VENICE – Apple and Italy’s film promotion entity Cinecittà Luce are launching an iTunes channel dedicated to classic and contempo Italian titles being touted as the first outlet ever to aggregate and distribute a national cinematography via the iTunes platform.
The Italian cinema iTunes channel on the Cinecittà app was announced at the Venice Film Festival by Nicola Borrelli, topper of the film unit of the country’s culture ministry.
Borrelli underscored that iTunes reaches a market estimated at 575 million milion users worldwide, boasting that the deal with Apple “stands as testimony to the fact that perhaps we have Italians have forgotten: the strong appeal of our cinema outside our country.”
The Cinecittà channel, currently comprising some 100 titles – a number expected to grow rapidly – will be launched on September 4 for domestic downloads and become available around the world by November.
“It will give Italian producers a common brand to launch their movies around the world, as long as they have international digital rights and add sub-titles,” Cinecittà topper Rodrigo Ciprani Foresio told Variety.
