by Vieri Brini, Emanuele Policante
Italia, 2014, 70'
chiens de velours prod., Ass. Laboratorio della Fabula
INDOOR. DAY. BAR
I come here every morning since I am laid off.
What do you do here? Breakfast….?
Yes, breakfast first, and then I exchange a piece of 50 euro and gamble….there….
Where?
There, at the machine...
How does it work?
Silently appeared in our ordinary life, Newslots have gradually climbed prejudices and legal difficulties. During the last year only, they had an income amounting approximately to 2,000 billions euro.
This is en enormous quantity of money, and this amount is expected to even grow.
Money-eater machines, video poker, slot machine, these are all different names for the same thing: the revolution in favor of prêt-à-porter a gambling.
From planting to recovery, from morning to evening, from the first win to the last debt, there's a lot that is involved in the daily cycle of new slots.
OUTDOOR. DAY. COMMUNITY
Since when you stopped gambling?
It's six months already, seven….
Do you miss the machines….the bar?
I miss my friends….I lost them all…..I asked for money to them all….and never paid them back…..
What do you do now?
I work 10 hours a day….in order to pay my debts...
Do you have many debts?
Too many...I should gamble...
Are you serious?
I have to….otherwise I shoot myself.
The new slot market irreversibly modified the approach to gambling.
From Casinos to the bar next-door. The consequences of such a situation didn't wait to show up. During the last year only, thousands of people entered in recovery structures. They're all classified under a simple code: SPG: syndrome of pathological gambling.
This phenomenon has consequences that are not limited to the players themselves, but affect all the social relations to them connected: wives, husbands, sons, family and friends.
A squalid reality-show that is able to create poverty and affect social uses.
The responsibilities are many. From the State, in as much as it has legalized the new slots and has favored their diffusion in order to increase its income, to the owners of bars, that often pretend they don't realize that they are contributing to the bankruptcy of their clients. This mechanism, that every year destroys lives and activities (traditional casinos sense a progressive decrease of presence) is getting more and more difficult to stop. In the past, the sick player was denied access to casinos, but this is not possible in the case of new slots, in as much as nobody can be denied access to bars, tobaccos, pubs… This phenomenon reached dangerous levels since a couple of years already, and there are several associations made of former players or parents of players.
This phenomenon dramatically recalls alcoholism.
The massive appearance of new slots modified the approach to gambling: in the recent past the places where gambling was allowed were the casinos only. Today, gambling can be practiced anywhere. Winning can be immediate. Nobody can prohibit or deny access to gambling games to those who want to use the new slots (on the contrary, such a prohibition can be exercised in the casinos). Moreover, the typology of players changed as well: the diffusion of these gambling games happened in an horizontal manner and included new brackets of players, from the very young (irrespective of the prohibition for under 18) to the very old, from housewives to family men.
Refused by fate and men aims at describing this situation: what are the social costs that such an indiscriminate legalization determines?
Where and how the necessity of a State to earn money can turn into a boomerang able to hit, arbitrarily, any citizen? Can a Nation made of obstinate players have a future?
During the first 7 months of 2009 the money spent for these gambling games amounts to 30 billions euro. This is real money, money that is not being invested in activities and projects; this is money that hides debts, usury and social suicides.
The visual approach of this documentary deals with several aspects: the compulsivity of gambling, the geometry of small spaces and machines, the contrast between advertisement imaginary and reality: the aseptic and infinite loneliness of gambling players.