After 67 editions, it is difficult for any international media event to be innovative and fresh, but Prix Italia keeps trying. The RAI-organized radio, TV and Web festival, concluded September 24, after a six-day run in Turin, Italy. A record number of seminars, workshops and programs in competition were presented.
The theme for this year’s Prix was “The power of stories, the laboratory of creativity.” Events focused on the more creative aspects of television, with conferences dedicated to topics such as creating a successful TV series, adapting the performing arts to media and dealing with user-created content. This was in addition to more current themes, such as adapting to new media platforms, the role of public service news in the current Middle-Eastern migrant crisis, and cross-European integration in public broadcasting.
Among its workshops, the Prix previewed VideoAge’s “The Future of TV in 2030” at Turin’s Radio and TV Museum, renamed for the occasion Samuel Becket Room with panelists Antonio Marano, RAI deputy director general; VideoAge editor, Dom Serafini and RAI’s TG1 journalist Barbara Carfagna.
A post conference video interview with Serafini can be viewed here.
This year’s delegates were also invited to an event in Turin’s Egyptian Museum, the second largest museum of its kind on the world.
Awards were not limited to the Prix finalists; indeed, the Friends of Roberto Morrione Association, named after the Italian investigative TV journalist, presented their investigative journalism award. The Rome-based Association, headed by RAI’s Giovanni Celsi, provides financing for up to three TV-investigations, which are then broadcast on RAI’s channels. At this year’s Prix, the association screened one of the projects in its entirely, focusing on misuse of European Agricultural Funding by small-scale organized criminals in Southern Italy, which are revealed to be paradoxically more difficult to eradicate than larger-scale organized crime. (Reported from Turin by Yuri Serafini)
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