The Embassy of
Malta in Berlin organised an evening of short films by Maltese film makers
Martin Bonnici and Kenneth Scicluna at the Eiszeit Cinema, a well-known
independent theatre house in the heart of the district of Kreuzberg in the German capital.
Martin Bonnici’s
rather melancholic film
Sħab deals with the fate an elderly widower after the death of the
person with whom he had shared, happily, most of his life. Bonnici’s second
film, Laqgħa ma' Mara Morbi, is based on Immanuel Mifsud’s story
with the same title; the producer takes the audience on a journey through
the mind of a forty-year-old man reflecting on his life during the
early hours of a particular day.
In Kenneth
Scicluna’s film Daqqet ix-Xita, a black and white “ode to Valletta”, a young man, torn between his natural
ineptitude and the need to break away from the clutches of his bleak
environment, keeps rowing a boat across the harbour against the background of
the city where he does not seem to arrive.
Scicluna’s second film, Elegija, based on a poem by Doreen
Micallef, portrays the intimate and fragile
relationship between two women.
Following the screening of the four films, the
two filmmakers discussed their work with moderator Anna Henckel Donnersmarck, a
member of the jury of the Berlinale short films section. They
explained what inspired them to produce the films, the challenges they faced
and how the general situation of film makers in Malta has developed in the past
years. A discussion followed during which numerous comments were
made by members of the audience
which included several film experts.
This event, which was made possible with the
assistance of the Cultural Diplomacy Fund of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
and Trade Promotion of Malta, received wide publicity through the popular daily
newsletter ‘Checkpoint’, which is distributed with the daily Tagesspiegel
newspaper of Berlin.
Picture shows the two
Maltese film makers Kenneth Scicluna and Martin Bonnici