Venice Film Festival: The Italian Film Industry Must Prioritize Quality Over Quantity to Address the Present Box Office “Crisis”
Italy’s film industry members discussed the cause and potential solutions for current issues.
In a recent interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera raised the prospect of an impending crisis for the Italian film industry if it prioritizes quantity.
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“The [Italian] movies we selected [this year] are great, in some cases excellent. However, it doesn’t seem to me that there has been an investment in quality overall,” Barbera said. “The quantity of this year’s productions [is] exorbitant compared to our market and the capacity of platforms to incorporate them.”
As Italy produced 250 feature films a year in 2021, Barbera said that the industry had “that belongs back in the 1960s.” The business “must prioritize quality” over quantity.
On the other hand, if too many films are being created in Italy, it is evident that not enough people will get to view them. Since the COVID pandemic began, box office sales have decreased significantly, and Italian films have difficulty bringing viewers in.
Studios’ films have been a hit in Italy, with Universal’s animated smash Minions: The Rise of Gru earning roughly $10 million after two weeks on the market. Most local pictures, on the other hand, have struggled.
On Thursday, Italy’s top filmmakers met in Venice to discuss the reasons and possible solutions for the country’s “crisis” in cinema.
On the other hand, Pape Ndiaye, CEO of French media conglomerate Canal + International, said that while premium movie theaters and internet streaming platforms can work together to address it, “need to work together” While acknowledging that media “have allowed our market to grow,” he said it was time “to think of movie theaters again.”
Nicola Maccanico, CEO of Italian production hub Cinecittà, suggested that streaming platforms do their part to protect theaters. “because they know that movie theaters, as a place and an experience, are important to everyone.” The industry needs to put its focus on bringing audiences back to cinemas, though, he said. “It’s not enough, as it sometimes is done, to simply invite people to come back.”
“We need clear-cut rules to protect theaters. We must not forget that, in our country, cinema has always been a lab for talents,” added Giampaolo Letta, CEO of Medusa Film, a leading Italian producer-distributor. He called for a simplification of the rules around film subsidies in Italy and “tools to best control the allocated resources.”
For Marta Donzelli, the president of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Foundation, Italian cinema must do more to connect with young people. “We need to reach the youth,” she said, “[teach them how] to read cinematic images, to recognize their value and their meaning. Rushing is a great enemy of quality.”
According to Francesco Rutelli, president of the national audiovisual association ANICA, cinema is an excellent resource for the film and streaming industries. If we want cinemas to stick around, though, Rutelli noted that the focus has to be on what audiences want. “It’s in everyone’s, in our country’s, interest to bring [the film] industry back to a central position,” Rutelli said. “The question that no one to this day seems to ask is a different one, though: What does the public think? What are the movies that could actually interest them?”
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