Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1448619
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 FEBRUARY 2022 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt Malta is not a 'Hollywood in the Mediterranean' Last week's Malta Film Awards was criticized for a lot of things: including, inter alia, that the lavish approach may give a misleading impression of the actual state of Malta's film indus- try. Your own reaction was to question the main theme: '100 years of Maltese film'. Do you feel that we are more concerned with projecting the image of a thriving film-industry… than with actually building up an indigenous film culture of our own? It is actually a lot more complicated than that; too complicated, in fact, to be summarized by that single Facebook post you just quoted. Let me try and answer you this way: when I commented about the '100 years of Maltese film'… I wasn't merely ques- tioning whether all the films, produced in Malta over that time-period, can re- alistically be defined as 'Maltese films' or not. Even because the research on this subject is still ongoing, to this day. I myself started writing about it in 2007, up until around 2016: and as any academic researcher should be able to say, what I've discovered so far is that… there is always more to discover. That's the beauty of research, to be honest. We always find more things out… So I'm not really disputing the claim that 'Malta has a 100-year history of film'. In itself, that may even be true: Malta does have a long, and very inter- esting, involvement with film-making… and I certainly don't think we should be shying away from it. What concerns me a little, however, is the way we seem to be using that as a tagline – or sound-bite – to make a 'bold claim' about ourselves. For one thing, I feel this doesn't really do jus- tice to the real history of Maltese film, to begin with… but for another: I also feel we need to be taking a much broad- er view of our film industry, in general. We should be looking at the past, yes; but also at the future… and the present. And there is a lot we have to unpack, so to speak, before we can arrive at the point of making such 'bold claims'. And this, incidentally, is something that has cropped up time and again, over the years. To give you one example: do you remember the 'Rinella Movie Park', back in the 1990s? Vaguely, yes… Well, not that many people remember it very clearly, because it didn't last very long. In 1996, there was an announce- ment that they were going to create a 'movie park'; and the park itself was in- augurated in, I think, 1999… but it was a very short-lived, very expensive project. Looking back, you can see more or less what happened there. There was a lull in the industry, at the time: but instead of using that opportunity to, for instance, invest in our own infra- structure… in our own filmmakers… what happened? We created something bombastic; something that was trying to mimic something else… like the Uni- versal theme park in Hollywood. It is as though there's this constant struggle to be the 'next Hollywood'. In fact, we are often labelled as the 'Hol- lywood of the Mediterranean' – but the question many of us are asking is… how can we also be ourselves? How can we also create a plan, that takes Malta's own characteristics into account? But what does 'being ourselves' really mean, in the context of film? Since the 1970s, Malta has been home to a fairly successful film-servicing industry, for instance. Is that not also part of what can realistically be described as a lo- cal film industry? It is… and it isn't. Because while both 'film servicing', and 'film production' are part of the same, broader industry… they are very different sectors, and they do need to be treated differently. Don't get me wrong: it's great that we service films. It's amazing, in fact. A lot of people learn by working on foreign productions; and it pumps a lot of mon- ey into the local economy. But when it comes to our own filmmaking; that is where it has always been lacking. Many people have been trying to change that. In fact, I cannot even count the number of stakeholder meetings I've attended, since around 2006… and great: we all sit around drinking tepid coffee, placat- ed with stale pastries to discuss 'what needs to be changed'. And yet here we are, all these years later, still fighting for the same thing. Likewise, it's amazing that we now have films like Luzzu. I cannot tell you how happy I am, to have people texting me from abroad, saying: "I've just seen a Maltese film, and it was amazing…" At the same time, however… there shouldn't only be one Luzzu. That sort CHARLIE CAUCHI – multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker – argues that Malta's film industry still has some distance to go, before it can 'rival the Oscars' with elaborate awards ceremonies…