CINEFILER

Perfect Leader

1983
4 minutes
Directed By: Max Almy
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Produced to coincide with the 1984 Presidential Campaign, Perfect Leader is a cautionary tale that brings to life a prototypical politician, as packaged by Madison Avenue. With a driving soundtrack and bold visuals, Almy satirically presents this dynamic simulation of media politics as a fast-paced music clip. The narrator is a disembodied Big Brother, an Orwellian computer program who creates candidate images—dictator, evangelist, moderate—as models for a mass-marketed leader. The image of the potential president is overlaid with graphic symbols of multinational power: technology; economics; warfare. As a woman hysterically intones, "We've got to have a perfect leader," the bland, telegenic candidate is brought into two dimensions on the TV screen. Concise as a commercial, insistent as a pop song, Perfect Leader is Almy's most effective use of television techniques to critique the impact of the media on contemporary life.

Language
English
Release Date
January 1, 1983
Data provided by TMDB