Today has seen the start of DigiTraining Plus, the training initiative through which, since 2004, MEDIA Salles has been accompanying players in the European cinema industry towards digital conversion.
The venue for this year's course, the first to be held in Italy, is Taormina, haut lieu of international cinema in a region Sicily which has benefited from joint efforts by public institutions and exhibitors to reach the objective of 100% digital screens.
Sino Caracappa, Vice President of ANEC Sicilia (the local branch of the national cinema exhibitors' association in Italy) presented the situation of cinema exhibition in the Region, which counts 260 screens, stressing the fact that almost half of them have been digitized thanks to public contributions, and expressing his hopes that new movie theatres will open in places which, despite having a relative large population, still lack a cinema.
Well-chosen new openings could allow Sicily, which represents almost 10% of Italy's population, to increase its audience figures, now standing at around 5% of the national total.
As to production, the film "L'attesa" (The Wait) opened the mini-festival organized at Palazzo dei Congressi in Taormina especially for DigiTraining 2016.
As Salviano Miceli emphasized in his introduction, whilst belonging to various different genres and styles, the five films chosen for this event share their commitment and dialogue to the territory hosting them.
The time scheduled for sharing experiences began with the participants introducing themselves and their work - involving various different contexts, including northern European countries and the central-eastern areas right up to the leading markets on the Mediterranean Rim, such as Italy, France or Spain - and continuing more informally at the dinner, which, after a full immersion in the world of Sicilian cinema, could hardly fail to centre on the island's local delicacies.
The course is organized by MEDIA Salles with the partnership of
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