A soundstage once used by Federico Fellini at the Cinecittà studios in Rome was damaged by fire Wednesday night. The possibility of arson has been raised, as workers continue to occupy the studios to protest planned restructuring and outsourcing.
Firefighters got the blaze at Studio 5 under control after four hours. Stages and wiring were destroyed but the building remains intact, Variety reports. Police are said to be investigating a possible link between the fire and the protesting workers occupying the site, while Cinecittà issued a statement calling the damage "minor" and avoiding speculation on the fire's causes, "which will be ascertained by experts and authorities." "We were sleeping and the area where we are is far from studio 5," an unnamed worker occupying the site told the Corriere Della Sera. "Then we read the news in the morning and we knew what had happened. We are very sorry ... and deeply saddened by what has happened."
Workers at the fabled studio have been striking since early July over a proposed plan that they say will cut jobs and destroy an important part of Italy's cinema heritage. According to AFP, Cinecittà Studio Spa, the studio's parent company, has a massive reorganization plan that includes outsourcing several activities, including screenwriting, postproduction, and the automobile fleet, while Le Figaro reports that the management wants to create a "film hub" with hotels, movie theaters, and audio and video postproduction facilities.
Cinecittà workers see the proposed renovations to the studio as real estate speculation and are demanding that traditional filmmaking careers be preserved. "Dozens of workers, of craftspeople, must leave this site to possibly work somewhere else," Alberto Manzini, an officer of the main Italian union CGIL, told AFP. "Some jobs will be given to outside companies and we don't understand how these plans can be synonymous with the studios' development." Emanuel Gout, the company's head of strategic planning, told Le Figaro that there will be no layoffs, but the workers have continued to occupy the site and several French filmmakers have signed a petition opposing the reorganization, including Michel Hazanavicius, director of "The Artist," Claude Lelouch, and Bertrand Tavernier.
Cinecittà has a rich and complex history. Mussolini established this "city of cinema" in 1937, hoping to compete with Hollywood. After producing fascist propaganda, the studios went on to become a temple of Italian neorealism, with Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Federico Fellini making movies there. The legendary "Hollywood on the Tiber" was used by such American mega-productions as "Ben Hur" and "Cleopatra" and was the site of innumerable spy movies and spaghetti westerns. While Cinecittà's heyday is past, it has continued to attract directors such as Martin Scorsese, who filmed "Gangs of New York" there, and Woody Allen, who used it for the postproduction of "To Rome With Love." According to Le Figaro, Cinecittà is spread over almost 150 acres and includes 73 buildings, with almost 50 miles of streets and a swimming pool for maritime scenes.
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