trailer trash

Silvio Berlusconi

Even after the six year wait for this powerful documentary to be released, the message ironically appears to be even more relevant now than it might have been in 2003, as we constantly hear revelations about Berlusconi’s corrupt political career.

As we all know from the news, Berlusconi’s government faces a lot of severe criticism and he has constantly faced allegations of corruption, so why do the Italian people keep voting to keep him in and why does his centre – right party, ‘People of Freedom’, have such success? As mentioned in ‘Citizen Berlusconi’, he clearly presents himself as a charismatic leader and as a participator from the documentary comments; Berlusconi’s confidence allows himself to be seen as a ‘charming, self assured politician who turns criticism into comedy for his devoted supporters’. However, it is not only his well composed public image that is a reason for his continuing support from the Italian public as the maker of this documentary researches.

‘Citizen Berlusconi’ explores the dangers of governments such as Berlusconi’s having almost complete control over the media and how not allowing much freedom of expression for the rest of Italy has become dangerous for the public. Berlusconi’s ownership of the media leaves the Italian public bombarded with bias and propaganda messages encouraging support for Berlusconi and thus enabling him to remain in power. As Berlusconi owns and controls so much of the media, it is very hard to view an anti – Berlusconi message in the Italian media, and even if somebody managed to show that sort of message, they would likely either lose their job, be labelled a ‘communist’ or writer of ‘leftist propaganda’.

The documentary ‘Citizen Berlusconi’ has clearly been edited to a certain extent, along with the majority of the rest of the Italian media but the message of the documentary is still strong and helps to encourage the idea that the media being owned and run by the government can be very powerful and dangerous indeed. Considering how relevant the theme of this documentary is in society today, I’d say that this documentary is definitely worth a watch.

Other interesting sites that are worth looking at if you’re interested in the documentary are Wikipedia, which gives an informed perspective on not only Silvio Berlusconi’s political career but also his turbulent personal life. It’s also worth viewing the official film website for ‘Citizen Berlusconi’.

Zeme

In recent days director James Cameron has announced that his new film Avatar, a dream project of his during the last 15 years and in production for the last four, will be given a 15 minute tease of its technological marvels around the world on IMAX screens on August 21.

So-called “Avatar Day” will supposedly revolutionise the cinema-going experience forever and raise expectations of what cinema can achieve as a medium.

Part of Avatar’s pull (if you’ve been reading numerous Cameron interviews on the web and in movie magazines these past few months) is the fact that it’s shot in 3D, and is in fact one of many films now being produced this way. Cameron is suggesting that 2D is dead, or at least in the beginnings of its death throws.

We’ve been here before in the 50s when cinema attempted to differentiate itself from the threat of television, providing an experience you couldn’t get at home on that small trusty cathode ray tube feet from your sofa. But I suspect it won’t go away this time. Much like High Definition, 3D is something that few people really want, but Hollywood is hungry for a way to reinvent itself and keep people from (ironically) staying in front of their HD TVs and push them to spend their dwindling income in theatres instead.

So what’s this all got to do with documentaries? Well, simply put, should documentary filmmakers follow? Of course this question is the wrong way around because it has been documentaries which got their first, not fiction. At least that is in the relatively recent technology platform offered by IMAX 3D.

Return to Everest, Under the Sea 3D, Dolphins and Whales 3D, Galapagos, U2 3D, Wild Safari 3D, Sharks 3D, Grand Canyon Adventure, Ghosts of the Abyss… and many more documentaries have been the foundation of the IMAX 3D experience in the last few years. Documentaries have laid the way for three-dimensional fiction by road-testing cameras, editing and digital pipelines, and now fiction is evolving the technology still further and attempting to make it go mainstream.

But if 3D is (quite literally) about spectacle(s), then where does that leave documentaries that aren’t about one beautiful shot after another? Does something that might be set (say) on a grime-filled housing estate require such a treatment? What would the 3rd dimension add for the audience?

I think the answer lies somewhere in the form of empathy, rather than breath taking audience reaction. Years ago I saw a small drama shot in IMAX 3D which followed a boy finding himself in New York in the 19th century. The story was forgetable, but ut what amazed me was that in several scenes I truly felt like I was looking through someone’s eyes. I was in the scene with the actor. I was almost as if I was in another actor’s body as the scene played out on the IMAX screen. It was a subtle and perhaps unintended effect by the director, but I think it’s a significant taste of where I think emotional storytelling could go for documentaries if the technology becomes easy enough and cheap enough to use on smaller budget fare.

3D cinema, even after 50 years, is still a technology not mastered by those who choose to wield it. If you’d like to know way more than you ever wanted to know about the state of the 3D union, check out Alexander Lentjes’s 3-D Stereoscopic Film and Animation Blog.

Great documentaries as I’ve said before, are in my opinion about moving your soul and therefore connecting you with people you never meet experiencing things you may never experience. A third dimension, tricked into existence by tools that fool our brain, may just make us connect even more fully to the people and places we need to understand and appreciate and care for in these uncertain times.

Editor Ben