It's a strange parable of the age, this long fight and its bitter conclusion: two grotesques of the age, she with her absurd political career just behind her,

http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/EuVG0F_oorM/0.jpg

he with his look of a traveling

brush salesman,

manufacturing huge, knowing pieces of kitsch and persuading the art world to pay ever-more-swollen sums for them.


  • "At the age of 18 I was agent Katicabogar


  • [Hungarian for ladybird], spy and comfort girl to Arab businessmen and American politicians."

    It's
not surprising she was picked for the work: photographs of her as a
teenager show a striking beauty with a long straight nose and severe
blue eyes, blonde hair swept back behind her ears. The avaricious,
lustful grin that became her trademark was still a few years in the
future.
    No white knight ever showed up. Instead, in 1987, as she reached the far boundaries of what Italy would accept, a political grouping known as the Radical Party stepped in to make an honest woman of her.

  • The Radical Party was as much a child of the Sixties as La Cicciolina herself, exasperated with the vice-like grip in which the Catholic Church continued to hold the country, but equally contemptuous of the grey, Stalinistic verities of the other great alternative, the Communist Party. The Radicals, led by fat and flamboyant Marco Pannella, famous for being repeatedly arrested for smoking joints in public places, was for all those modern Scandinavian sort of things that the Church wouldn't countenance - abortion, contraception, dope, divorce and (why the hell not?) pornography, too.
    But in truth, Staller was no politician, and the Party of Love was no party. It failed to pick up more than a handful of votes, and died.
    Life after porn
    That didn't matter, though, because respectability in another guise had come hammering at her door: holy matrimony. True, Jeff Koons may have seemed scarcely more plausible as a husband than, say, Michael Jackson, but he was famous, artistic, and in his oddball way, he seemed to idolise her.





via my new favorite Italian Blogger (link later when i find it again)

VideoToo Hot for YouTube! Berlusconi Doc Says 'Forget your nose, have you seen Videocracy?' Watch it HERE (whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com)

Italy politics: Sex, thighs and 'Videocracy'

Cicciolina is a Political Woman
VideoToo Hot for YouTube! Berlusconi Doc Says 'Forget your nose, have you seen Videocracy?' Watch it HERE




