The conference, promoted by the Presidency of the Regione Lazio under the High Patronage of Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission Responsible for Information Society and Media – and moderated by Cinema & Video International contributor Marco Spagnoli – was attended by over sixty Italian and international sector operators who discussed co-production strategies, the role played by international cinema-television markets, training, the promotion of European and Mediterranean audiovisuals and the fight against piracy on a European level.
Some of the initiatives presented at the event focused on discussions and exchanges between the countries overlooking the Mediterranean: from the creation of a portal in Arabic, English and French with over 4,000 videos from Europe and the Mediterranean by the Copeam-Permanent Conference of Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators, in partnership with the European Union, and the annual organization of a Festival and Market at Sitges (Barcelona), to the preservation of the values of Mediterranean culture by Apimed, the association of independent Mediterranean producers.
The collaboration between European and Mediterranean countries also includes the Cinema Trade School of Casablanca in Morocco realized by the Istituto Luce with funding from the Regione Lazio, a structure which “” as Luce’s Managing Director, Luciano Sovena, explained “”was set up to meet the growing Italian and international demand for locations in the territory.
Moving to Italy, the Managing Director of Rai Trade, Carlo Nardello, talked about the need to concentrate our efforts on the distribution front, announcing the creation of a virtual platform open to all distributors working in the audiovisual field in concert with the Regione Lazio, whilst the DG Cinema, Gaetano Blandini “” talking about piracy “” said that he intended to make a proposal to the Table for the fight against piracy at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers regarding the issuing of a formal directive for public authorities which, by applying a system of filters to servers, would make it impossible for pirated material to be downloaded from the web.
