The Political Economy of Italian Locations

In the late 1990s, Italian national and local governments began to see film and television production as strategic levers for promoting economic development. It was the beginning of an important transition in the conception of the cultural industries, from a sector to support to one to invest in. While the national government focused mainly on granting tax credits for those investing in cinema, local bodies were mainly interested in the shooting stage to achieve economic benefits: money spent on local goods and services, employment, tax receipts, developing or consolidating skills specific to the audiovisual world, increasing or creating touristic flows. For doing that, they used two main tools: film commissions and film funds. The book chapter I would like to propose investigates the key role of film and tv locations in the contemporary local film-friendly policies in Italy through a political economy approach. Firstly, the chapter will describe what the local governments are doing in the film and television field and the new Italian geography of the audiovisual production. Then, it will critically analyse this new scenario discussing pros and cons of the Italian Regions’ activism. How is this local activism affecting the Italian audiovisual industry? To what extent do the local policies integrate and/or overlap with the national ones? Is a kind of Italian federalism emerging in producing and hosting film and TV series? What impact has this scenario on the Italian locations’ appeal for foreign producers? To what extent does the local governments’ ambition to generate film-induced tourism impact the artistic freedom in writing scripts?