Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/501315
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 26 APRIL 2015 Opinion 22 L ast Wednesday I made my way down to the British Legion in Valletta for a screening of Federico Fellini's 'E La Nave Va', organised by Kinemastik. It's one of those films I seem to vaguely remember watching before, even though I don't think I'd ever actually sat through an entire screening. Nonetheless, individual moments seemed to stir particular memories: perhaps because they'd been lifted out of context and used elsewhere so many times – on rolling TV mash-ups like Blob (on RAI), for instance. The scene where two ageing orchestra conductors perform Schubert on champagne glasses in the ship's kitchen, for instance, was definitely one I'd seen before somewhere. Or the incurably romantic opera buff, languishing in his armchair and endlessly replaying footage of the love of his life on a hand-operated projector… while the sea slowly seeps into his cabin, and the entire ship lists inexorably towards its grand watery finale... I can't place it with any certainty, but it seems to capture a sensation I've encountered somewhere else. And not too long ago, either. Perhaps the camera movement had something to do with it, emulating as it did the pitch and roll of a ship… but stepping out of the cinema actually felt like stepping off a floating vessel onto dry land. And the teetering sensation persisted (not helped much by a few drinks at the bar afterwards) almost until the following morning. OK, I don't claim to be an expert on cinema or anything, but I have watched a couple of other Fellini films in my time: enough to discern a certain thread of interlocked motifs running throughout his work. He was a man clearly fascinated by epochal, end-of-era moments – uniquely conscious of the individual phrases and movements that make up the symphony of history, and also amused by the surreal resistance most people put up to the entire concept of change… their dogged refusal to acknowledge that their part in the drama is now over. The characters in that movie – an assortment of jaded aristocrats, absurdly self-possessed opera divas and maestros, wealthy impresarios and grand patrons of the arts – are all hopelessly drift on board a vessel that is no longer in their control. "We are standing on the crater of a volcano," the young Archduke at one point says… only for the volcano to erupt all around them with the inevitable onset of World War I. Yet on the ship sails, serving caviar and lobster under chandeliers to the fabulously important in the dining area, while hungry Serb refugees eye them darkly through curtained windows from the deck outside. All are painfully conscious of the impending catastrophe; all are hell- bent on pretending it isn't really happening. Whether Kinemastik chose this particular movie deliberately to reflect something of the epochal moment we ourselves seem to be living in right now, I do not know. But it could hardly have been a more apposite choice, what with dead bodies washing up all around us, and the band playing on in the background. The following morning, still teetering slightly from my maritime experience the night before, I glanced at the newspapers… and for a surreal moment I got the impression I was still stuck in that Fellini movie. "Dignitaries attend funeral of unknown migrants who died trying to reach Europe," one headline ran. Beneath it, a picture of 24 coffins arrayed on a red carpet, as a gathering of dark-suited, spectral VIPs looked on with suitably sombre faces. Honestly, not even Federico Fellini would have been capable of stage- managing a vision quite so bizarre and other-worldly. And that was before even reading the story. "The coffins were carried into the space by AFM soldiers to the sounds of a melancholy harp tune and the wailing of the mourners," we are told. "The 24 coffins were placed onto their respective trestles in front of the seated dignitaries, many of whom were visibly moved…" Who are these visibly moved dignitaries, you might be asking? Opera divas and jaded impresarios? Well… almost. There was (inevitably) Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil. There was the President of the Republic, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca. Home affairs minister Angelino Alfano was there representing the Ialian government; Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos flew the flag (at half-mast) for the European Union. There was the speaker of the House Angelo Farrugia, along with various ministers and magisters; there were the Bishops of Malta and Gozo, the Imam, and someone resembling Gandalf the Grey in a beanie (not sure, but I think it was the Greek Orthodox Papas). Oh yes, the great and the good were all there, putting on their best beaten-dog expressions for the cameras which rolled and clicked incessantly in the background. And of course, there were also the corpses of 24 African asylum seekers, who drowned in the attempt to reach a Europe that turned out in such full force for their funeral… but would not even have so much as sneezed at them had they actually survived the crossing. In fact… what would have happened, I wonder, had those 24 migrants made it to their destination safe and sound? What would have happened had they been intercepted – like so many thousands of others over the past decade – by the AFM, and escorted under arms to Haywharf? Unless there's been a drastic rewrite of the script while I wasn't looking, the procedure would presumably have been the same as all the other times. No 'melancholy harp tunes' would have accompanied their arrest for entering a country without valid documentation. No red carpets would have been rolled out as they were escorted, handcuffed, into a large army bus, thence to be driven to one of Malta's three detention camps for a mandatory 18-month prison term without trial. There might, however, have been a few cameras rolling in the background… only the footage would not have been adorned with bouquets of flowers and placards instructing the audience to 'weep and wail' on demand. It would have been included as a bulletin on the 8 o'clock news, in which those same African migrants might have been likened to an invasion of jelly-fish… all accompanied by aggressive demands for the EU to 'take action', so that this unbearable 'scourge' and 'plague' of irregular migration is brought to an emphatic end once and for all, by any means necessary. But that's the procedure for living human beings. Dead human beings, on the other hand, do not threaten to take any jobs or undermine the local culture in the long term. So we can afford to be magnanimous towards them. And yet, this just scratches the surface of the multi-faceted, devastating irony staring back at us through those cameras at that funeral. Look at the faces of those dignitaries, and compare them to all the other times you've seen those faces and heard the accompanying voices. Joseph Muscat, for instance: And the band played on… Raphael Vassallo