MipCom Tv in Cannes (8th-12th October), The Business Street at the Rome Film Festival (18th- 21st October) and the American Film Market (31st October -7th November).
The fall markets are just around the corner and the top Italian exporters are getting ready to launch their new products onto the international scene.
The different and, in certain aspects, complementary trading opportunities of these three events, which have perhaps been crammed too tightly into a limited period of time, will be tackled by three sector operators, Roberto Di Girolamo of Filmexport, Paola Corvino of IntraMovies and Sesto Cifola of Rai Trade, with different and variously modulated approaches.
“We will be bringing our usual list of 600 titles to MipCom in Cannes, a purely TV market, including genre products and great classics such as movies by Risi and Scola”, explains Roberto Di Girolamo, “as well as some theatrical productions for the small screen.
These include “Yo Rhad “” Un amico dallo spazio” by Victor Rambaldi, “Notte prima degli esami” by Fausto Brizzi and the thriller “Psycho Game” which, after two years of attempting theatrical sales is now being proposed for the small screen”.
Filmexport has a number of brand new and very solid productions for the big screen markets in Rome and Los Angeles:
“We have “Le tredici rose” by Emilio Martànez Là¡zaro, a big 6.8 million Euro co-production with Spain, starring Italian actors such as Gabriella Pession, Adriano Giannini and Enrico Lo Verso.
Then there is the theatrical debut of Vincenzo Marano, a TV director who is highly rated in France, with his thriller “L’écart”, and the Spanish co-production “Ti piace il piccante?”, starring Rocco Papaleo, Anna Galiena and Victoria Abril.
We also have great hopes for a wonderful animated co-production with Argentina, “L’arca di Noè “” Noah’s Ark”, which was released in Argentina during their winter holiday to considerable commercial and critical acclaim, achieving audiences of 450 thousand during the same period that “Shrek” and “Harry Potter” were released”.
Intramovies, on the other hand, is staking everything on the Cannes TV market while it decides whether or not to take part in The Business Street and the AFM:
“At MipCom in Cannes”, explains Paola Corvino, “we are putting our full backing behind our new two part TV series, a remake of Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Rebecca”, produced by Titanus with the Rai, starring Alessio Boni and Cristiana Capotondi, as well as the beautiful documentary “Il viaggio di Gesù” by Sergio Basso, which was presented at the Locarno Festival in the “˜Ici et ailleurs’ section.”
As we said, Intramovies has not yet defined their participation at the subsequent events for the big screen and are putting their faith in Berlin for their quality proposals.
Naturally Rai Trade is gambling everything, or nearly everything, on the French rendezvous:
“MipCom in Cannes is the top market for us and we invest 90% of our resources in it”, says the head of sales, Sesto Cifola.
“We will be there presenting Rai drama, animation, documentary and TV movie products, as well as our library of movies to be transferred to the small screen.” 
At MipCom Rai Trade will also be presenting “War and Peace” in grand style.
This 35 million Euro project produced by Lux and Rai Fiction, along with numerous European partners, was presented very successfully at the Drama Festival in July.
Another movie which was presented at the summer festival directed by Felice Laudadio is “Caravaggio”, the two part TV movie starring Alessio Boni, directed by Angelo Longoni, photographed by Vittorio Storaro, that Rai Trade will be proposing for both the large and small screen.
They will also be announcing the second series of “Capri” and four new episodes of “Commissario Montalbano”, the sale of the latest products in the “Imperium” series from Lux Vide, some episodes of “Crimini” and the English language version of the cartoon “Gino il pollo”.
“We will also be giving advance news at Cannes of a number of important theatrical movies which we will also be strongly promoting at the Festival of Rome”, continues Cifola.
“‘La masseria delle allodole’ from the Taviani brothers, “Hotel Meina” by Carlo Lizzani and the documentary by Franco Brogi Taviani “Forse Dio è malato”, based on the novel by Walter Veltroni”.
Cinema&Video International n. 10-11 October/November 2007
