Old, quaint things

Valerie Vella, without doubt one of the favourite presenters, is back on television – in Xorts.

I will rephrase that. Last Wednesday, Vella hosted the first Xorts on TVM. Just shy of 45 minutes, each programme of the series features four or five films, depending upon their duration, which had been submitted to the Malta International TV Short Film Festival in 2009 and 2010.

The series will run until the end of March; the festival’s next edition will be held in July. The films come from Europe, US and Africa, and are of different genres including animation, true stories, fantasy and war.

There are no studio guests but viewers can submit their opinion via e-mail info@maltashortfilmfest.com or SMS 5061 5050.

The series, produced by Joyce Grech and Tony Parnis, is directed by Godfrey Smith. As with most good programmes on most local television stations, it has no repeat.

Speaking of short films, the documentary film The Phoenicians produced by Chris and Maurice Micallef was aired on One Television in 2005. It has not stopped bagging awards since, beginning with the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature and Best Cinematography at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in the same year, and most recently the Rising Star Award in the Canada International Film Festival held in Vancouver early last year.

The Phoenicians recently garnered yet another two Awards of Excellence for both the documentary and scriptwriter in the Accolade Competition held in San Diego, California, earlier this month. These awards recognise film, television, videography and new media professionals demonstrating exceptional achievement in craft and creativity.

The Phoenicians focuses on the eponymous people that established trading and commercial routes across the Mediterranean, and examines its impact and influence on Malta. The highlight of the film, partly shot in Lebanon, is the re-enactment of the Third Punic War, in which the Carthaginians were crushed by the Romans.

The Indie Fest is another international contest with slightly different categories. In the End, a short film by 2 Diff’Used Pictures, made up of Alex and Ramon Mizzi, won a merit award in the Indie Fest 2010.

It was entered in the Malta Cine Circle National Film Competition and Philip Mizzi won an award for his magnificent performance.

It had also bagged the Best Contemporary Short Film Award in the New York International Film Festival 2009. This film will be one of those screened in the aforementioned Xorts, in mid-February.

Here I must scrape my fingernails across the blackboard for attention, and ask once again why people (not the aforementioned) who are not given the time of day locally are successful abroad, whereas talentless people are considered celebrities locally, due to their connections.

• The clip has now been pulled from You Tube – but for two days, it was talk of the town. I speak about the section that was cut from the VIP Show (TVM, Sundays) in which contestants were involved in a game that had them chuck shoes at skittles, which were decorated, for want of a better word, with photographs of the President, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Now I am under the impression that the Criminal Code specifically states that the President cannot be held up for ridicule. PBS avoided this by the skin of its teeth, because some sharp-eyed person decided to edit (or ‘censor’, as viewers put it) the programme.

The question begs itself – will legal action be taken against the person responsible for putting this clip in the public domain?

• Of late, there appears to have arisen some kind of flurry over the Performing Rights Society forms that are supposed to be filled in by every presenter (and not just those who present music-based programmes).

The PRS pays artistes according to what music is broadcast. As a person in a ‘position of responsibility’ put it “...if we do not supply a list of what was played, artistes, especially local ones, get short-changed.”

But the attitude of different media to filling in these forms appears to differ. Indeed, at least one broadcaster is in court over this issue.

Another station has filled them in “since forever”; another “does not know what they are”; still another appears to have gone into a tizzy-fuelled overdrive about them.

Even with people who are supposed to know what the system entails, there appear to be a lot of misunderstandings, not least that some of the PRS pronunciations appear to be ambivalent, whereas others are ambiguous.

Someone must put down in black and white whether jingles, background music, signature tunes, and snippets of records between different sections of discussion programmes actually count as ‘complete records’.

• Broadcasters give two reasons why they make atrocious mistakes in Maltese (I shall not comment about the prevalent pitiful level of English of some presenters for the nonce, because they ought not to be using it during programmes in the Maltese language anyway).

The first excuse is that “it was written down like that”. This means either that they did not realise there was a mistake, or that they were on automatic pilot.

It is no excuse to say it’s not their job to edit someone else’s work. Errors must be rectified. Would they have read a string of blasphemies or vulgarities?

The second banal excuse is that “it was a live programme”. How could you make such mistakes as “jaraw għajn b’għajn mal-Vatikan”; “fil-faċċata ta’ wara”, and “Slaten Maġini” when you are speaking in your mother tongue, if you are there as a role model for speaking the vernacular properly?

television@timesofmalta.com