It was 32 years ago, shortly after he had finished his movie that has now become a classic in the history of Maltese film, Il-Gagga, that Mario Philip Azzopardi faced the full wrath of the islands’ conservatism and censorship, and the accompanying deadly silence of the artists and intellectuals.
What offended the uptight censors and the authorities back then remains a mystery, as no explanations behind their ruthless outright ban on his play that was to be staged at the Manoel Theatre were ever forthcoming.
What’s sure is that the powers that be came down in full force to stop a satirical piece of drama that had all the essential ingredients of the absurd faces of Maltese society in lashing out at sex, religion and politics.
“Everything was set and we had the dates booked,” Azzopardi recalls today, about his play Sulari fuq Strada Stretta. “Then all I know is I receive this phone call telling me we could not stage the play as I did not have the censorship board’s certificate. Now this was six weeks ahead of production night so there was ample time for the censorship board to issue the certificate, but it was clear we would not get it. This was definitely state censorship.
“I had told them there were more than six weeks left. I had produced lots of plays at the Manoel and most often censorship was just a formality. We would get the certificate in the last week, at times even after the play was staged.
“It wasn’t just the theatre afraid of staging my play; this was the authority stopping me, telling me this play could never be staged. I took them to court, and it was a real sham. All it took was 10 minutes. The judge heard the Manoel chairman and didn’t even listen to my version. He dismissed my case. No reason given. The official reason was that I didn’t present the censorship board’s certificate, but I hadn’t received it yet.”
To make things worse, Azzopardi ended up at police headquarters, summoned by none other than the police commissioner in the company of the official censor who at that time was Lino Cassar.
“Cassar had advised me to change a character; instead of a monsignor I could portray him as a colonel. He also told me to change all the everyday swearwords scattered here and there. He was telling me all this in front of the police commissioner. Joe Vella Bonnici was accompanying me. Were it not for him I would have ended in prison. As an artist, seeing your work cut to pieces, one page after the other censored and butchered, it drives you crazy. Vella Bonnici kept me calm. His negotiating talent saw me through one of the most difficult times of my life. It was a very heavy hour.
“When they heard I was about to appeal the case, all the floodgates of hell broke lose. Everything started to happen to me. I was about to act in a television and was recast and I lost the part. It was difficult for me to get any meeting anywhere. At that time I was subsisting only on theatre and film – I had no other means to make a living. I had already missed a year at university, which I had to repeat, because of the work on Il-Gagga. I was totally dedicated to theatre and film. And a lot of strange things started happening. Even my father’s pension was stopped. An acquaintance had told me, ‘Why don’t you stop it with this appeal? Look at what has happened to your father?’ It got very ugly. I thought the Maltese theatre and artistic community would support me. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one word of solidarity, a telephone call or anything. So afraid they were, scared shitless, that nobody said a word. I couldn’t take it any longer, this was the last straw. I just packed and left.”
Azzopardi says at this stage in his life he saw everything crumbling. Realising he could not make a living from film and theatre here, he got married to his wife, Theresa, and left for Canada.
“Mind you, it’s the best thing to have happened to me because I don’t think I would have reached the level that I reached had I remained here. Today I have done over 400 films, most of them television films and I’m very proud of some of them. I’ve just finished a teleserial that should come out in April. It’s the biggest teleserial to come out in Canada, and I’m very proud of that.”
Now, with all his luggage and experiences, Azzopardi finds himself directing his own play censored 32 years ago.
“Judie Farrugia, the Manoel Theatre director, read the play and liked it a lot. Not only do they want to stage it now but they also want to produce it themselves; such is the irony of things.”
I ask him what brought him back to the country that let him down so badly.
“I still have a lot of dreams, besides my wish to start writing in Maltese again. In Maltese I can write in a certain style without giving a damn about whether it will be considered or not abroad. Of course, most of the youth here who wish to have success abroad have to write on themes that can also sell abroad. I can understand them. But I don’t have to do that. What I write professionally, I write for abroad, and I have the great opportunity to write for the Maltese in a purely Maltese context, which would possibly never be fully understood by a foreigner. I can use an allegory to satirise something that is purely Maltese. I doubt anyone who is not Maltese would understand Il-Gagga for example.
Azzopardi has only words of encouragement for the local filmmakers, but they need the help to make the quality step forward.
“There is a lot that is home-grown, there is the will at the grassroots. One has to nurture that so that we make steps forward. But how many people are crazy enough to go for it? The political and financial will have to unite at a practical level so that Malta can develop on co-productions. Malta can never foster a film industry for a long time without co-productions; we don’t have the wherewithal. You can have films produced here in cooperation with foreigners but with a Maltese stamp. For this to happen, things have to start from here. You cannot just sit and wait for someone else to come here. The moment you say you want to produce film you’ll have thousands of enquiries, but nobody would produce anything that is intrinsically Maltese. So you have to find the Maltese subjects, the Maltese seed, so that you can then seek to attract international help. And we have a lot of things to say and do.
“Unfortunately everything is being done in the worst way possible. I’ve spent 30 years abroad in just this sector, nothing else, with some of the biggest companies in the field; ABC, CBS, Warner Bros, Universal, MGM. I’m ready to try again, but it’s very difficult. There is a certain obstinacy, an attitude of ‘who does he think he is?’, ‘Dan xil-Madonna jahseb li hu?’ I’m faced with this dismissive attitude all the time. ‘He-just-produced-a-television-show’ sort of attitude. If every hour I worked is worth a million dollars, then there must be over $350 million I was responsible for – not even Malta’s economy reaches those heights in one year. Even as I say this to you I feel like I have to prove myself with people who do not know certain things, like I have to convince them I know what I’m talking about, and that’s difficult.”
