Paolo Del Brocco

Manager, journalist and professor at several universities, is currently CEO of Rai Cinema. He is a member of the board of directors of the “Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino”; member of the board of directors of the “U.S. Lecce”; member of the Giunta Anica; member of the EFA (European Film Academy).

In 2017 he was part of the jury at the “Tiantian award – Beijing film festival” and in 2018 he was president of the jury at the Moscow International Film Festival. Since 2017 he is on the Variety 500 list, an index of the 500 most influential business leaders in the media industry. Under his guidance, over the past 10 years, Rai Cinema has coproduced more than 650 Italian films and more than 435 Italian documentaries, becoming the most important Italian production company and, with 01 Distribution, has distributed numerous Italian successes in cinemas, becoming the first Italian distributor with 13% of the market share.

A National Film School’s responsibility is not only to train future professionals, but to respond to the cultural and industrial needs of its country. A task quite similar to the one of a National Broadcasting Company such as Rai.

At the same time the school prepares the professionals, commissioners select the projects that should be made and presented to the audience, with the mission not only to entertain, but also to inform and educate. But the question remains: what audience? How to identify it, understand it, orient it?

In the quest to understand the audience, the need for the audience itself to best understand the audiovisual medium emerges as a key point. And the opportunity for national broadcasting companies and national film schools to work together in the educational process of building audiovisually literate audiences too crucial to miss. But what form this collaboration might take? And how to harmonize the sometimes divergent interests of commissioners and educators?