White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 7withdraws to a personal point of viewis in danger of working in a vacuum.The refusal to dialogue with thesurrounding world – both the director’sown and that of the audience – willmake him or her appear pretentious. Inshort, when there is “proximity”, thereis greater involvement. Americancinema enchants; Italian cinema isshared. And audiences for these filmsperceive their own cinema-going as akind of active contribution inconstructing a “true” image of Italianlife.The need for proximity also has a fewnegative effects. For example, it tendsto be associated with excessivelyconservative consumption patterns.Italian films appear to audiences as aproduct to be viewed in the “dear oldold-fashioned” cinema. Not in amodern multiscreen facility, where theywould seem out of place and not onnew digital supports, where they wouldseem mummified. This reduces thescope for the circulation of Italianfilms. It is not surprising that inproduction chains such as DVD retailor pay and on-demand forms ofviewing, Italian products strugglecompare to the success enjoyed byAmerican products. This has primarilyhindered the development of morecreative modes of consumption. Italianfilmgoers, although very good atparticipating in the field of building avision of citizenship, lag behind when itcomes to developing new viewingrituals.In short, Italian films struggle tosurvive outside the traditional cinematheatre distribution and consumers givelittle encouragement in this direction.Moreover, Italian filmgoers continue toconsider a film as an “event-based”product. Consumers, however, canwatch films at any time and wheneverthey like, thanks to the offering of Skywith its cinema bouquet (but also theofferings of other content distributors,such as Fastweb, Alice or Tiscali).Going to the cinema, however, formost people, although not anexceptional event, is always a littlespecial. It is an experience slightly outof the routine and in this sense filmand television fiction are still kept wellapart in the consumer’s mind(paradoxically, in production processesthey are much closer than is normallyadmitted…).But what does being an “event” meantoday for the film industry? It meansthat its value is still linked not so muchto simply being “entertainment” as tothe possibility of being a “happening”(in the original sense of the word). Theextent to which a film shown in acinema challenges filmgoers andengages them will determine thepleasure of re-viewing and makes it“worthwhile”.Given this background, the strength ofsome of the more recently proposedsolutions becomes very clear: I amthinking, for example, of the shift inthe film festivals and events from beingpurely cultural occasions to “festive”occasions. This also makes the wayforward easier to see. For example,there will be a greater balance betweenevent-based moments and routinemoments (film-going is after all stilloften a habit). And most importantly,good use may be made of the filmheritage built up over the years, whichstill acts both at home and abroad as asign of national identity and, as a trueWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 163