Advertisement
The Maltese Herald
APS : 0.57 AXR : 0.41 BMIT : 0.35 BOV : 1.74 CVS : 1.00 FIM : 0.16 GHM : 0.87 GO : 2.70 HLI : 0.23 HRV : 0.97 HSB : 1.36 IHI : 0.45 LOM : 0.80 LQS : 0.19 LSI : 0.49 LSR : 1.00 MDI : 0.25 MDS : 0.45 MIA : 5.95 MLT : 0.55 MMS : 1.32 MPC : 0.35 MSC : 0.33 MTP : 0.47 MZ : 0.58 PG : 1.89 PZC : 0.63 RS2 : 0.52 RS2P : 0.60 SFC : 6.70 STS : 1.25 TML : 1.00 TRI : 1.12 VBL : 0.20
Culture News Sports
The Maltese Herald

What film awards? You have been scammed.

—

by

Mark Camilleri
in
Culture Minister Hose Herrera with David Walliams

The point of an award ceremony is to literally give an award to a selected category of people and celebrate their work. During the National Book Prize, I used to give out a €4000 cheque to every winner and then proceed to spend around another €1,000 marketing the winning book, apart from putting the book into my export list.

Award recipients at the Malta Film Awards attended an over-priced awards ceremony and didn’t receive any monetary rewards at all. The ceremony was a cover for the payment to Tec Malta,  a Labour Party-supporting events organiser which usually organises the logistics to the general election. Tec Malta was given the Malta Film Awards to organize it a premium rate so that they can freely service the Labour Party during the general election.

I’m sorry, why on earth did anyone think that these barbarians actually care anything about culture? Carmelo Abela is as dumb as the Butt of Butthead in Beavis and Butthead and Jose Herrera can’t tell his Orson Welles from Ridley Scott, and you thought that these people will genuinely help the film industry?

They are in it for themselves and they use the culture industry for their own personal interests and those of the Party. They are also like opportunistic children – having had vacuous and boring lives, they now get excited like the infants they are for a photo with a foreign star. “Look, ma, I have a photo with David Walliams!”. They are ridiculous, and totally unfit for purpose. They also bring great shame to us and our country. This isn’t how we actually behave. We actually have some gravitas and unlike Carmelo Abela and Jose Herrera, we don’t actually get our pants wet when we meet a foreign actor.

The most important film directors boycotted the ceremony because they knew in advance it was going to be an extravagant show which didn’t respect the industry at all. The award ceremony was attended by three ministers and various government executives. Friends and members of the Labour Party got to announce some winners, like Jason Micallef and Veronique Dalli, Miriam’s sister who is now arguing publicly that we shouldn’t add the term femicide in our criminal code.

I don’t know why anyone would expect a heavily-funded awards ceremony without awards to be anything other than a scam.

Comments

  1. Peter Vassallo avatar
    Peter Vassallo

    Why should you attempt to belittle the Minister of Culture Jose Herrera. It was not Herrera who organized this activity although he had an obligation as Minister of Culture to hand the awards.

    I have met Jose Herrera on several occasions and I can assure you that he is very well versed in literature and the history of our Nation. Just to let you know, he certainly read Orson Welles and is an avid cinema goer and absolutely knows the movies by the genius that is Ridley Scott such as his masterpiece Bladerunner which is based on the book written by Philip K Dick. You should read it sometime, its called ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ and explores important themes such as empathy and other traits which distinguishes us humans from the rest of the animal kind and possibly AI. I encourage you to read it. I also encourage you to start being more realistic and faithful to the facts and the truth in your writings. One should not write to insult and offend others, but to discuss ideas and whenever needed call a spade a spade.

    I will not argue the main topic of your contribution which, in this case, is the Award Ceremony, I tend to partially agree with you especially if the moneys spent on this event runs into six figures, but I honestly feel that your bashing of Minister Herrera is unfair and unjustified.

    I hope that you publish my fair comment and thank you for the opportunity.

    Reply
    1. Max avatar
      Max

      Read Orson Welles? Orson Welles made films. You’re confusing him with H G Wells.

      Reply
      1. camillerimark avatar
        camillerimark

        You seem to be either dyslexic (nothing wrong with that) or having a hard time with English.

        Reply
      2. Peter Vassallo avatar
        Peter Vassallo

        Citizen Jake ? The book and screenplay were written by Welles

        Reply
      3. Peter Vassallo avatar
        Peter Vassallo

        Dear Mark,

        Since I cannot reply to your post below, I am taking the liberty of responding to you here.

        No. I do not have a reading disability. I understand the adjectives you used and attributed to other human beings.

        I refuse to go down this road, and I refuse to attribute an illness to anyone just because I disagree with him.

        I hope you place this gentle reply on your website

        Reply
    2. Rowena Scicluna (@silverrow) avatar
      Rowena Scicluna (@silverrow)

      @Peter Vassallo, I think you mean Citizen KANE (not Jake), which was directed by, and starred Orson Welles, but he didn’t write the book.

