Event Preview: AVPSummit

A look at next month’s Audio-Visual Producers Summit, set to be held in person in Matera, Italy, from July 7 to 10.

The Audio-Visual Producers Summit (AVPSummit) is set to take place in person in Matera, Italy—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—from July 7 to 10. Organized by the Lucana Film Commission for APA-Audiovisual Producers Association, in association with the Producers Guild of America, the event is intended to foster ties between Italian and international creatives.

Roberto Stabile, president of Lucana Film Commission—established to help production companies who would like to shoot in Basilicata in Southern Italy—tells TV Drama that the event emerged from a long ITA-Italian Trade Agency tradition on APA’s behalf of bringing Italian producers to L.A. to meet with American producers “to discuss concrete projects and to explore the different possibilities of cooperation between the professionals of the two countries. The Producers Guild of America has always been a privileged partner, and, in every journey, relationships have become closer and affinities have grown. In 2020, the pandemic prevented us from organizing professional encounters between Italian and American producers in L.A. Given the difficulties of traveling in the United States, we have therefore decided to modify the concept and to invite Americans, but also British, French and Germans, to Italy.”

At the event, producers from the U.S. and Europe will be able to network and attend panel discussions “to build and strengthen relations between professionals of the audiovisual field and to promote new agreements of cooperation,” Stabile says. Highlights include the Meet the Commissioners sessions, where attendees can connect with representatives from Italian broadcasters and digital platforms, and Shoot in the South, allowing “film commissions of the south of Italy to promote the territory and to show incentives and services at a regional level to support production for those who film in Italy,” Stabile adds.

AVPSummit is among APA’s many activities to support Italian producers. “In this crucial moment of important increasing of international interest in Italian independent productions, considering the important synergies at the international level between production societies, investment funds and publishing companies, a discussion between professionals of the sector, free from negotiating reasons and aimed at a deepening of the respective scenarios in which all operate, becomes indispensable,” says Giancarlo Leone, the president of APA. “It will be indispensable, above all, to prepare in the best way all these realities for the market appointments in the second half of the year.”

Gary Lucchesi, the president of Lakeshore Entertainment and president emeritus of the Producers Guild of America, says the organization’s involvement reflects American creatives’ desire for a “closer relationship with European-based producers because of the extraordinary content being produced in Europe and watched all over the world. That is why the AVPSummit is so important. Language is no longer a barrier to entertainment enjoyment, and producers/storytellers everywhere can learn from one another.”

APA was among the organizers of last year’s MIA market in Rome, one of the few events to take place in person amid the pandemic. Lessons from that experience will be brought to staging AVPSummit next month. “It has been a great challenge because when we started to plan the ceremony, we were living in the full lockdown—Italy was completely closed in the red zone area,” Stabile notes. “It didn’t even seem possible to talk about an international event in person, with guests coming from overseas and all over Europe. It was not an act of unconsciousness, but an investment in the future, with awareness of our skills and the desire to react, with great optimism and, above all, with trust in the policies implemented by the new government.”

AVPSummit has indeed received broad support from a range of Italian government agencies, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through ITA, the Ministry of Culture, through DGCinema, and Istituto Luce Cinecittà. Chiara Sbarigia, who was previously with APA and now serves as president of Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, notes: “The APA’s role over the last 25 years has been to cultivate international relations, establishing different ways to adapt together to the needs and changes in the audiovisual market. It is important to promote a moment of reflection between producers and commissioners on the profound changes in technology, financing and content that have changed the audiovisual industry.”