Tribute to a gentleman from Malta

A documentary on Francis Ebejer, A Gentleman From Malta, will be screened on Sunday at 7 p.m. St James Cavalier, in Valletta, as part of the World Book Day events.

The documentary was produced by Malcolm Scerri Ferrante 10 years ago on a shoestring budget of Lm500, provided by the Malta Broadcasting Authority and was, eventually, screened in Austria.

The connection with Austria lay in the fact that the Austrian co-producer, a friend of Mr Scerri Ferrante's, had provided rare and exclusive footage of Mr Ebejer, including unused scenes, that had been relegated to the basement of a producer's weekend home in the outskirts of Vienna and were discovered in 1996.

He also provided music composition and mixing in exchange for the rights to broadcast the documentary.

Ironically, the only nationwide broadcast the documentary had was in Austria, Mr Scerri Ferrante said. In Malta, it was only broadcast on the former Channel 12, the community channel, to a limited audience.

The Producer's Creative Partnership has now sponsored the digital mastering of the original tape onto DVD.

The documentary aims to discover the intriguing life and works of Malta's renowned playwright and novelist. Ebejer wrote more than 50 plays for theatre and TV and his novels have been translated into nine languages, including Japanese.

He received many awards, both locally and overseas, among them France's Medaille d'Honneur de la Ville d'Avignon.

The documentary's running time is 50 minutes. In 1998, it won the Best Documentary of the Year in the MBA Programme Awards.