By FRANCES D'EMILIO (AP) – 12 hours ago

This Sept. 20, 2009 photo shows Italian television showgirl Melita Toniolo during the show Colorado Cafe, aired on the Mediaset channel Italia Uno network in Milan, Italy. The undress-for-success formula is rarely challenged in Italy, where flaunting sex appeal is a way of life. Cleavage and barely clad behinds are the signature feature of the lowbrow entertainment that is the mainstay of the Mediaset TV empire that made Premier Silvio Berlusconi one of the world's wealthiest men and launched him into politics in the early 1990s. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Aresu)
ROME — Take a sex scandal dogging Silvio Berlusconi, add plenty of scantily clad young women on Italian TV and throw in some of the first serious scrutiny of a national culture where television lies at the nexus of power and politics.
The result is sex, thighs and "Videocracy" — a documentary that takes a harsh look at a system perfected through Berlusconi's TV empire, in which sexy women become a symbol and instrument of power.
The undress-for-success formula is rarely challenged in Italy, where flaunting sex appeal is a way of life. But a rebellion of sorts has begun to challenge this Berlusconi-championed mix of sex, political influence and TV.
Cleavage and barely clad behinds are the signature feature of the lowbrow entertainment that is the mainstay of the Mediaset TV empire that made Berlusconi one of the world's wealthiest men and launched him into politics in the early 1990s.
For some women seeking to catch Berlusconi's eye, critics say, a lot of exposed skin has even been a way to break into politics; his minister for equal opportunity is a former beauty queen and host on Mediaset and state TV, and women whose most obvious attribute is sexiness have been recruited as candidates under the Berlusconi party banner.
Now comes an Italian businessman claiming to investigators that he procured some 30 women, many of them TV starlets or wannabes, as well as a high-end prostitute, to spice up the evenings dinners and parties at Berlusconi's Sardinian villa and Rome palazzo.
The businessman has since been arrested in a cocaine probe. Berlusconi, who denies ever paying for sex, isn't being investigated.
In the midst of the scandal, a man wielding a statuette attacked Berlusconi on Sunday at a rally in Milan, leaving the premier with a broken nose and two broken teeth.
One politician who is decidedly not aiming for a spot on Berlusconi's TV shows is Rosy Bindi, an opposition centrist who, as vice president of the Chamber of Deputies is one of Italy's highest ranking female political figures.
She was on a state TV network in October, rebuking Berlusconi for the sex scandal when the 73-year-old premier phoned in and zinged her on the air, saying: "You are always more beautiful than intelligent."
The graying, primly dressed 58-year-old shot back with: "I'm not one of the women at your disposal," and a backlash was born.
La Repubblica, the left-leaning Rome newspaper that Berlusconi detests, invited women to express their anger, and some 100,000 responded in less than a month.
Besides posting irate comments on the paper's Web site, many sent in photos of themselves, fully clothed and in such poses as stirring pots on the stove, working in office cubicles or holding babies. Many scrawled across their photos: "Mr. Premier, I'm not at your disposal."
Then there is also "Il Corpo delle Donne" (The Body of Women), a pass-the-word cult YouTube video seen by nearly 1 million people.
A Milan businesswoman, Lorella Zanardo, spliced together snippets of some of the saucier scenes of sexy women known as "veline" (veh-LEE-neh) lifted from Berlusconi-owned and state TV networks. The name comes from the term for the thin strips of paper on which propaganda dispatches were written under Benito Mussolini, and the show's name, "Striscia le notizie" refers to news flashes.
When Zanardo takes the 25-minute video around to schools, she asks girls what they want to be someday. "The most popular calling for girls 16 or 17 years old is to be a 'velina,'" said Zanardo.
In "Videocracy," cameras roll at a shopping mall where crowds of eager parents and grandparents egg on skittish young women at annual "veline" tryouts.
Bindi blames the premier in large part. "Berlusconi has become the interpreter, the facilitator, the shaper of this culture," she says.
Berlusconi has been unapologetic about his fondness for attractive women and the marital troubles they have caused him. His wife, Veronica Lario, herself a former starlet, is divorcing him, and her publicly expressed indignation that he tapped starlets to run for European Parliament seats forced all but one of them to drop out.
"Shameless trash in the name of power," said Lario.
She also berated him for attending the 18th birthday party of a model from Naples last spring.
Italy's unusual blend of sex and politics didn't begin with Berlusconi. Twenty years ago it catapulted Ilona Staller, the former porn-star known as Cicciolina, into Parliament. But Berlusconi and his media empire have taken this mix to a more systematic, mass-cultural level.
Still, Berlusconi remains highly popular, and so do the onscreen veline.
They are fixtures of the most popular prime time slot, a parody of a newscast in which two young women, one blonde, one brunette and both in hot pants and shirts open almost to the navel, plop themselves on the desk of the show's anchors — two men in suits. They are mostly silent, except when it comes time to hawk products.
Bindi notes that Italy's relatively low rate of women in jobs, and its generous early retirement system, give people ample time to watch TV.
Says Zanardo: "I don't think Berlusconi had a strategy to sedate" women, but "TV does drug women who watch it five, six hours a day."
"All the people who watch a lot of TV vote for him, especially women in the 50-to-70 age range," Zanardo told The Associated Press in an interview.
As for Noemi Letizia, whose birthday party Berlusconi attended, she is said to harbor hopes of getting into politics.
'"Daddy' Silvio will take care of that," she was quoted as telling a newspaper.


What the papers say

newspapers



Venice 2009 – Venice Days/SIC, Sweden
Erik Gandini’s “Videocracy” stirring up healthy controversy
Italian-born Swedish transplant Erik Gandini has made a splash on the Lido with his investigative documentary Videocracy, on the media empire that Italian president Silvio Berlusconi created, which in turn fed the Berlusconi political empire. The Venice Days/International Critics’ Week screening was such a sell-out that a special second screening had to be scheduled.

Gandini says he made the film, produced by Sweden’s Atmo (with Zentropa), initially for his Swedish friends. “They used to laugh about Italy,” he said at the Q&A. “But I wanted to show them there was nothing to laugh about. In fact, they’ve stopped laughing, and when Videocracy

For foreigners, Italian television with its endless semi-clad or naked women is a hard concept to grasp. To Gandini, the entire culture of “veline” – the aforementioned women who dance but must never speak on variety shows – begins with a seemingly harmless programme from the mid-1980s. A quiz show, it featured housewives who would strip when call-in contestants would answer questions correctly. “We used to joke about the show, it was ridiculous. We didn’t know we were watching the future,” said Gandini.

