Exhibitors: "No chance for the summer season"
Summer arrives and the old controversy explodes. "We will no longer program films that come out during the summer in Europe but not in Italy", is the provocative answer by the president of exhibitors group ANEC Lazio, Giuseppe Ciotoli, to the Italian distributors’ habits of pushing back summer film releases to autumn, or even later.
There are, in fact, many US blockbusters set to be distributed throughout Europe whose releases have been postponed in Italy. The same goes for Italian films: The Family Friend by Paolo Sorrentino, in competition at Cannes, which will not be released until December 22.
"It’s been at least ten years,” says Ciotoli, “that distributors have been promising to extend the season. In the meantime, Italian exhibition has grown and can offer sufficient guarantees, and all summer experiments have had positive results. If the distribution companies still aren’t convinced about regularly offering films twelve months of the year, we can no longer worry about convincing them".
All of the Italian exhibitors agree on the fact that the Italian market is prepared to absorb films from January 1-December 31 and that changes in release dates are no longer acceptable. Francesco Cardin, an exhibitor from Lombardy, has a different proposal: "Asking distributors for an adjustment in rental percentages, directly proportional to the delay with respect to a film’s release in other European countries".
The lack of films during the summer period and the difficult relationship with distributors is one of the topics that will be discussed by the group Giovani Esercenti di Cinema (Young Film Exhibitors), which will meet June 21 in Rome, after an initiative from ANEC, the national exhibitors association. Other topics include piracy, distribution windows, marketing, digital technology and promotion in schools.
(Translated from Italian)
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