      Reply
  2. Anyone who?s ever paid for a billboard knows – Manuel Delia avatar
    Anyone who?s ever paid for a billboard knows – Manuel Delia

    […] need to ask what these things really cost and how they were acquired because everybody is thinking what Mark Camilleri said earlier today. That even above all that you see there?s an invisible but hefty layer of fat of advanced […]

    Reply
  3. Anyone whos ever paid for a billboard knows – Manuel Delia

    […] need to ask what these things really cost and how they were acquired because everybody is thinking what Mark Camilleri said earlier today. That even above all that you see theres an invisible but hefty layer of fat of advanced […]

    Reply
  4. Ben avatar
    Ben

    Herrera deserves every form of bashing. Just because he read a couple more books than his colleagues (which isn’t saying much) he is still a good-for-nothing political animal. He has installed cronies of his in all public cultural organisations as soon as he was given the portfolio while being surrounded by thugs whose only interests are contingent upon the interests of some tacky “event organisers” with shady connections. As for the cronies, they are either paid to bully people or to do nothing or both. So the hell with Herrera.

    Reply
  5. Bon?u News on Wednesday, 2 February - BON?U avatar
    Bon?u News on Wednesday, 2 February - BON?U

    […] Book Council chairman Mark Camilleri suggested that the government hired events organiser Tec Malta at a premium rate as an indirect […]

    Reply
  6. Bon?u News on Wednesday, 2 February - BON?U avatar
    Bon?u News on Wednesday, 2 February - BON?U

    […] Book Council chairman Mark Camilleri suggested that the government hired events organiser Tec Malta at a premium rate as an indirect […]

    Reply
  7. So, Clayton Bartolo lied to me | Mark Camilleri avatar
    So, Clayton Bartolo lied to me | Mark Camilleri

    […] It’s all normal in the rent-seeking paradise. The Ministry of Tourism is the Labour Party’s checking point for public subsidies to Labour Party donors and Clayton Bartolo’s role is only to ensure that this rent-seeking boat sails safely. Just recently, the Ministry of Tourism has splashed away ?2 million on a fake film award ceremony… […]

    Reply
  8. An election mired in abuses – Mark Camilleri avatar
    An election mired in abuses – Mark Camilleri

    […] These allegations are part of a long-running series of abuses made by the Labour Party in the run-up to the election. In fact, Labour inaugurated its election campaign with typical rent-seeking through the the Malta Film Awards – an event which did not distribute any real awards but was rather set up exclusively to pay off a Labour Party donor that regularly organizes its logistics, tents and platforms during election…. […]

    Reply
  9. A list of electoral abuses by the Labour Party – Mark Camilleri avatar
    A list of electoral abuses by the Labour Party – Mark Camilleri

    […] many instances of this corrupt practice. Most notable were the fake film awards which were used to pay-off a Labour Party donor which then went on to organize its logistics during the election campai…. Robert Abela also used the Public Broadcaster to release a scripted interview by the […]

    Reply
  10. This is not about free speech – Mark Camilleri avatar
    This is not about free speech – Mark Camilleri

    […] and corruption when needed. Just like Johann Cremona of the Malta Film Commission who used a fake Film Awards Ceremony to pay off for the Labour Party election logistics. Artists have been happy to accept these people for fear they would miss out on public funds if they […]

    Reply
  11. It’s not the war: it’s fraud – Mark Camilleri avatar
    It’s not the war: it’s fraud – Mark Camilleri

    […] an extensive spending spree, burning hundreds of millions of Euros on stupid projects, to appease contractors and friends of friends, and more millions to win the elections, the government has announced it will be trimming its […]

    Reply
  12. It’s not an economic sector: it’s the personal entertainment of a criminal organisation – Mark Camilleri avatar
    It’s not an economic sector: it’s the personal entertainment of a criminal organisation – Mark Camilleri

    […] industry is not a film industry at all, but a heavily-subsidised government scheme intended as the personal entertainment of the criminals that run the country. They can’t make it even more obvious that […]

    Reply
  13. Malta Film Commissioner Johann Grech publishes a populist and political against critics – Mark Camilleri avatar
    Malta Film Commissioner Johann Grech publishes a populist and political against critics – Mark Camilleri

    […] It is a political message worthy of a fascist or a criminal thug. Johann Grech has long been accused of blunders and reckless spending but he wants us to believe that it is all for the good of […]

    Reply
  14. Steve Ellul’s electoral campaign seems to be heavily funded – but we don’t know from whom – Mark Camilleri avatar
    Steve Ellul’s electoral campaign seems to be heavily funded – but we don’t know from whom – Mark Camilleri

    […] the full disclosure of the donations made to the Labour Party for its electoral campaign, but some regular names will surely be involved. Steve Ellul’s is also being backed by MaltaToday and Saviour Balzan and has been bankrolled […]

    Reply
  15. No, it didn’t – Mark Camilleri avatar
    No, it didn’t – Mark Camilleri

    […] It’s not complicated really, and these sub-literate barbarians have no idea what they are doing, except for using the culture industries as their private entertainment scene. There is no good reason or marketing sense to pay ?120,000 to a foreign actor to host your film awards in which you give literally nothing to the local awardees. […]

    Reply
  16. Only washed-up actors would do propaganda for a criminal government – Mark Camilleri avatar
    Only washed-up actors would do propaganda for a criminal government – Mark Camilleri

    […] serve as personal entertainers for our ministers and government executives. Two particular actors, David Walliams and Russell Crowe have been paraded by the Labour government […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *