Gandini has produced and directed a number of internationally acclaimed documentaries, including Surplus (First Prize IDFA 2003, Amsterdam), Sacrificio and Gitmo (together with Tarik Saleh). Videocracy, his feature doc from 2009 about Berlusconismo in Italy, was voted best documentary film at the Toronto Film Festival by a critics’ poll conducted by Indy Wire and chosen as one of the best documentaries in 2010 by The Guardian top critic Peter Bradshaw. He founded production company ATMO in 1999 and joined FASAD in 2013. His featuret doc The Swedish Theory of Love premiered at CPH:DOX in 2015 and was also screened at IDFA in the Masters section, the film was followed by The Rebel Surgeon in 2017. Erik Gandini is the producer of the CPH:DOX 2018 winner The Raft by Marcus Lindéen.
STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY OF THE ART
Besides directing and producing, he is Professor of Documentary Film at Stockholm University of the Arts since 2016.
Gandini is currently working with the artistic research project THE FUTURE THROUGH THE PRESENT about the future of work.
It’s thematic point of departure is our relation to work in a time when Artificial Intelligence and technology outweigh our cognitive skills and automation is expected to replace us on a large scale within most professions. From an existential perspective this invites us to ask ourselves: what will we do when we don’t have to work? It challenges us to formulate a new idea about work. Beyond the role it has, in a Western context, as one of the most central, identity defining activities in our lives.
The research project is interdisciplinary and collaborative. It is run and coordinated by Erik Gandini, professor of documentary film at STDH and it’s conducted in collaboration with Roland Paulsen, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Business Administration in Lund and Jyoti Mistry, professor in film at Valand Academy in Gothemburg, with a clear goal of strengthening the exchange between art, film and sociology.
The aim of the project is to explore a documentary film narrative that manages to create a projection into the future and it’s results will be part of the feature documentary film AFTER WORK (release 2021).