Shortly thereafter, Berlusconi founded the first private TV stations, whose programming was all variations on the same theme, with the premise of bringing fun and happiness to Italy. What was created, however, according to Gandini, was a “culture of banality that seems innocuous, but is not. It is a dangerous force. This TV culture created Berlusconi and got him where he is now.”
READ MORE CLEAVAGE BELOW


Videocracy shows moments of many of these shows, but focuses on three main characters. The first is Ricky, a young man dying to sing and dance his way to TV immortality. The second is Lele Mora, the foremost television agent in Italy, and a declared fascist. The third is Fabrizio Corona, an unscrupulous paparazzo who has cornered a new business. Besides selling scandalous pictures to magazines, he sells them directly to the photographed subjects, who pay thousands to keep them from being published. (Corona has even spent 80 days in prison for extortion.)

That Gandini gained easy access to Mora and Corona is indicative of this monopolizing industry that the director says has a blatant monopoly on itself. “It wasn’t hard to shoot in the TV studios either,” he explained. “This world is all about exposing itself, that’s how it works. They’re happy to have exposure abroad, any kind of exposure”.

What emerges is a culture that with few limits or morals, in which any action, once immortalized on television, is immediately absorbed and justified (like Berlusconi’s recent sex scandals). This problem, however, is at the root of television’s overall power, which glorifies events through endless media play, often diverting attention from much more serious matters.

Videocracy cost €600,000 to make and is being released today in Italy by Fandango. However, the film’s trailer was banned from television, both Berlusconi’s channels (Mediaset) and state broadcaster RAI. Which in Italy comes as no surprise to anyone. came out in Sweden, it was dubbed ‘the horror film of the year’”.
Natasha Senjanovic


‘Videocracy’ ads can’t air on Italy state TV

MILAN — Italy’s state broadcaster RAI has refused to air ads promoting “Videocracy,” a Swedish documentary examining the influence of television on Italian culture over the last 30 years, because it says the spots are an offense to Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Both of the 30-second promotional spots show a smiling Berlusconi, the 72-year-old media magnate and three-time premier. One opens with a montage of scantily clad women who have appeared on TV over the years; the other features statistics proclaiming Italy’s low standing in rankings of equal opportunity and press freedom and notes that TV is the primary source of information for 80 percent of Italians.

RAI’s rejection letter, obtained by The Associated Press, called the spots “offensive to the honor and personal reputation of the prime minister,” noting that the photos of the unclothed women were suggestive of the recent scandals over Berlusconi’s personal life.

Italian-Swedish filmmaker Eric Gandini rejected the contention that film was anti-Berlusconi and that the film in no way discusses the scandals, which was finished the month before they broke.

Disclosures that Berlusconi had attended the 18th birthday party of a model in Naples in April led his wife to publicly announce she was divorcing him. Since then he has been linked to other women, including a prostitute. Berlusconi has denied having improper relations with the model, or any other woman.

“It is a film about the present time. It is a film that talks about how Italy has become after all these years. Of course, Berlusconi is in the story. But it is much more a film about Italian culture,” Gandini said in an interview from Stockholm, where “Videocracy” was making its Swedish premiere Thursday night.

It will be shown next week at the Venice Film Festival and later at the Toronto Film Festival.

Berlusconi made a fortune with his Mediaset media empire, which he built up throughout the 1980s and which includes the three largest private television networks in Italy. Mediaset and state-run RAI’s three channels comprise 90 percent of the free-to-air television channels in Italy.

Mediaset also has refused to run the spots.

“It is one of those cases where there is an excess of zeal,” Domenico Procacci of the film’s Italian promoter Fandango said in an interview broadcast on La Repubblica’s Web site.

Procacci said the spots were proposed to RAI in slots dedicated to promoting cinema.

In its rejection letter, RAI also objected that the spots also imply a conflict of interest over Berlusconi’s vast media holdings and “propose the possibility that the government, though television, would be able to subliminally influence the conviction of citizens in favor of its own choices and thereby assure their consensus.”

RAI said the spots could be shown if accompanied by another offering an alternative point of view. Gandini responded that Berlusconi’s Mediaset and RAI, by their very nature, already tell the other side of the story.

“The other side has six channels, 24/7, telling the other story,” Gandini responded. “I think they really can afford a discussion about these things because it is not like they lack a means of telling the other side — to show how good everything is, or how fun everything is. Having fun is like a mantra of the past years. To say something else is obviously very, very controversial.”

The 42-year-old filmmaker, who grew up in Italy but has lived in Sweden for the last two decades, said he intended the film for foreign audiences and was motivated by his native Italy’s status as a laughingstock country.

“My friends in Sweden, they laugh a lot about Italy. It is kind of a comedy for them. That is why I did this film. I wanted to show my friends in Sweden how strong this cultural evolution has been and how it is nothing to laugh about,” Gandini said.


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