03/01/2006

Puglia will soon have its own film commission and possibly a film fund as well. The institution of the Apulia Film Commission was announced yesterday by the Puglia Region’s Councillor of Culture and the Mediterranean, Silvia Godelli, in an interview in daily paper La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. "The statute draft is already ready", explained the Councillor, "and the consulting group, made up of approximately thirty members, will convene on January 16 to select the administrative board. A new office will be opened in Bari within the first few months of the year. There we will create a Pugliese ‘casa del cinema’, which will include the regional multimedia library that had ended up as a hideaway in a building in the city’s industrial area”.

Silvia Godelli added that a “permanent seminar” had been opened that featured directors (including Edoardo Winspeare and Alessandro Piva), producers and festival organizers and that the region was “counting on being able to establish a Film Fund. We’ll see if it will possible to do insert in into the 2006 Budget". The Region has provided for an increase of 3m euro in respect to the 2005 budget, for financing culture and entertainment in Puglia.

(Translated from Italian)