08/02/2007

Three out of 100 Italians went to the cinema at least once in the last six months, with an average rate of 1.7 times, an increase compared to a decade ago.

Just over 25% go to the cinema at least once a month, with peaks of once a week or more. Almost 80% of audiences sees between two films per month to two films per week on free TV, while 26% of the same group also sees Pay TV films with the same frequency, and rents or buys DVDs in 54% of instances.

Nearly 2.7% admitted to downloading films from the Internet without any fear of prosecution and, of these, 51% say they do so at least once a month. Filmgoers used to this new distribution method belong, for the most part, to the "core group" of movie theatre audiences. Thus, the same young film lovers up to 25 years of age, highly informed on the use of new technologies and titles on release, are the most actively interested in film distribution: from DVDs to theatres, from downloading to videophones to pirated films.

These are the results of DOXA research commissioned by the film industry associations grouped together in ANICA, entitled “A new identikit of audiences: Theatrical film distribution and Internet downloading”.

“Film demand is very high,” said Riccardo Tozzi, president of ANICA producers, “but this demand is not adequately met by the media: theatrical distribution is not sufficient, free TV schedules films within their programming in an incorrect manner, and Pay TV consumes films to an extent not proportional to the resources set aside for them”.

“The resource problem,” continued Tozzi, “exists in all methods of film distribution. The Internet problem is not that people are downloading films, but that they are doing it for free, without recompensing the film system for that distribution. There is thus a need for an overall system that gives cinema, from the point of view of resources as well, that which cinema gives to all the forms of media in which it is present.”

(Translated from Italian)