From clockwork cameras to international acclaim

Celebrating the 50th Golden Knight Malta International Film Festival between today and tomorrow, film veteran John Dacoutros traces the 60-year history of the Malta Cine Circle.

On a spring afternoon in 1952, four young friends with 8mm clockwork winding movie cameras and armed with Kodachrome film met and decided to form a club for moviemakers.

Their first productions were the carnivals and their travels abroad – the renowned Malta Cine Circle was born.

These four men – Roger Strickland, Marcel Bianchi, Roger De Giorgio and Victor Lungaro Mifsud – took it upon themselves to show each others’ films first and the club was born. Members joined fast.

With no television, the Circle became very popular and cine camera sales started to grow.

Many were shooting the latest newsworthy items and the Circle held monthly get-together shows to project what was happening in Malta, whether it was a Queen’s visit, an RAF crash or anything similar.

There was no way one could add a soundtrack to a film in those days, so films were shown with live commentary and two turntables for a running music background or special effects, changing discs and clattering or squeaking a door as the need arose.

Tape recorders came later and projectors that could synchronise sound and film soon started to appear.

Only one pioneer is still with us today – Roger De Giorgio, a renowned architect.

Strickland died while filming the sub-aqua Olympics at Mellieħa Bay in the late 1950s on assignment for Movietone.

Bianchi, a lawyer, and Lungaro Mifsud, a popular accountant, are no longer with us.

By the 1960s, one could have a Eumig projector that could connect to a tape recorder and both played in synch. Here real quality films appeared with sound effects and commentaries. A film-making revolution started.

The Golden Knight International Film Festival was born quickly in 1962 with the aim of fostering the hobby of amateur film-making.

One of the major activities of the Circle was always the running of a National Film Competition, an event that is still being organised to this day. Hundreds of local productions entered these competitions and several were successful in competitions overseas.

The Golden Knight Festival owes its origins to these competitions and to another activity that the Circle always organised in the 1960s, namely the Malta Film Holiday.

Well before tourism started in Malta, the Circle used to organise a 10-day holiday in Malta for amateur film-makers from the UK. They used to bring their movie cameras and film their holiday.

On their return home, they used to send a short documentary of their visit and the Circle would run a competition for the best documentary about Malta. The success of this activity led the committee to take the bold step to launch an international competition: the Golden Knight Film Festival.

The first of these international festivals was held in 1962. At first, only a handful of productions were received, mainly from the UK, but, year after year and with great perseverance, the festival gained in prestige and popularity.

Today, the Golden Knight Festival has gone beyond the amateur field and new classes have been introduced for film school students and professional short productions.

Entries are received from Europe, the US, the Far East, Australia and South America. Recently, films have also arrived from emerging countries such as Israel, Turkey, Iran and Cyprus.

The Golden Knight has established itself in Malta’s cultural calendar and is better known abroad than on the island.

Maltese film-makers soon started to take part in various similar foreign film competitions and some won very prestigious awards.

Today, the festival has become more popular than ever abroad due to the explosion of digital film-making while celluloid film practically vanished.

The Golden Knight receives about 300 films a year and spends weeks on end judging them to award the prestigious Golden Knight trophy.

This year’s festival marks the 50th anniversary and is held over two days due to the large amount of films received by the committee.

Abroad, such festivals are supported by an annual government grant but in Malta this is lacking, although this year the Circle received some money from the Good Causes Fund.

If such support comes, the Golden Knight could become even bigger and help spur the island’s tourism, culture and education in a big way.

The Circle wishes more large institutions and government organisations help it grow.

Curiously but true, the Golden Knight has a large library of films about Malta and from hundreds of countries that no government department or any library can match. Yet, while we are the biggest source of films in Malta and Gozo, this library is supported by nobody.

Let us hope for better days and more support.