On May 15, the Directorate-General for Cinema of the MiBAC met 100AUTORI and ANICA, acknowledging theagreement that recognizes an additional remuneration in favor of the authors (scriptwriters, screenwriters and directors), deriving from the automatic contributions destined for companies, generated by the artistic and economic results of the works.
The agreement was signed on 18 April by Stefano Sardo and Antonio Leotti for the 100AUTORI and by Francesca Cima and Francesco Rutelli for ANICA.
Cinema General Manager Mario Turetta expressed satisfaction with the agreement reached by the two Associations, the result of a shared working method which aims to strengthen the authorial and production system to the benefit of the entire supply chain. An example of maturity and responsibility of the parties that the Ministry has appreciated in form and content.
Automatic contributions are an authentic innovation of law 220/2016: financial resources accrued by operators in the independent production and distribution chain in proportion to the economic (national and international), cultural and artistic success of the works and intended exclusively to be reinvested in new works of Italian nationality meeting the cultural eligibility requirements. A virtuous system of self-financing that puts resources back into circulation which in the past could have remained available to the producer.
“We are satisfied. This agreement restores the relationship between authors (of the story, of the screenplay and the director) and the commercial, distributive and artistic outcome of their work - says the screenwriter Stefano Sardo, President of 100AUTORI. We were in a system that excluded the author, from an economic point of view, from the fate of his work. With this agreement begins a path of collaboration that we hope will be ever closer and more profitable with the producers, who together with the authors constitute the creative and irreplaceable part of the industry, which will increasingly have to face a common front in the relationship with the globalized and international reality of the new audiovisual market.”
ANICA shared the proposal made by 100 authors to restore, in the application of the same law 220, a mechanism of attribution to the authors of the subject, of the screenplay and to the directors, of a part of the automatic contributions accrued by the producer. The agreement – which has no precedents in the history of relations between authors and producers – will produce effects from the moment of the reinvestment of the automatic contributions, which has yet to be operationally regulated by the MiBAC.
The cinematographic and audiovisual companies that choose to adhere to the protocol therefore undertake to attribute to the authors of the subject, of the screenplay and to the director of the works a flat-rate fee, based on their own economic resources, within thirty days of effective use for reinvestment.
The amount is calculated as 4,5% of the total automatic contributions for cinematographic, television, web and animation works: 1,5% to screenwriters; 1,5% to screenwriters; 1,5% to directors, possibly dividing the sums equally among the authors of the same category.
Francesca Cima, President of the ANICA Producers Section “it is the right time to demonstrate that the audiovisual supply chain is responsible and able to unite in proposing reasonable and strategic solutions. The automatic contributions intended for reinvestment constitute the real novelty of the law for a sector that wants to be increasingly innovative and in step with global competition: our growth will be measured on the value and results of original ideas, and we have shared this conviction for some time with the authors. The fact that they are contributions intended for reinvestment in new works creates a virtuous mechanism, which will enable us to propose and develop increasingly innovative and original ideas. Being a voluntary agreement, this possibility is potentially open to all operators who bet on the new Italian product. We are now awaiting regulations and guarantees of continuity of the measure which, like all new and revolutionary bets, requires time and running-in to be effective".
On May 29, 2019, with a Decree of the General Manager, the list of the first automatic contributions assigned according to law 220/2016 was published online for works that achieved economic, cultural and artistic results in 2017.
