When in Rome…

I spent three days in Rome last week at the DocFactual Agora organised by Gioia Avvantaggiato and Bettina Hatami of distributor/producer GA&A, and organising supremo Valentina Brero. I produced a couple of sessions, one of which I moderated – on the way in which factual television covered social themes.  Benefits Street got an outing, along with plenty of other UK examples. The other one was on front-of-camera talent, elegantly moderated by Corentin Glutron of French channel RMC Decouvertes. That’s him on the far left.

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The event was part of the Roma Fiction Fest, in the beautiful setting of the Parco della Musica.

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I can’t say that I recognised any of the TV stars attending, but I did meet a Zombie from the series Walking Dead

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There was a lot of talk of Reality TV and casting, and tons of examples from US cable, which gave the conference a very modern feel. It was great to have broadcasters and producers on the same stage, in a country where they are often very far apart. The discussion of television, audiences, production and distribution was informal and insightful. I sometimes felt swamped by the entertainment-driven US style, and wondered if I actually wanted to produce TV with values like that. Italy has a huge amount of commercial TV, and maybe it needs more public service programmes than yet more commercial fare.

But overall it was a good event, with a good crowd, and the positive response meant that I’m sure it’ll happen again next year.

By Krishan Arora

I'm an experienced television executive and producer. I started out at the BBC in London, working as assistant producer and director on a variety of documentary and magazine programmes. I then went to France to be one of the first programmers at Arte in Strasbourg when the channel launched in 1992. Returning to London after three years in France, I became Producer and Head of Development for documentary company Antelope. There I produced docs for all British broadcasters, with many co-productions on international subjects including the award-winning feature documentary Srebrenica - A Cry from the Grave, produced for BBC, NPS, PBS, and WDR. After a year developing and producing through my own company Electrify, I rejoined the BBC in 2001 as Commissioning Executive in Factual, commissioning Science, History and Arts documentaries and series from independent producers for all four BBC channels. In 2005 I became the BBC’s Independents Executive, responsible for the BBC’s strategic relationship with the UK independent television production sector across all genres – factual, drama, comedy and entertainment. In mid-2011, I went back to the world of production and consulting, for clients including NHK, Steps International, the Sunny Side markets, French production company Gedeon, and now the Australian broadcaster SBS. Of Indian and German parentage, I'm based between Copenhagen and my native London.