13/06/2005

Cinema is stuck between two massive institutions, the State and Television, which clearly do not make life easy. Indeed, the co-production Forum held in Rome last Thursday and Friday, could not avoid the topic, the relationship between the film industry and TV channels.
Both are obviously quite close, but this privileged relationship has tended to degrade over the years, as revealed by the lack of both terrestrial and pay TV channels represented at the Forum.
"TV can no longer be relied upon to support films, whether in Italy or elsewhere,,' said Carlo Macchitella (Rai Cinema); "films do not achieve a large enough market share to attract money from commercials." Films are not attractive enough to broadcasters for them to actively support their production.
"TV-channels will soon stop supporting the cinema,' Gianpaolo Letta (Medusa) explained, "as current trends for broadcasters indicate (especially general channels), who are less and less keen on programming films, preferring TV-fictions and entertainment programmes, with an emphasis on reality-shows.'

Specialized pay-channels could be a good solution, but in Italy there is only one provider (Sky) and in France, channels like Canal Plus have chosen not to take an editorial line allowing room for Italian cinema. Replying to Aurelio De Laurentis' (Filmauro) idea that the top-ten titles of each box-office should be compulsorily broadcast in France and Italy, Nathalie Bloch Lainé (Canal+) demanded total freedom with regard to acquisitions. "A success in Italy," she explained, "will not always be to the taste of the French public. At Canal Plus, the editorial line is based on two ground-rules: success is taken into account, but the choice is more qualitative than quantitative. Besides, we are obliged by law to dedicate 12% of our annual budget to the acquisition of European films, 9% of which must be in French". Canal Plus broadcasts an average of 440 films per year, 265 of which are European productions, but only 8 of which are Italian, "for a cost of 3 million euros, "Block Lainé added, 'which is not negligible.'

Even if Italy favours French films more than France favours Italian productions, the situation is far from being ideal: only 163 French films were played in Italy last year (for 242 in 2002).
However, new technologies could remedy this. Home-video and, more importantly, digital TV, said Gianpaolo Letta, "have interesting an potential."