White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 7comedies which were box-office hitsand were handled by the large Italiandistribution companies. But, in thiscase too, the marginal role of Italianmovies highlights the Italian operators’shortcomings in effectively managingthe distribution of their own productsin channels outside cinemas.7.5 Television fictionproductions and spin-offsfor location areasThe television fiction industry has onlydeveloped relatively recently in Italy. In1996, just over ten years ago, a total ofonly 221 hours of television fiction wasproduced in Italy. From 1990 to 1995there was an up-and-down growthtrend in fiction production (in the1990-1991 season, 227 hours wereproduced), but since the mid-1990sgrowth has been very fast: new Italianfiction shown by RAI and Mediasetamounted to 627 hours in 2000,whereas in 2007 the correspondingfigure was over 800 hours. xxxviiTwo regions have been particularlyactive in promoting film production:Lazio and Piedmont. According to theSecretary General of the Lazio Region,the production of audiovisual productsis the second industry in the region.This claim clearly reveals the policyincreasingly pursued and defended bythe Region and other institutions. Thusthe creation of the Rome TelevisionFiction Festival in 2000 and the RomeFilm Festival in 2006 must be seen asaimed at constantly boosting anindustry which attracts so muchattention to the capital and the wholeregion.The second region which has beenparticular active in the promotion ofthe audiovisual industry, and especiallyin the production of television fiction,is Piedmont. In recent years its filmcommission has been a model in termsof initiative and enterprise. At a timewhen a deep crisis threatens TurinbasedFiat, regional politicians of allparties are looking to the servicessector, culture (the Turin Book Fair,the Winter Olympics, etc.) and thepromotion of audiovisual activities inthe region.Piedmont is a very interesting case, alsobecause the first series of an historicalsoap opera – Elisa di Rivombrosa – wasfilmed in the region. The project was abold but rather risky attempt toreintroduce a genre (the serialisedhistorical romance) which had not beentackled by Italian television for a longtime. Initially, it was decided to adoptas a model the classical narrative ofRichardson’s Pamela, an 18th-centurywork, in some ways the precursor ofthe modern novel and therefore also ofserialised narratives. Since the novel isEnglish, filming was to begin inIreland, but on the grounds of cost andthanks to the collaboration with thePiedmont Film Commission, theproduction decided to relocate to theItalian region and an imaginary towncalled Rivombrosa, actually Aglié in theCanavese area, and its ducal castle,whose facade became a kind ofemblem for the series. The enormoussuccess of a Elisa not only revitalisedthe image of the Piedmont countrysidebut, as happens with all narrativeswhose characters win the hearts ofWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 183