Malta Film Commissioner Peter Busuttil recently gave a talk about filming in Malta and how the island is the prime location for European film-makers.
The talk was held during Production Value 2012 - the European Scheduling & Budgeting Workshop, organised by Focal and the Norwegian, Swedish and Austrian film institutes with great support from Media Training - a programme of the European Union.
Many famous faces attended the talk, including 32 film professionals from almost 20 European countries. These people were mostly assistant-directors, line producers, producers and directors.
Amongst those attending were Marco Valerio Pugini (TV series ‘Rome'), Stuart Renfrew (Bridget Jones' Diary), David A. Martinez (Knight and Day), Mathias Schwerbrock (John Rabe) and Kaare Storemyr (Kon-Tiki).
The informative session discussed how international producers and high-calibre film directors have been travelling to the Maltese islands for over 50 years. Despite tough competition from many other fantastic film locations, Malta has provides support services to many foreign film companies for the production of feature films, adverts and TV series.
The earliest known film shot in Malta was Sons of the Sea in 1925, directed by H. Bruce Woolfe. Many prestigious directors have shot films in Malta, such as Steven Spielberg, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone, Guy Ritchie, Robert Young, Ron Howard, Guy Hamilton, Alan Parker, Michael Anderson and Peter Yates.
