The panel Towards the harmonization of regional funds, the path started by Italian Film Commission: analysis, comparisons and future steps, was concluded in the setting of Nuovo Cinema Barberini.
The event, attended by Cristina Priarone, IFC President Luca Ferrario, IFC Vice President, Francesca Medolago Albani, ANICA Secretary General and Marcello Mustilli, lawyer, BLM Firm, focused on the need to harmonize the various regional funds granted to the audiovisual sector. Through such work it would indeed be possible to significantly increase the efficiency of these grants while consolidating the various parts of the supply chain.
The meeting started with Cristina Priarone‘s speech, which introduced the central theme of the conference, that is a standardization project for what concerns the regulation on funds and calls in Italy.
Right after Luca Ferrario took the stage saying “In the last years each film commission became an increasingly present reality and funds not only increased quantitatively but more and more regions started to allocate them. We are now facing a scenario characterized by funds which vary a lot among them, not only because of their unique regional structure but also for the distance in their realization. Clearly some differences are inherently due to the different approaches of each region and commission, but some are due to management issues and different administrations. Italian Film Commissions is working now with ANICA to create a basic regulation available to anyone.”
Marcello Mustilli then went into the details of each issue related to the funds and the calls “For example we will try, with this project, to standardize current terminology, like the one connected to eligible entities, creating a much clearer definition on exclusion criteria as well” he then added “A particularly delicate point was the one related to eligible expenses and terminology associated with costs. A concrete example of the difficulty in understanding costs is the one surrounding travel costs, in fact travels within a region are considered eligible expenses while domestic flights are not.”
Lastly, it was Francesca Medolago Albani‘s turn and during her speech she talked about ANICA’s approach to the project “For a start there was a first selection of producers, some with different experiences within the same region, in different regions or with different types of productions, basically a very diverse sample of producers. We then worked to find a common denominator among these producers.”
She then stressed her hope, in the near future, to “reach the agonized national harmonization, for what concerns forms too, which should be harmonized centrally, following the tracks of the ministry.”
