My essentials: Jamie Vella’s cultural picks

About

A lifelong passion for film and history. My formal education in architecture further enriched these passions, giving me a clearer understanding on visual literacy and the creative conception of things. This background continues to inform and inspire my creative work today.

Book

The Black Count by Tom Reiss.It is a biography about the life of Alexandre Dumas’s father, who was French of African descent and rose up to the rank of general during the revolutionary wars and later within Napoleon’s army. His endearing rise and determination were made possible by the openness of post-revolutionary France, yet later becoming unjustly tragic as the political mechanisation of Napoleon starts to take hold. Despite a life of brilliance and loyalty, the book left me with a great sense of existential solitude, which I very much found similar to The Stranger by Albert Camus.

Film

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It’s just pure perfection. The cinematography by Roger Deakins, the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and a career best performance by Casey Affleck. How the film unravels its themes of celebrity, fame and identity, encased within a Western, while simultaneously demythologising, is nothing sort of brilliant. The contrasting characterisations of Pitt’s Jesse James and Affleck’s Ford and how it ultimately all converges into that overly-long film title is simply visual poetry.

Internet

I absolutely love Bajd U Bejken. Some much-needed levity and humour in an otherwise constantly serious and dour Maltese online landscape. There is something special and unmatched about getting to laugh in your own language.

Music

I don’t know why but the older I’ve gotten the more I have moved away from specifically listening to bands as I once used to. I now almost exclusively dig up, keep track, and listen to film scores. Recently I have been listening to Robin Carolan’s Nosferatu score. As with all his previous works with Robert Eggers there is this unmatched sense of authenticity, and this subtle restrain to the music which makes it so engrossing and evocative.

Travel

The western coast of Turkey is always on my mind for a revisit. From Çanakkale down to Kaş, the untouched coastline is filled with authentic and carefully developed towns. It  just makes it a quintessential Mediterranean experience. Then throw in some of the best-preserved ancient Greek and Roman ruins (Ephesus, Priene, Millitus, Temple of Apollo, Assos, Troy, Termessos) and you are truly in an 1800s romanticised painting of the Mediterranean world.