TV network's attempt to stifle Silvio Berlusconi documentary backfires

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. Photograph: Isopress/ Rex Features

Berlusconi-owned network's refusal to screen trailer for critical documentary Videocracy results in surge of interest about the film

• Ben Walters
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009
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• When the Italian TV networks RAI and Mediaset refused to screen the trailer for Videocracy, they hoped to dampen interest in the film, adocumentary feature that accuses their boss, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, of fomenting a debased and chauvinistic media culture. Instead, requests from Italian cinemas to screen the film have doubled, and its director credits the broadcasters' ban for the surge in interest.

  Videocracy screens today at the Venice film festival, in the independent International Critics' Week strand. It opens with footage from one of the notorious "stripping housewives" gameshows that first aired on Berlusconi's channels in the 70s – material, the film argues, that set the tone for the culture Berlusconi would dominate and degrade for more than three decades.

  It is directed by Swedish documentary-maker Erik Gandini, who lived inItaly and whose previous credits include Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers and Gitmo: The New Rules of War. A trailer for Videocracy, showing scantily-clad women and statistics about restrictions on press freedom, was rejected by Mediaset and RAI, which called it offensive to Berlusconi's reputation in a letter to Gandini. Since then, requests for prints of the film from Italian cinemas have leapt from 35 to 70.

  "The ban indicated the level of tension in Italy regarding everything that goes on TV," Gandini told the Independent. "In Italy, what does not exist on TV does not exist. I was scared by the ban, and by RAI's Orwellian-style letter, but the day after there was a huge explosion of interest on the internet."

  Berlusconi's private life has long been fodder for scandalous stories throughout the European and international press, although his massive influence on Italian media has tended to keep a lid on domestic coverage. He exerts great power over the state broadcaster RAI and owns Italy's biggest publishing house as well as Mediaset's three national TV channels and major advertising division. Berlusconi's family also controls several major newspapers.

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/03/silvio-berlusconi-videocracy-documentary