There are moments when the past rises not as a single memory, but as a chorus. Old reels breathe again, and with them come the voices of those who shaped, witnessed, questioned, and protected the fragile miracle of film. My Diary today gathers those voices - not in conflict, but in conversation - each one carrying a shard of Cecil Satariano's legacy.
Here, the pages turn like the slow flicker of a projector warming up. Dust lifts. Light spills. And the people who knew Cecil, who worked beside him, who loved him, who restored him, step forward to speak. This event was organised by the National Archives of Malta.
This was an event taking place at St James Cavalier over three nights. I am here writing about a panel which took place on the second night. This happened in October last year. I can hear my father's voice saying tempus fugit.
Joe Debono the czar of Studio Seven, who worked with Cecil on Giuseppi in 1972, sounds somewhat wounded. He remembers the original film intimately - the Super 8 grain, the careful editing, the deliberate restraint. He recalls the long hours spent laying the soundtrack, the shared decision "to keep the music and effects to the barest minimum as the edited picture was so strong that it needed very little."
And then, decades later, Joe sits in the cinema of St James Cavalier, waiting for the film he once helped shape to return to life.
But what he hears is not what he remembers. "Whoever was responsible for the digitisation process completely ignored the original soundtrack... Instead they laid all along the film a concerto by Charles Camilleri together with a lot of loud special effects." He is not pleased.
This Diary holds his words gently, even when they tremble with frustration.
He speaks of structure undone, of intention overwritten, of a film's heartbeat drowned beneath a new score. "This completely changed the feeling, the structure of the whole production... The soundtrack is overbearing on the picture." He doesn't mince his words. His intervention ends not in anger, but in sorrow - a plea for respect, for fidelity, for the fragile truth of an artist's original vision. "Cecil Satariano deserves better treatment."
Madeleine Vella Satariano, herself an artist, daughter of Cecil and Eileen talks tenderly about her father and the house where films were born.
After Joe's sharpness, Madeleine's voice enters like a warm room - a kitchen light left on, a father climbing the stairs to edit while a mother waits with a warm meal. Her memories are not technical; they are human, domestic, tender. She recalls being a teenager, watching her father disappear into his world of aluminium foil, kartonċin, and improvised reflectors. "I remember Dad spending hours upstairs editing, and Mum patiently waiting for him downstairs with a warm meal. Her commentary is a portrait of a man whose creativity spilled into every corner of the house. A father who drifted into meditative thought even while driving, but never losing control. A man whose mind never stopped inventing.
"My father was a very intelligent and creative person, his mind never stopped planning and creating..." She writes of love, of mentorship, of a father who was calm, steady, and present and of his tender last words on her wedding day just as they were leaving their home to go to church. "Daddy was always there for his family... He helped me through rough times and he was my mentor and support in my personal life and in my artistic journey."
Her comments soften the proceedings - reminding us that behind every reel, every restoration, every disagreement, there is a family, a home, a heartbeat.
My own presence in Cecil's creative world was limited. He was a member of the governments Censorship Board, while I, on the other hand a member of the Censorship Reform Group. Censorship was harsh in those days. I wrote against censorship, Cecil reviewed films for the same newspaper. I cannot remember how we first met all those years ago. The Satarianos lived a stone's throwaway from my family home. Anyway, somehow we got together because I read his articles and he read mine. He was also a friend of Lino Cassar, that mischievous journalist, a gentle giant you had to love. Lino had access to the Forces cinema where films were not censored and he invited me and Cecil to join him from time to time. I felt like a naughty girl on those occasions but enjoyed the experience of watching uncensored films. That was me Contra Mundi.
On several occasions I wrote about Cecil and his film making. He was warm, funny, dedicated and quite brilliant. I knew his wife Eileen had no objection to my accompanying him to the cinema or while making films. This was not always a bed of roses, especially in the summer months. While filming The Beach ankle deep in sand on some sizzling day, he would mutter "Sandy, bloody Sandy," the title of a popular film at the time which had been censored.
His life was cut short far too soon. He had plans for other films. He had left me a note saying that now that we are joining the EU there would be plenty of funds. He would do the filming and I would write the scripts. I still feel sad to think that he had so much to give but wasn't given the chance.
Veronica Galea, Director, Cecil Satariano Film Restoration Project, after Joe Debono's intervention was not defensive, but deliberate, shaped by responsibility and the determination to save Malta's film production. " What she did was amazing," someone told me.
Veronica was not on this panel but from the floor she spoke as someone who has handled the reels themselves, who has sifted through "no less than twenty film reels of edited film and film footage" Her voice is that of an archaeologist of images, piecing together fragments of a filmmaker who often reworked his own creations.
She explains the discovery of the audio reel to the awarding winning Giuseppi - found in a garage, a relic waiting to be heard. And she frames her decision with a metaphor that feels almost ceremonial: "As in the field of archeology, if you find chards of ancient crockery deep in the ground, you dig them out and piece them together. The same applies in film restoration." Her comments acknowledge Joe's hurt, but also the duty she felt: "Had this work not been carried out, it would have been a failure of duty... depriving both the Satariano family and the wider public the opportunity to experience a second version of the film Giuseppi."
She admits her one regret - not showing both versions on the same evening - and attributes it to lack of funds, not lack of will. Her voice is steady, committed, and tinged with exhaustion: "Scraping money from here and there is not going to make this happen... Without dedicated funding... we stand to lose our heritage in film."
Jean Pierre's voice widens the frame. He was brought in by the National Archives who knew of his dedication and who brought him in to bring this three day event into existence. This event was their idea.
Where Joe Debono speaks from memory and Veronica from duty, Jean Pierre speaks from structure - the architecture of the project, the team, the nights of screenings.
He recalls how he first met Veronica, how he introduced her to Madeleine, Cecil's daughter, how the films found their way into the hands of those who could preserve them. He spoke of the National Archives stepping in, of climate‑controlled rooms, of reels rescued from deterioration. He describes the team - four people, each carrying a piece of the work - and his own role shaped by years of research and close contact with the film world, Cecil's world. His intervention that evening becomes almost cinematic as he recounts the three nights of the retrospective: the introductions, the presentations, the screenings, the panel discussions, the restored films, the unrestored travelogues.
Mario Philip Azzopardi whose work on films especially in Canada is well known and much appreciated and who now lives in Malta also made a valuable contribution.
When the projector stops, the voices remain. Joe's pain, Madeleine's tenderness, Veronica's duty, Jean Pierre's structure - each one a necessary thread in the tapestry of a filmmaker's afterlife. My Diary does not choose sides. It listens. That evening honoured the man who created Giuseppi, the family who loved him, the collaborators who shaped his films, and the restorers who tried - with limited means and abundant devotion - to bring his work back into the light.
What remains is not a single version of a film, but a constellation of memories.
What returns is the understanding that art lives not only in reels, but in the people who carry it forward.
I am now totally convinced that something must be done to save Malta's film heritage.
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