Reinventing the Value of the Moving Image

Never have we spent so much time on our screens, and never so little of it watching the works they were built to carry. As social platforms absorb an ever-greater share of viewing time, the old frontlines of the screen industries — cinema versus streaming, broadcast versus digital — no longer describe the real battlefield. Across film, television and gaming, the question is now whether intentional, ambitious works can sustain their value in an economy increasingly designed to capture attention. That value is not only economic; it is also cultural and democratic. The plenary establishes the common diagnosis in two movements.

1. A civilizational shift in our relationship to images. The moving image transformed the twentieth century by giving humanity, for the first time on a universal scale, a shared way of seeing reality, experiencing the beauty of the world, and feeling connected across borders. Today, images are everywhere, but the conditions in which we encounter them have changed. Works designed to endure increasingly compete with images optimized to retain attention, while the growing capacity to manipulate them is making trust more fragile. Films, series and games can awaken emotion, stimulate curiosity, connect people and educate; the infinite loop of the feed can instead turn images into instruments of confinement rather than connection, with documented costs for the well-being of younger audiences and the cohesion of our societies. The urgent task is to help the next generations regain control of their screens and invent, for them and with them, a new relationship with images — and, through images, with each other.

2. Redefining value in the new screen landscape. The multiplicatibon of images has not made ambitious films, series and games easier to finance, discover or sustain. As traditional models weaken, distribution fragments and attention becomes the scarcest resource, the screen industries must rebuild the conditions that allow works to be created, reach audiences and endure. This means rethinking how risk is shared, how value circulates across the chain, and where accountability must now sit. The task is not only to preserve economic value, but to sustain the cultural and democratic value that gives the moving image its place in society.

Four tracks then follow the life of films, series and games — how they are created, how works and the companies behind them are financed, how they reach audiences, and the responsibilities the industry must assume in return.