Introduction. Sustainable Screenings: Economic, Touristic and Cultural Impact of Audiovisual Productions on the host Locations in the Post-Lockdown Era

In the last twenty years, the relationship between media production and places has been a key topic in the field of media studies. Despite that, in the post-lockdown world this relationship still needs to be properly investigated since nowadays it embodies new meanings that invite media scholars to redefine their understanding of how media may serve and/or impact places and vice versa; the capability of film and audiovisual production to serve places needs to be reconsidered through the lens of sustainability and its three pillars: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. This reconceptualization challenges the widely accepted idea of a win-win relationship between audiovisual production and places. In doing that, it invites to distinguish between good and bad practices, to investigate complex networks of stakeholders that pursue different goals, to adopt new research perspectives and research tools that allow media scholars to fruitfully address the most urgent issues on the political agenda. Starting from these considerations, this issue of “Comunicazioni Sociali” invites international scholars to discuss the economic, touristic, and cultural impact of audiovisual productions (films, documentaries, scripted and unscripted TV products) on the host places considering both the contemporary unprecedented scenario and the concept of sustainability. The six articles composing this issue prove that the relationship between audiovisual production and sustainability in the post-pandemic era is multifaceted and cannot be fully understood through the traditional scholarship and research tools of the film and media studies community.