(Finance) – ‘Cinecittà, an Italian rebirth‘ is the title of the prestigious magazine of Le Monde which he dedicates to Studies in via Tuscolana the cover of the issue that comes out today. The new golden age of Cinecittà, as Le Monde defines it, had already ended up at the center of the international media scene with the front pages of the New York Times, El Pais and articles in newspapers such as the Guardian, the Sunday Times and Vanguardia .
“The legendary Roman studios have rediscovered the effervescence of the 50s and 60s, when they were called ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ – writes the journalist Aureliano Tonet– after difficult decades, in which it risked ending up in an amusement park, the public facility is fully benefiting from the development of streaming and is about to open five more studios. It is difficult to imagine that just ten years ago, in the same place the employees refused the fate promised them by the then owners: to become just another stop on the road that brings so many tourists to Rome”, observes Le Monde.
“In less than three years, we went from an average occupancy rate of 30% to almost 80% average occupancy at our studios. And, after years of losses, we are finally back in the black. 1.8 million by 2022 – he tells the weekly Nicola Maccanico, CEO of Cinecittà – The increase in the duration of productions linked to the boom in series is working in our favor. We just celebrated the end of the series Those About to Die, a peplum with Anthony Hopkins, after nine months of filming. Between spending all that time in Eastern Europe or Rome, renowned for its rich culture, hospitality and climate, artists don’t hesitate for long.”
In the long nine-page article, the prestigious magazine gives the floor to directors including Joe Wright (“I know how difficult it is to keep studios running, they depend so much on the vagaries of the tax system. The artisans of Cinecittà continue to stand out from the crowd”) , Luca Guadagnino (“I came to Cinecittà to find what Jean-Luc Godard found there when he filmed Le Mépris: an elsewhere”), Ridley Scott, Wes Anderson (“Cinecittà has personality to an almost excessive degree. Mussolini, Cleopatra, Fellini. The excellence of the craftsmanship, the proximity of the ruins…In a certain sense, one feels connected to antiquity”), Alice Rohrwacher (“When I went looking throughout Italy for authentic sculptors for my film, I found them found only in Cinecittà), Monica Bellucci, Saverio Costanzo (“One morning, on the set, I looked at my extras, young suburban girls dressed to the nines, like Egyptian women. They were the same faces as those filmed by Pasolini on the outskirts of Rome fifty years ago. In that moment I understood that Cinecittà is us”).
Cinecittà, Le Monde writes, is seeing a myriad of stars come and go: Stanley Tucci, Angelina Jolie, Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Willem Dafoe, Uma Thurman. But it is precisely the role of the workers that is in the foreground of the magazine: “No one embodies this soul better than carpenters, painters and other decorators. High-tech computers sit side by side with tools from another era, as if they were Renaissance The workforce is mixed and intergenerational, in order to ensure the transmission of skills and techniques.”