By Erin Somers
This year Prix Italia will kick off its traditional fall TV festival activities September 19-24, again in Turin. Now in its 62nd edition, the festival cum conference is organized by RAI, Italy’s state-owned public broadcaster. For the complete article on Prix Italia 2010, please see the June/July Issue of VideoAge Monthly.
Prix Italia’s venue, which rotates among the country’s historic cities, will return to Turin for the second year in a row, and will be coming back in 2011 as well. The event will once again play host to a variety of activities, including a competition for radio, TV and Web programming and RAI’s new autumn TV season’s previews. This year, the festival will be based out of three venues — RAI Headquarters, Radio Edifice and the Arturo Toscanini Auditorium — and will be open to the public. Screenings will also be held in the Teatro Gobetti, a theater nearby.
Prix Italia boasts a membership of 90 radio and television broadcasters from 48 countries. New to the organization this year are two Italian broadcasters, La 7 and Radio 24, as well as representatives from two new foreign countries: Mexico and Egypt. Regarding attendance, Mara De Angelis, the association’s Rome-based press consultant, said, “We are expecting to have 500 attendees, between jurors, delegates from our 90 international members, panelists for the meetings, Italian and foreign press and observers.”
Where the competition is concerned, three prizes will be awarded for radio, three for television, and one for the Web. The Web Prize, which honors the best website related to a radio or TV program, became a permanent category in 2000. Seven international juries made up of directors, producers, broadcasting executives and academics will judge the submissions, of which there are 244. In previous years, Prix Italia laurels have gone to such entertainment greats as Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, Samuel Beckett, Ingmar Bergman, Harold Pinter and many other historical notables.
In addition to the competition, attendees can look forward to a variety of panels, meetings and seminars featuring industry professionals. Notable speakers and panelist will include Paolo Garimberti, chairman of RAI; Christy Carpenter, executive vice president and COO at the New York City-based The Paley Center for Media; Welsh director Peter Greenaway; Italian composer Roman Vlad; Eva Hamilton, director general of Sweden’s SVT; and Prix Italia president, Tunisian Slaheddine Maaoui, director general ASBU, Arab State Broadcasting Union based in Tunis.
Seminars will be based around the theme of Prix Italia 2010, which is “Future Preview.” According to organizers the theme will address “information sources and new technologies.” Panels that will tackle the technology theme include “The New Frontiers of Television and Media,” which will be held Thursday, September 23, and include presentations by the RAI Research Centre and the Politecnico di Torino applied science facilities. Additionally, an international meeting on Wednesday, September 22, titled “Sources of Information — Plurality, Reliability and Responsibility” will raise questions about the reliability of information and news in the Internet age.
