Special program "Escaping Realities“  

French philosopher Bernard Stiegler looks into the enormous influence of commercial television on how we interact and how we consume. "It used to be you making the images, and now the images make you," a man warned - on television - back in 1957. With Fear Factor, Big Brother and Temptation Island, taboos are broken. The voyeurism and exhibitionism inherent in these programs stimulates regressive behaviour: domination, narcissism, greed, cynicism. Entertainment targets primitive aspects of the brain, Stiegler argues. Take The Weakest Link, for example, in which the scapegoat mechanism is used for man's elimination of man. Or programs in which people are deprived of comfort, followed by a block of advertisements that overwhelm the viewer with consumer goods that then seem all the more attractive. Idols specifically targets people who associate fame with a big house and car, whereby the program acts as a springboard towards a certain style of consumption. Make-over programs also stimulate consumption. In Stiegler's opinion, "If the French feel they have lost their identity, it's not at all due to foreigners who moved to France, but advertising has deprived them of their culture; parents no longer have relationships with their children; teachers can no longer compete with television. This is the real problem."

Festivals

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2010
DocVille International Documentary Film Festival, Leuven, Belgium, 2011

Jean Robert Viallet

Jean Robert Viallet was born in 1970 in France. For almost ten years he had worked as a cameraman for TV documentaries and fiction films, for example, Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. He later moved on to film directing. His documentary films dwell on social issues as for example his award-winning documentary series La Mise à mort du travail. The film reveals underground currents of the contemporary labour market and has received the prestigious Albert Londres Prize that since 1985 has been awarded not only to the „best reporter in the written press“ but to the "best audiovisual reporter" as well.

Filmography

Kill The Messenger / Une femme à abattre (2006)
The Lost Children of Tranquility Bay / Les Enfants Perdus de Tranquility Bay (2005)