Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/219723
6 News maltatoday, SUNDAY, 1 DECEMBER 2013 Making mediocrity history? IF nothing else, visitors to the Medi- terranean Conference Centre's Temi Zammit Hall were treated to a great on-stage performance last Thursday, as the International Institute of Writers, under the patronage of superstar American screenwriting coach Robert McKee was launched. Set to become a hub for Maltese as well as international screenwriters – and writers of any kind, really – the Institute was the brainchild of accountant-by-profession Jesmond Pace, who was galvanised to set up such an institution in Malta after he spent some time as McKee's student in the United States. Witnessing McKee speak, it was easy to see why his course on 'Story' would have such an effect on Pace, and also why it has become a benchmark experience for writers – again, screenwriters in particular – all over the world. With a confrontational-but-conversational style that's hard not to describe as 'no-bullshit' (a typically American rhetorical trait in and of itself ), McKee gave his blessing to the newly opened institute, peppering his introduction with some choice gems from his career as a storytelling "guru". (Though he hates the term, "guru of the gurus" is an epithet that seems to haunt him wherever he goes.) The experience of watching the stout, silver-haired McKee get up on stage – he insisted on pacing, as he always does during his seminars – held a particular thrill for me as a film enthusiast. In what is perhaps yet another testament to McKee's influence on the Hollywood machine, his legend was cemented when he appeared on the silver screen himself, embodied by decorated British actor Brian Cox, in the quirky Charlie Kaufmann-scripted, Spike Jonzedirected film Adaptation. Itself an evisceration of the way films are made, Adaptation presented McKee as an aggressive champion of archetypal storytelling patterns, of rules that needed to be followed in order for a story to work. Chief of them is the idea of conflict – and McKee's dogged belief that a story with no conflict is no story at all. That missionary zeal was very much in evidence last Thursday, when McKee expressed his hope that the International Writers Institute would help Maltese writers to create stories that are "culturally specific, but universally human". PHOTO BY AUDREY LIENARD The introductory seminar for the International Writers Institute was a largely ceremonial affair, but TEODOR RELJIC was still captivated by the oratorical skills of its patron and co-founder, the American scriptwriting guru Robert McKee Robert McKee: "Nobody is interested in history 'as history' but to be taken into a world they do not know... they want to discover it themselves" Sitting down to participate in a panel discussion about the problems Malta faces in the storytelling sector – in which he was joined by transmedia producer Jean Pierre Magro, author Immanuel Mifsud, Malta's Ambassador to Tunisia and Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Malta Vicki Ann Cremona and V.18 Project Coordinator Karsten Xuereb – McKee cut through the complaints expressed by both the panel and the floor with typical single-mindedness. "The most important trait a writer should have is courage. To get up every morning, look at what you've written and go: 'what shit'. Then to start all over again, and to keep at it until it's no longer shit." The implication here is that this courage is universal, and this universality is what helped make McKee's seminars such an enduring success. In fact, he said that the International Writers Institute should strive to create stories that aren't about Malta, "but about the world". History being an easy thing to latch onto when it comes to prospective stories set it or utilising Malta, McKee flips the easy go-to notion on its head. "Malta is full of history, I mean just look at this place," he said while pointing to his immediate surroundings, the MCC's Temi Zammit Hall, "but nobody is interested in history as history. What the audience wants is a 'double experience'. They want to be taken into a world they do not know. Another country, another planet, a place of complete fantasy – whatever. "They go into it with a prayer. They want it to be anthropologically specific. Then, when they get there, they want to discover themselves. They want to say of the characters they encounter in your story: 'These people are human beings, just like me'. "So it doesn't matter where you come from. As long as you take care of the reader – that's your job as a writer. You take care of the reader, and let everyone else decide what is 'Maltese' about your writing or not…" The conversation took a turn for the topical when the panel tucked into the problematic issue of scriptwriting in Malta, specifically, Jean Pierre Magro's frequently trotted complaint that Malta's only university lacks the necessary instructional tools to provide students with the rudimentary knowledge to get even a basic script together. "I came out of university hoping to be a writer. But the fact was that by the time I graduated, I didn't even know what a synopsis was," Magro said, in a speech which began with an allegory: the story of the 'Emperor Who Has No Clothes', as a metaphor for Malta. Magro's complaints were corroborated by that of a university student this time, who complained about the University of Malta's communications course – ostensibly the only real outlet for students interested in film and the media – describing the experience as being given a blank paper and told: "Go on, just figure it out yourself." These complaints certainly reached the right 'audience': the introductory seminar was concluded by a speech by none other than Education Minister Evarist Bartolo – an early champion of the Institute – who accepted the criticism graciously enough. "There's certainly a great challenge ahead of us: we need to change our educational system. The fact is that kindergarten kids are more creative… only because they haven't been passed through our educational system yet," Bartolo said, echoing an earlier statement by Magro in which he described the Maltese system as one which doesn't reward creativity and urges students to just cram for exams instead. A speech by Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia (who is also responsible for the Malta Film Commission) wasn't as sensitive and onpoint as Bartolo's. "Since this is an event launching a writers' institute, I thought I'd pen my speech myself… I don't usually do that," Mallia began, before going on to promise that his ministry will do its utmost to bring more foreign productions to our shores and to empower writers "to use Malta as a backdrop". For more information on the Institute, log on to: http://www.writersinstitute.eu