The domestic film industry, especially the independent sector, is among those hardest hit by the restrictions. Several festivals and indie cinemas have moved their content online, in a process of digitalisation that could pay off once normality returns.
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When thinking about the sectors most violently hit by the coronavirus emergency, it is hard not to think of cinema. Italian cinemas, above all those in Lombardy, were among the first to have to close, and today, as the country enters phase 2 and restarts, bars and restaurants raise their shutters, industries get back up and running and people begin to move around again, their moment has not yet come. They will have to wait until 15 June, provided all goes well and a spike in infections does not plunge the country into a new lockdown.
As Giancarlo Leone, president of the Associazione produttori audiovisivi (Apa), has pointed out, the combination of closed cinemas, suspended sets, and actors and dubbing artists staying at home amounts to a monthly loss of 100 million euros for the sector in Italy. The companies involved in the Italian audiovisual and broadcasting sector number 8,500, employing 173,000 workers, while there are nearly 4,000 cinema screens across Italy. In a tragedy of this scale, those who are faring worst are the ones who were already accustomed to struggling even under normal conditions, locked in a perpetual fight to stay afloat: the world of independent cinema. There is indeed an army of directors, actors, sound engineers, technicians and distributors condemned to a daily existence of precarity, who now find themselves out of work and with no prospects whatsoever.
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While commercial cinema tries to survive through major streaming platforms such as Netflix, the channels available to independent cinema are far more difficult to access. Art-house cinemas, festivals, film seasons and cineclubs have ceased to exist over the past three months, the summer holds no promise, and while many films in production have been suspended, others seem condemned to oblivion for lack of a showcase in which to make their mark. It is a problem that affects every link in the chain: those who make the film, but also those who screen it.
In this complex situation, however, many Italian organisations have reorganised themselves so as to continue their activities even during the lockdown, united by a common thread: digitalisation. Art-house and independent cinemas have created their own platforms where they upload their programmes — both free of charge and on a paid basis — taking inspiration from the great success of international platforms such as Mubi. Meanwhile, as major national and international film seasons have been cancelled, several Italian independent film festivals have decided to press ahead, moving online.
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What could be considered the hardest moment in the recent history of domestic indie cinema has thus been transformed into an opportunity to experiment with new ways of navigating the current chaos. Solutions that will certainly not be able to guarantee survival on their own in the long term, but which, combined with the experiences of the past once everything returns to normal, could even create a better context for the sector.
In Milan, Beltrade, a cinema that is a true city symbol of independent film, has launched a streaming channel where you can enjoy the programme from home. It is called Il Beltrade sul sofà, requires payment of a ticket ranging from a nominal amount to a higher sum depending on how you feel, and offers dozens of d'essai films every week. This initiative is no oasis in the desert; on the contrary, it has been replicated by several other similar venues across Italy.
The same is true of Lab80 in Bergamo, parallelo41 in Naples, the cinema PostModernissimo in Perugia, the Cineteatro Orione in Bologna, the cinema Streeen in Turin, and the Cineclub internazionale in Reggio Calabria. Real cinemas turned virtual, which have decided to stay alive by entering people's homes while they wait for those same people to be able to come out and visit them. A map has even been created bringing together the dozens of initiatives of this kind taking place around Italy, a way of navigating the labyrinth of films, shorts, documentaries and other sector-related cinematic material, offering audiences new viewing experiences from the comfort of their own sofa.
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The Italian indie film festival sector has also reorganised itself during this period. The Torino Underground cinefest, for example, has no intention of cancelling its 2020 edition and everything will proceed as planned — not in loco, but through the support of the platforms Indiecinema and Mymovieslive. Alice nella Città, an international festival dedicated to younger audiences, has instead given life to Cinema da casa, a programme of film screenings projected onto buildings in Bologna so that they can be watched directly from one's own window. The Lucania film festival has activated its social media channels, through which it has been offering weekly content since April to carry forward its mission. The Mostra del nuovo cinema di Pesaro, the Ca' Foscari short film festival and the Concorto film festival, while awaiting clarity on whether and when they will be able to engage a live audience again at their events, are for now settling for building loyalty virtually by putting a number of films from previous editions online.
The key to survival for the Italian indie film industry is, in short, digitalisation. This has meant that some realities rooted in tradition have seized on the current difficulties as an opportunity to innovate. Those who were already at the forefront, meanwhile, have found new energy to offer very particular ways of experiencing films, in the face of which it is hard to remain indifferent. It is no coincidence, for example, that the archive streamed by Fondazione Cineteca di Milano to provide content during the quarantine period recorded a rise in views to over 2 million.
The risk is that when everything is over, the real cinema — the theatre — could prove to be an obsolete space. The strength these venues demonstrated until just a few months ago is, however, proof of their irreplaceability. If anything, digitalisation could prove to be a positive factor in bringing more people closer to indie cinema today, something that tomorrow could then translate into greater attendance at theatres.
