On this week’s episode of The Screen Podcast, Italian-UK producer Carlo Cresto-Dina advocates for protecting the role of film producers, who he says are essential for managing “complex creative processes”.
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Cresto-Dina, founder of the Italy- and UK-based Tempesta, is best known for producing Alice Rohrwacher’s features: Corpo Celeste, The Wonders, Happy As Lazzaro and La Chimera. His other credits include Cathy Brady’s Wildfire, Margherita Vicario’s Gloria!, Michela Cescon’s Blue Eyes and Leonardo Di Costanzo’s Ariaferma. He is also an experienced co-producer.
Cresto-Dina has called for public funding across Europe not only to finance single projects but instead finance slates or invest in production companies. “That would make a massive, massive difference. Public investment should be about long-term results, bringing value to companies,” he says.
In addition to the financial boost filmmaking can give a country or region, he adds: “You have to protect art and culture even if they don’t generate returns.”
Cresto-Dina discusses some of his ideas about the crucial role of producers in his new book, Making A Film Is A Challenge: Collective Work In Cinema, And Why It Matters To Us, which argues that producers sit at the heart of the filmmaking process and their role should not be devalued.
“Producers make possible the films and series we love, which have excited us, that have shaped in a way what we are, how we look at the world,” he says. ”And yet there has been very little reflection on what a producer actually does or what a producer actually is. So the book starts with the definition: producing is the ‘design and management of collective creative processes’.”
Cresto-Dina is also an active member of the European Producers’ Club and supports their lobbying campaign that started last year to improve the standing of producers within awards and festivals.
“We want producers of selected films to receive the same treatment as other key talents like directors and actors,” he says. ”They should be invited and accredited as part of the core creative group. Just as importantly, they should be given space to speak about the film - what they did and why. Nobody ever asks a producer, ‘Why did you make this film?’”
In the full podcast interview, Cresto-Dina also talks about how to “sniff” new talent - like helping Rohrwacher get her debut feature Corpo Celeste off the ground even before she had even directed shorts.
The Screen Podcast is hosted by Wendy Mitchell and produced by Ellie Calnan. New episodes are out every Thursday.
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