Having embarking on a successful career as a print journalist (Jacopetti helped found the magazine L'Espresso) and working on newsreels, Jacopetti teamed up with anthropologist Franco Prosperi, news cameraman Antonio Climati and composer Riz Ortolani, a unit that remained constant for all of Jacopetti's feature film output.

The impact of his first feature film Mondo Cane (1962) came from a side-stepping of documentary neo-realist principles in favour of a hyper-realism dubbed "shockumentary" because of its brutal edits ("shock cuts", Jacopetti once remarked), rapid zooms, extreme close-ups, heightened post-production sound effects and sharp contrasts between mis-en-scene and musical score (the much recorded ballad More comes from the film). Jacopetti's narrations were resolutely satirical, amusing, sad and at all times contemptuously despairing of humanity's failings.

The impact on audiences not yet seduced by cheap air travel or the pleasures of globalising capitalism - who were unprepared for Technicolor National Geographic style montages of ''primitive" rites and "civilised" wrongs - was such that an avalanche of inferior copies followed. Soon the 'mondo film' - the sensational treatment of documentary footage - became a fixture of transgressive film art.

The international success of Mondo Cane resulted in several follow-ups and allowed Jacopetti the freedom to embark on a more ambitious project Africa Addio (1966). This portrait of a continent writhing in the agony of decolonisation was so frank that accusations of racism and complicity were levelled at Jacopetti and his team. An infamous court case in Italy damaged Jacopetti's reputation but he emerged with Zio Tom (1971) determined to expose the violent perversions of the American slave trade in his trademark unblinking style.