Americans, Swiss Rescue Italian Film Industry.

Despite an 18.5 percent jump in the number of Italian cinema screens (now 3,500), overall admissions for the 1999-2000 box office season registered just a 2 percent increase with 68.9 million tickets generating grosses of $374 million.

Admissions for national productions totaled 8.4 million, down from 17 million the previous season and representing a 14 percent slide in market value. The market share for U.S. productions was 64 percent.

Up until now, domestic production has had little success attracting international attention. Americans came to the rescue by producing in Italy or by shaping co-productions so that they would have a global appeal. American film production in Italy comes mostly from Fine Line Features and Miramax Films, two studios that have committed to the local production of some 12 features. However, to protect themselves from Italian inefficiencies, the companies are not financing the projects directly but are structuring the deals as negative pickups.

Radiotelevisione Svizzera (RTSI) is also very active in producing and co-producing Italian-language motion pictures. The Lugano, Switzerland-based RTSI is part of the Swiss consortium that every year allocates $10 million to co-produce films by Swiss independent producers. So far this year, RTSI has participated in 30 films harnessing such partners as Amka, Luce Film Institute, Lugano Films, Monogatari and RAI. One of RTSI's films, Bread and Tulips, won nine Donatello Awards and was seen by more than one million Italians and some 140,000 moviegoers in Switzerland.

Azzurro, another RTSI co-production starring Italian comic Paolo Villaggio, was selected for the closing ceremony at the Locarno Film Festival, the 53-year-old festival held in August every year in the Italian Swiss canton. Presented as the antidote to the highly political Venice Film Festival in September, Locarno organizers had to deal with some drama and politics of their own this year. Festival director Marco Muller resigned on the closing day and festival president Giuseppe Buffi died 13 days before the opening.

In 1999 total Italian film production investment was valued at a mere $192 million.

Italian creative talents can fashion a trend in Poland with Disco Polo music, but apparently are unable to revitalize their domestic entertainment industry. The bulk of exported Italian films is now composed of pornography.

In fact, 300 hardcore films are produced every year among 70 Italian production companies. With approximately 400,000 cassettes sold annually, Italy is the world's second-largest producer of erotic films after the U.S. Since it is illegal to produce hardcore entertainment in Italy (although it is legal to distribute and display it), producers shoot mostly in Eastern Europe.