Dark, desolate and dreary, Daqqet ix-Xita is drawing visitors at the Cannes Short Film Corner with a concise but highly effective tribute to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ramona Depares gets the lowdown from director Kenneth Scicluna.

Set in the atmospheric, narrow streets of Valletta and inspired by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 production of Hamlet, the Lighthouse +Ashley movie Daqqet ix-Xita (Plangent Rain) is making waves at this year's Short Film Corner in Cannes. A cursory look at the movie's page on IMDB proved to be immediately intriguing. Let's face it, with a synopsis that kicks off with the immortal words 'dark, liquified decrepitude' and the promise of a sobering journey into the deepest insecurities of the human psyche... I was obviously hooked. But the question remained: were these empty words merely intended to puff up a mundane script, or does the film actually deliver the gamut of oppressive emotions that the blurb on its sleeve promised?

There was only one way to find out. I cadged a copy of the movie and prepared to be blown away - or not. I made the mistake of watching it in a dark room with headphones on. Bad idea, simply because the atmospheric doom and gloom is so strong that I even after the fifteen minutes were over I found it difficult to snap back into the happy-go-lucky, falalala mood I had been previously enjoying. Which is exactly what the team behind Daqqet ix-Xita wanted to achieve, which in turn makes the movie a success. Reuben Zahra's score – Maltese folk, interjected with dramatic and discordant chords- was particularly inspired. The film is shot in black and white, another factor that contributes to the heavily oppressive atmosphere. Short as the production is, the characters leap at you and you can actually feel the main character's impending madness.

Hardly any wonder the film has been endorsed by Hungarian cult director Bela Tarr. I decided to meet up with Kenneth Scicluna, the brains behind script and direction. Scicluna is no new name to the local movie scene, with seven directing roles (including Daqqet ix-Xita) under his belt and participation in a host of other offerings. He started off by explaining that Daqqet ix-Xita is the fruit of a production team of six, working under the umbrella of Lighthouse+Ashley productions. The whole project, which was co-financed by the Malta Film Fund, took about two years to finish with actual filming starting last October.

"I had been toying with the idea of using the story of Hamlet in a production for quite a while and the Shakespearean tragedy is a recurrent theme in this movie. Daqqet ix-Xita is based on the idea of fluidity, kicking off with the crashing waves and repeatedly using Ophelia's figure like a billowing sail in the wind. One of the biggest headaches was finding the right location that would translate the dark aura of the script into a corresponding visual. The location we eventually settled on, a house at the lower ends of Valletta, turned out to be perfect and actually had a basement that flooded as soon as it rained. It was just right for the atmosphere that we wanted to recreate. The incredible part is that people actually live there."

Wetness, in the movie, is used to personify death. Rather ironic, considering that the first day of filming happened to be the same day a series of flash-floods brought the whole of Malta to a standstill. Up at dawn and ready for a full day's filming, Scicluna's crew were faced with a totally flooded and unusable location that they couldn't even get to. The situation descended into farce when reports started coming in about coffins floating in the roads in Qormi. Filming was postponed to later on in the evening. An eight hour delay is no big deal, you would think. You'd be wrong of course, with cast and equipment booked to precise timelines, the slightest change in schedule can lead to a missed deadline. The fickle Maltese weather turned out to be a big deciding factor in the whole process and as sod's law would have it, the forecast rarely delivered what was needed.

"Working with the weather was definitely one of the biggest challenges. To mention just one example, when we needed overcast skies to shoot a scene in the Grand Harbour, we got blue skies and blazing skies. The scene included the use of very expensive marine equipment and a whole diving team, so we had to go ahead with the scene. Despite all the weather mishaps, all the nights spent writing and re-writing the script and the other hundred and one things that went wrong at any given time, we made it. The commitment that the whole team showed was incredible. One story that springs to mind involves actress Polly March, who managed to overcome a big fear of water to shoot (and re-shoot) a scene where she in being taken across the harbour by boat."

It is easy to see that Daqqet ix-Xita, much like all his other film offerings, is very much a labour of love for Scicluna. When asked about the downside to directing this kind of project, he does not mention the sleepless nights spent filming or the cost to his personal time. What worries him are the scenes that were shot but which ended up on the cutting floor.

"With every production, a number of perfectly good scenes end up not being used for a variety of reasons. In the case of a movie like Daqqet ix-Xita, the reasons are usually related to the length of the film. No matter how necessary it is, I honestly hate doing it! Both crew and actors will have sweated blood to create that scene and it always pains me to throw out someone's good work. Probably the biggest regret of this sort is related to a particular scene in a five-minute movie I did called The Isle, where I enlisted the help of a crowd of extras to play the part of dead people in a church. I often think that I shoot re-shoot that movie and find a way to include it and one day...I probably will."

The satisfactions, of course, outweigh the challenges. Contrary to what I expect, Scicluna insists that the biggest pleasure of all is not when he sees the end product ready and polished. Rather, it's letting the production go by giving the rest of the team the opportunity to make it their own, using their interpretation of his script. Upon its launch, Daqqet ix-Xita was immediately accepted by the Cannes Short Film Festival Corner, an achievement that is likely to open the gateway to a number of other opportunities within the international Short Film industry. The film has already been accepted to take part in an Italian festival, the Salento Finibus Terrae, which will be held in Salento this July. The movie is subtitled in English, German, Spanish and French and more info can be found on www.stradastretta.com.

Festival Facts

Two other Maltese entries are being showcased at this year's Cannes Short Film Corner: Balzan's Contract, directed by Armand Attard (submitted as a joint Malta/UK production) and Stenbah, directed by James Spiteri.The Short Film Corner attracts the most promising up-and-coming names within the international film-making world and is the gateway to all the biggest industry players, offering access to institutions, financiers and the most important international reps in the film business.All participating movies are viewable in the Digital Film Library throughout the entire duration of the Festival and are made accessible to all festival-goers. Films are also made available for private viewing to programmers and buyers after the event.

The main Cannes festival

The festival will include a country tribute for the first time. This year's chosen country is Egypt, chosen both because of its strong film-making history and because through its January revolution it demonstrated a collective strength in expressing its desire for democracy. The tribute will be held this coming Wednesday with a screening of 18 jours, a work grouping the short films of Sherif Arafa, Yousry Nasrallah, Mariam Abou Ouf, Marwan Hamed, Mohamed Aly, Kamla Abou Zikri, Sherif El Bendari, Khaled Marei, Ahmad Abdallah and Ahmad Alaa.

Another first for this year is the awarding of an honorary Palme d'Or, which will be offered to an authoritative film-maker who never received the award. This year's recipient will be Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, best known for masterpieces such as Prima della Revoluzione (1964), Novecento (1976), the Conformist (1970) and The Last Emperor (1987), movies which all left their mark on the recording of political and social history

This year's main jury will be headed by Robert de Niro. Members of the board also include Jude Law and Uma Thurman.

Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris opened the 64th edition of the festival last Wednesday. The romcom was shot in the French capital and features Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Marion Cotillard, as well as Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Gad Elmaleh and Léa Seydoux.

The restoration by Warner Bros. of cult director Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), will be honoured in this year's Cannes Classics with a screening on Thursday 19th. Lead actor Malcolm McDowell is expected to attend the screening and will also give a class on cinema the following day.

There will be a total of 19 movies competing in the Official Selection. Movies buffs are particularly excited about Pedro Almodovar's entry, La Piel que Habito (The Skin That I Inhabit). Almodovar is arguably the most internationally acclaimed Spanish moviemaker and was the brains behind iconic movies such as Volver, All About My Mother and Talk To Her.

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