Film Commission Torino Piemonte

The Newsstand 2.0, understood as a kiosk that sells newspapers, has been considered for many years a focal point of villages, cities, and metropolises. The term newsstand derives from the Latin “aedicula”, diminutive of “aedes” which means "temple". In fact, Hegel said in the 19th century that "reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer. One orients one's attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much

security as the latter, in that one knows how one stand”. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, the newsstand crisis has been known for some time and is part of a more general crisis in newspapers and the media. Due in part to the rising costs of paper, transport, and the transformation of society and its habits, the situation for these places of great historical importance is dramatic. Over the last few years, thousands of newsstands have definitively pulled down the shutters and those that remain are in very poor condition, both economically, and socially. The sale of newspapers, once the main activity, is now often replaced by the sale of scratch cards, souvenirs, children’s games. Furthermore, Italy is split in two: in the North, the situation is bad, in the South it is even worse, and in several places, newspapers do not arrive because of the prohibitive costs of paper and the conversion of paper mills to packaging for convenience. Although at first sight, these places seem to have no other prospect but abandonment, fortunately this is not always the case and virtuous cases are not lacking. Our journey begins in Turin, at the newsstand in the Aurora neighbourhood renamed “EdicolArte”, a project created to redevelop an area that does not want to succumb to post-industrial decline. The objective is multiple: artistic and symbolic, but also social, cultural, and economic. In this case, the newsstand becomes a collective work of art that is transformed, with the work of artists and citizens, to give voice to the territory and its problems. Later, we move on to Milan, discovering the Radetzky Newsstand, an Art Nouveau kiosk. Overlooking Milan’s Darsena, this small piece of architecture is characterized by an iron and glass structure with a large pagoda roof. Today it transformed into a space dedicated to contemporary artistic research and hosts a busy program of exhibitions. Our third stop is Bologna, where a cooperative has taken over a newsstand in the Barca neighbourhood, and created the "Resilient Newsstand" project. Their goal is to preserve and relaunch the newsstand as a place for socializing and helping the community around it. Everyone provides time, ideas and skills in order to create an open and inclusive hybrid space, aimed at responding to the needs of individuals and families. Moving down the peninsula we find ourselves in Bari, a city rich in cultural and artistic ferment, to discover a newsstand with a particular history, facing enormous difficulties in surviving an epochal change. Sicily holds the negative record in terms of the number of newsstands, but, despite this, in Messina we discover the history of a structure that has managed to transform and mould itself in the changing world by attracting young people and the whole neighbourhood. To conclude our journey, we discover the story of La Nuova Sardegna, the most popular daily newspaper on the island, recently returned to the hands of a Sardinian company, after having been owned by the GEDI publishing group for twenty years. The documentary is a snapshot of the situation of Italian newsstands today and explores how some realities have transformed and reinvented themselves. Six stages, six stories told by people who revolve around these places that are so important for the right to inform and to be informed.