Short film aiming to break Sant’s barriers

Two months after the release of a cryptic teaser depicting former Prime Minister Alfred Sant’s pensive, dimly lit profile, the short film’s director breaks his silence and speaks of rupturing the myth of the cold, secluded politician.

He is very likeable as a person

Scheduled to be released in cinemas towards the end of the year following international film screenings, Sant Sant is an amalgamation of biographical and documentative elements embedded within what is primarily a work of fiction.

Director Dustin Cauchi describes the short film as “an intervention on Alfred Sant’s private life”.

Produced by FenêtreFilm, the 13-minute short, which is filmed in English and Italian, revolves around the binary of the private and the manifestation of the public within the person of Dr Sant, who is the sole protagonist.

Dr Sant speaks about writing and the difficulties of writing. There is no reference to his time as Prime Minister in the short.

“It both is and isn’t a documentary. There is calculated tension between the two. You have Alfred Sant as himself, and yet the film is scripted, and Sant is in a way forced to take on the role of an actor.

“So it is imposed in a way, Francesca Mangion and myself wrote a tailor-made script. As ultimately, without Sant, we would have no script and no film.”

The 31-year-old filmmaker first met Dr Sant last September to discuss the project. The idea interested him and they subsequently met up a number of times throughout the months.

But why Alfred Sant?

“I believe Sant is very interesting because he provides a perspective through which one can view Malta. It’s as if he were the belated postmodern condition in the Maltese political and cultural structure.

“His influence can be perceived in a number of contemporary political and cultural contexts: the idea of a more secular State and the termination of the violent and heated tones of the 1980s.

“Before Sant, no one would dream of taking their daughter to the swearing-in ceremony. It was Sant, in my opinion, who changed the direction of the Labour Party, even though certain things didn’t quite work out at the time.

“The ‘new’ Labour Party owes a lot to Sant’s way of doing things – they have adopted a more sober approach. It’s not exactly technocratic, because Sant isn’t a technocrat, but there’s an executive approach which he brought to the way of doing things within Maltese politics in general”.

Yet, Dr Sant was also a party leader who lost three successive general elections. Mr Cauchi believes that Dr Sant was not so successful a politician because Maltese politics was not ready for his approach.

The filmmaker was struck by Dr Sant’s intelligence, generosity and acute critical skills.

“He is very likeable as a person. The short film can be read as an attempt to demythologise the stereotypical figure of Sant as a remote academic, walled up behind his fortress. When we were filming outside, he would greet and speak warmly to people who came up to him.”

When the 50-second teaser was released two months ago, the media and the general public both stood up and took interest. Yet Mr Cauchi, who has also been working on another short film titled Fenêtre Fenêtre, featuring soprano Miriam Gauci, was suspicious of the sudden interest in Sant Sant.

“It’s an interesting exercise for me to try to understand the ways through which us Maltese determine what is relevant and what is not.

“Sant is unique; he is a figure which stands out from the majority. Yet his distinctiveness was simultaneously his strength and also what made him unpopular.

“We never were a culture which appreciated difference, though that is slowly changing,” Mr Cauchi remarks.