Paolo Del Brocco speaks on some crucial issues related to Italian cinema. The managing director of Rai Cinema dedicates an article on the pages of the daily newspaper Il Foglio to express his thoughts on the state of health and current events in the film industry and on the films distribution. What destiny for Italian cinema? For Paolo Del Brocco no apocalypse, but it’s important to recognize the quality of the films produced in Italy.
“For months – underlines Del Brocco – there have been different opinions on the fate of Italian cinema, in many cases conflicting. There is a sort of apocalyptic forecast alternating with a feeling of carelessness, as if the cinema were always the same, destined not to change or to succumb from one moment to the next. Yet, the quality of our films, recognized in the most important international festivals, had not reached such high levels for decades.” “In reality – explains Rai Cinema’s ad – for the first time in its history, our film system is shaken by external turbulence, linked to the advent of new operators and new models of content enjoyment, and by well-known internal criticalities that must be faced: an ever-present seasonality, a piracy endemic to the sector and, finally, a contraction in the market share of Italian films in theatres that has been progressive and constant for three years now”.
The most fitting example regarding the influence of external operators on Italian cinema, also with regard to the distribution chain, is certainly the one that happened with Sulla mia pelle, available on Netflix and distributed at the same time in cinemas. Del Brocco’s reflection on the subject is as follows: “To guarantee an exclusive window to protect the cinema for Italian films does not only mean to preserve the deepest sense of cinema, but it also means to look at an important part of the economy of the sector. However, persisting in perpetuating the same model for all films, at a time when the market has definitively changed, may not be a winning choice. We need to start differentiating products according to locations that allow each film to meet its audience without compromising its value”.
Rai Cinema’s ad identifies another thorny issue for the sector: “Another issue concerns the younger generation, which is at the moment detached from the classic film system because it is more involved in substitutes such as gaming or complementary products such as TV series. For this audience it would be possible to create a cluster defined by the exercise to entice the viewing of the film in the theater through a reduced ticket price. In the final bars, Paolo Del Brocco takes a position: “The cinema is not afraid of change, it has always shown, but a film, to be such, can not do without the theater.
