For more complete coverage of RomaFiction Fest, please see the June/July issue of VideoAge.

For the fourth year in a row, Rome will be the scene of fiction activity for five days in July at RomaFictionFest. The 2010 edition of the event will take place Monday, July 5 through Saturday, July 10 at venues throughout the city. Created by the Fondazione Roberto Rossellini per L’Audiovisivo and supported by the Lazio Region (where Rome is located), the Italian Television Producers Association and the Chamber of Commerce in Rome, the fest encompasses a variety of activities, including a competition and business-oriented Industry Week, to be directed by British TV executive Antony Root.

RomaFictionFest events will be scattered throughout a number of venues this year, including Adriano Multiscreen Cinema, the Auditorium Conciliazione, Lumsa University and the Fiction Village. This latter location, the Fiction Village, is new this year, and promises to inject some fun into the market. The Village, which will be set up in gardens of Castel Sant’Angelo, will include an open-air set where attendees can try their hand at filmmaking. Participants will get a chance to get a taste for all the professions involved in putting together a top notch fiction production, including direction, dubbing, editing, make-up artistry and more.

All venues are near the Vatican and easily reachable on foot. Cities like Rome present a great challenge to festival and market organizers, not only for the numerous distractions offered to participants, but also for logistical reasons. Fortunately, for the RomaFiction Fest, once registrants reach the Multisala Adriano for accreditation, they are only a short walking distance to the other places.

For those who are headed to RomaFiction for strictly business purposes, there is Industry Week. According to organizers, Industry Week aims to concentrate on the opportunities, rather than the challenges of the entertainment business. Thus, the event is designed to create networking occasions for professionals. Industry Week is made up of two components: RomaTvScreenings and RomaTvPitching. The Screenings half will kick things off, with activities on July 5 and 6. Over the course of two days, buyers and programming executives from around the world will have a chance to preview more than 50 new Italian fiction productions. New to the Screenings this year are the “Doing Business With…” panels, which will focus on the opportunities for sales and co-productions in specific countries and regions.

The second half of Industry Week, RomaTvPitching, begins July 7 and lasts through July 8. The event will provide a first look at projects in development to acquisitions and co-production executives and commissioning editors. The programs previewed will all be projects that found funding through the fest’s Pitching Competition and Speed Dating sessions.

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