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Giovanni Costantino • Distributor

“A right historic moment to do something different”

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- After the success of Spaghetti Story, Distribuzione Indipendente, guided by Giovanni Costantino, is launching Red Krokodil

Giovanni Costantino • Distributor

Distribuzione Indipendente, a distribution company for independent and genre cinema, has been active for three years now, and has been functioning in the following way: the films it takes on are programmed in cinemas adhering to its programme for at least one screening. After their launch screening, movie theatres can decide whether or not they want to continue screening films. The first film on the 2013-2014 calendar is Spaghetti Story by Ciro De Caro (review), released last December 19 at “the same cost as a cheap car.” It is in its fifth week of programming, with many sold-out performances. An unexpected and surprising success. Or perhaps not? We asked Distribuzione Indipendente’s president Giovanni Costantino

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Cineuropa: Were you expecting such an overwhelming success for Spaghetti Story [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
?

Giovanni Costantino: I will only be able to respond to this question at the end of March, after the launch of The Brothers Karamazov by Czech director Petr Zelenka. Only then will I be able to explain our project, if I do so now I risk contradicting myself. For this third year of activity, our programming was especially closely studied, because we knew that the official and off-circuit models were to be combined, and that some films would need to be programmed during certain times and not others.

How much has De Caro’s film made so far?

We started off with four cinemas. In the last two weeks, we went up to 20 and requests are still coming in. First a couple of performances a day, then three, then four. We are close to €100,000 in box-office revenue. If it had come out in 100 cinemas, it would have made over €1 million. The results from Spaghetti Story represent a victory for all, for a generation trying to do something. This is the right historical moment for this. There is a profound need for alternatives, and insistence and stubbornness creates cases like this one, which would not have existed, had it not been for two years of different kinds of offerings we have started making the public and news outlets used to.  

The second film from the season, coming out on 23 January is a completely different genre than Spaghetti Story: Red Krokodil by Domiziano Cristopharo – a crude piece of work for those who can stomach it, which investigates the drama of krokodil, one of the most devastating drugs in circulation. How did cinemas respond to it?

The response has been good, even if it is a difficult film. Next to more commercial pieces of work, like Spaghetti Story, distribution entities need to also include space for different languages, more intimate ones. In this case, cinemas are part of an important social exercise: beyond making an Italian director known to the public, this film is part of creating a high level artistic monitoring against the drug.

In order to promote Spaghetti Story, you came up with an urban game. What kind of strategy did you think of for this film, which is for those 14 and older?

We organized a sensitization campaign in agreement with those cinemas which included the film in their programmes (between 40 and 50 in official and unofficial circuits), with discounted tickets for students and instructors. It is not a commercial operation. Our films reflect the cultural richness at the heart of Italy’s stimulus, its variety of genres. In February, with Una domenica notte by Giuseppe Marco Albano, we will go back to another entertaining indie comedy. 

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(Translated from Italian)

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