Italy’s Telecom has stuck an agreement with Cinecitta Luce in a bid to keep the cash strapped film promotional body, archive and source of financing afloat.
Presented during the Venice Film Festival, the agreement will see Telecom providing an initial injection of $700,000 (€500,000), reaching $424m ( €3m) to complete the first project. In exchange, Telecom will have access to Cinecitta Luce’s titles as part of Telecom’s new IPTV and WEB TV service called Cubovision.
Cinecitta Luce will have three channels on Cubovision upon which to show 50 library titles, which will be rotated periodically. Films and docs will be offered free on the platform. A total of 150 films and documentaries will be available on pay per view, while an additional 200 will be accessible for free.
Telecom President Franco Bernabe called the project “a cultural project that is able to stay afloat economically on it’s on, and for that reason, to be applauded.”
Cinecitta Luce’s CEO Luciano Sovena said, “thanks to this project, we are able to bring the story of this country to 18 million Italian homes.”
Culture Minister Giancarlo Galan also applauded the initiative: “It would have been a folly to close Cinecitta Luce; this agreement allows us to save it.”
The first titles to be announced as part of the initiative include Marco Bellocchio’s Venice Film Festival title In the Name Of The Father, on the Lido this edition as well as India by Roberto Rossellini and Jafar Panahi and Mojaba Mirtahmasb’s This Is Not A Film.
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