Mapping Film Education and Training on the Island of Malta

Abstract

While on location, shooting Casino Royale in 1968, British director Val Guest wrote an article for The Times of Malta, in which he described the small, newly independent island as an up-and-coming, low-cost alternative to more established runaway production sites like Italy, Spain, and France.1 Albeit quaint, Guest depicts a country eager to lure Hollywood to its shores. “I knew,” he asserts, “there was an emergent film industry in Malta when the uniformed boy who brought my baggage up to my hotel room informed me that should I ever need them, his whole family, numbering nine, could always make themselves available for work as extras.”2