Three decades since he migrated, Azzopardi sees a great potential here.
“Iceland, which is a smaller economy than Malta, has no history, but they produce four films a year. We have a history to impress the world. Every corner in Valletta is a film set. We can use our assets to make films with others. There are ways to do this, and that is my next step. I see great strides in art; painting, music and sculpture. When it comes to theatre it has gone to the dogs. I’m talking about Maltese theatre. As regards film we’ve only just started. When Il-Gagga was being shown there were two posters in the cinemas – one for my film and the other about Qerq. That’s fantastic.”
Back to his irreverent play, that will be staged at the Manoel from the 25 to 27 January. This time round, none of the scenes have been cut, no censorship, but it has received an 18 rating.
“It’s disappointing. I don’t think anyone aged 16 is scandalised by anything anymore. They’re excluding part of Maltese society from watching Maltese controversial theatre. It doesn’t make sense.”
The play itself concentrates on the last few days before the end of World War II. The last three members of a Maltese aristocratic family live in this palazzo here overlooking Strada Stretta. One who is 80-year-old is being inspired to write her third will. Another one, her brother, 70, is a monsignor who has been defrocked after he was caught meddling with children. The third is a 75-year-old working actively to bring Mussolini to Malta.
And there is this young man who is the son of the whores of Strada Stretta who manages to get into this palazzo and befriends them so that he can eliminate them eventually and bring the people at the lowest ground floor to the highest floors to be able to prostitute themselves better.
“The play is a satire, and as satire it has no corners. Satire has no manners, it is not meant to be respectable. It tries to jolt people on certain issues, through its own language and style, designed purely to do that, including to offend. Satire is tongue in cheek. One thing I realised here is how seriously people take themselves. We forgot the Maltese used to take the mickey out of everything. The Maltese carnival in the past used to be total political satire. I remember the political floats they used to parade. Theatre is also a place where we can go for such an experience, and it’s all done in fun, tongue in cheek. Sulari fuq Strada Stretta might offend some people who take their lives too seriously, but then the Maltese Christian religion will not be shattered because of my play. Maltese politics won’t change because of Sulari fuq Strada Stretta. Our ideas about sexuality won’t change because of Sulari fuq Strada Stretta. But maybe you’ll find something that gets you to see yourself in a new light, and they might help you see part of your soul which you never had the chance to look into before. And that’s all it is. It’s a comedy that makes you laugh but also opens a window on the Maltese character.
Azzopardi is very critical of today’s students – so much indifferent and cosy in their little niches, so different from his campus colleagues of 30 years ago who set out filming Il-Gagga enthusiastically, for free.
“Maltese university life is very different nowadays from what it used to be in my time. There was a lot of activism back then, nowadays they’re just concerned with the career, everyone has his car, and the biggest problem the Maltese students have is where to park the car given to them by the government. It’s a national tragedy.
“Stipends are blasphemous in my opinion, it’s a system that failed, it should be scrapped completely. When you just make one’s life easier… the Maltese character at times need a slap in the face to wake up. It’s like the island on which Gulliver lands and realises that all the people are surrounded by children carrying wooden sticks, because after a little while they need a beating on their head to get back to their senses. The Maltese suffer from that. Discipline has to be inculcated through radical ways. At times democracy is overestimated, especially for the Mediterranean character. At times the Mediterranean character works better under a dictatorship. A benevolent dictatorship perhaps.
“I used to see this a lot in Mintoff’s time. We made some great steps under Mintoff, but then with time he either aged or became bonkers, and he needed Gulliver’s child to beat him on his head to wake up to reality. That’s what we had set out to do. It was a distorted socialism because we used to put the worker on an altar and gratify his ignorance. Instead of educating and helping him improve his conditions, culturally and socially, the worker was just exalted and left to rot in his ignorance. Nowadays I don’t think there’s any student activism going on, it’s non-existent.
“Malta’s existence defies reason. There’s no reason for Malta to exist. There are no resources, there’s nothing. It only exists because of the will and stubbornness of the Maltese. That’s a great thing. It’s not something you find everywhere, it’s something purely Maltese. We’re Maltese because we’re Maltese. Nobody can tell us we aren’t. That’s the reason why we exist. I see ourselves like Michelangelo’s statues near David, like a human figure trying to get out of the marble. That’s what we are, continuously struggling to come out and assert ourselves. That situation is us, forever caught in that marble. And that is fascinating, that’s the essence of our unique existence. We can give so much to the world, but we have to take it seriously and professionally. Professionalism is not just about getting paid; that does not make you a professional. It’s about how you look at yourself. We have to stop this anything goes attitude. I hate it.”
Besides Sulari, he is now halfway through his second play he wants to stage here, called Ix-xitan kunjomu Malti (The Devil has a Maltese surname) – political satire dealing with the PN and the MLP.
“I have already designed the poster: it has the Nationalist and the Labour flags being kept by the devil’s hand. The devil possesses a Scottish girl who starts talking in Maltese. So they bring her over to Malta to understand exactly what she’s saying, and it turns out it’s the devil voicing his concern about the fact that there is no longer the hatred there used to be between the Nationalists and the Labourites. So he tries inciting that hatred a bit again.”
And with an election round the corner, it seems the devil himself is already lurking.