The Film Grain Foundation, the private foundation behind the Valletta Film Festival, has just launched its programme for 2019. This programme will go beyond the now popular Valletta Film Festival, which will this year run between June 14 and 24 and include a number of film-oriented events, as well as the launch of the Valletta Film Lab.
Two ‘VFF Weekends’ will take place in March and November, the first to be held between March 22 and 24 at the cinema of Spazju Kreattiv and will focus on documentary films. The November edition of the weekend will offer a number of feature films focusing on a genre of cinema or a theme. A lot in-store as the festival turns five, here’s what happened, what’s currently happening and what is to happen in the coming months!
Valletta Film Lab
Both VFF weekends will happen at the end of two workshops that will be organised by the foundation as part of the newly established Valletta Film Lab (VFL). The first workshop of the lab will be focused on feature-length documentary films and will be held between March 18 and 23, while a second workshop dedicated to fiction will be held in November.
VFL is the first support platform open to film-makers from Malta and other small nations around Europe helping in developing audiovisual content through training, networking events and promotional activities. The aim of the lab is to develop projects from small nations and follow them into production.
Commenting about this initiative, Oliver Mallia, co-founder of Film Grain Foundation, said that VFL will provide the beneficiaries of various film development and production funds in Malta and other small European countries the possibility to attend first-class workshops that would help them transform their ideas into high-quality projects.
“The idea to create a training and development platform open to film-makers from small nations stemmed from the Cinema of Small Nations conference held at Valletta Film Festival in 2016. We understood the need for a platform that focuses on small nations given that film production companies from small countries experience similar difficulties because of limited economies of scale,” Mr Mallia said.
Mr Mallia said that the activities to be organised by the Lab are intended to help producers from small nations to develop productions that would reach international financiers, producers, distributors and broadcasters and potentially help them reach audiences beyond their own territories. In fact the lab aims to attract producers from larger countries who are interested in co-production with small nations, and who can come to Malta to extend their conversation.
Four projects from Malta together with another five from other small nations around Europe will be participating in the first lab that will be led by three renowned documentary film-makers and tutors – Jacques Deschamps, Boris Mitic and Lutz Gregor.
Film Grain Foundation co-founder Slavko Vukanovic added that 10 local companies and individuals all active in film production have partnered the platform and committed to participate in the development workshops that the Lab will be organising.
Mr Vukanovic remarked that one of the aims of Valletta Film Lab is to ensure that by 2021 a minimum of 18 feature-length projects from Malta would have received support by the lab and reached advanced development or pre-production stage.
At the end of the documentary lab, participants attending the workshop will be participating in a pitching contest and two projects will be awarded the HSBC Best Pitch Award which will allow them to attend the Sunny Side of the Doc in June to present their film to producers, financiers, distributors and broadcasters.
A similar award will also be provided to fiction participants in November linking them with a presence at the European Film Market at Berlinale in 2019. Applications for the Fiction Workshop of the Valletta Film Lab will open next month.
Valletta Film Festival: fifth edition
Apart from the workshops held in March and November, VFL will also be present during the flagship event of the Foundation – the Valletta Film Festival.
This year, the foundation will present the fifth edition with a sharpened identity and a new strategy which aims to become home to cinema of small nations. For the first time the festival will be dedicating its competition selection to feature and documentary features, as well as short films, originating from the 34 small nations in Europe, Middle East and North Africa.
Summer Cinema will take films outside Valletta
The Cinema of Small Nations Competition will be judged by two international juries.
Additionally, Pjazza Teatru Rjal, the prime venue during the festival, will host a programme of screenings that will mix high-profile independent films with festival winners, restored classics and cult films.
According to Mr Vukanovic the aim of this programme is to continue building audiences as well as ensure quality and standards via an eclectic selection of cinema. Apart from the sections mentioned above, the festival will still feature other sidebars like Islanders, Without Borders and Teens Only.
Following an absence of one year, the foundation will be returning with a programme of screenings at Pjazza San Ġorġ and will also be dedicating one of the festival’s weekend to Kids offering a variety of animation short and feature length films.
Acclaimed Hungarian director Béla Tarr will be a special guest at this year’s festival and his films will make up this year’s Master of Cinema section. The director, whose films are often listed among the best films ever made and produced will be attending the festival and will also be giving a masterclass at The Phoenicia Malta on June 22 as part of a programme of industry events curated under the Valletta Film Lab banner.
Passes for the festival are on sale this month and the full programme of this year’s event will be announced at the end of May.
Summer Cinema
This year the foundation will also be introducing ‘Summer Cinema’ which will take films outside of Valletta to various localities around Malta and Gozo during the summer months.
Summer Cinema will be a family-friendly affair where a mix of classics and contemporary films will be shown in the squares of various towns and cities around Malta. The event is supported by the Malta Council for Voluntary Sector.
Participation at festivals
In February, the foundation took a number of Maltese short films to the world’s largest film festival dedicated to short films at Clermont-Ferrand in France. The selection included films that were exhibited at the Valletta Film Festival in the past year and other films that were shown elsewhere or that have yet to be released. Among them was the premier of Ir-Ragel tal-Klieb (The Dog Man) by Samuel Sultana, adapted from a novel by acclaimed Maltese writer Oliver Friggieri.
The other films are Bajtra tax-Xewk by Alex Camilleri, previously selected for Toronto Film Festival for Kids and VFF 2017, Il-Kompliċi by Ryan Gatt which is adapted from the short story of the same name by Walid Nabhan and selected for VFF 2018, Arcadia by Jamie Vella, also selected for the VFF 2017, Eleanor’s Forest, a short animation by Matthew Stroud, and finally, the short documentary From Malta to Motor City by Charlie Cauchi that premiered at the VFF 2018.
Right after Clermont, the foundation landed in Berlin where it participated as an exhibitor at the European Film Market held during the Berlinale – one of the largest and most prestigious film festivals in the world.
This was the first time that Malta had an exhibitor stand in the market that was attended by over 21,000 film professionals from around the world. The stand served as a focal point for local film-makers and production companies to meet with European counterparts and it promoted Valletta Film Festival and the work of the foundation.
Film Grain Foundation is supported by Arts Council Malta through Cultural Partnership Agreement and Creative Industries Platform. The Official Partners of Valletta Film Festival and Valletta Film Lab are HSBC Malta and The Phoencia Malta.
For more information about the events of Film Grain Foundation visit www.vallettafilmfestival.org or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.