We need to talk about Dom | Pierre Ellul

"Most people were scared to talk on camera, but they would tell me their 'Mintoff' stories face to face. Like the man who burst into tears as he recounted being bundled up, beaten and thrown into prison during the 80s, for no reason at all."
Director-producer Pierre Ellul insists that it is stories like these that make a documentary sing with humanity.

"History does not exist in a vacuum of documents, it's made of people..."

This belief has sustained his vision of Dear Dom - a feature-length documentary on Dom Mintoff, which premiered at Eden Cinemas on 23 March.

The film takes a broad look at Dom Mintoff's reign over Malta - effectively portraying a long stretch of Maltese history, from the 50s through to the 80s - and takes the shape of an 'open letter' written to the controversial former Labour leader and prime minister.

According to the cinema itself, the film has proven to be a box office hit.

But it is perhaps to be expected that the film also evoked strong reactions among the Maltese from all walks of life (not to mention from different parts of the political divide).

Ever since the media caught wind of Ellul's production, he has insisted that his approach was not politically motivated in any way. Another recurring 'disclaimer' that Ellul consistently made about his hour-long documentary was that first and foremost, he's interested in stories, in people and "in the way that a film can touch people".

"If something doesn't touch you - be it a film, book or any other form of art, I personally believe that it has failed."

Ellul claims that in this sense, Mintoff was the perfect subject, because he stirs emotions in people to this day. But though the film has been praised by most critics, a section of filmgoers remained unconvinced (at best) by Ellul's approach.

The mainstream media has largely been kind to Dear Dom, appreciating it as an unprecedented attempt to depict a crucial character from Maltese history. The most scathing criticism, however, came from the fringes: social networking and blogs.

Perhaps one of the most negative appraisals was by Fr Mark Montebello, who lambasted the film as 'banal and insolent', taking Ellul and co. to task for - according to Montebello - presuming to 'know Mintoff inside out', while remaining superficial throughout and operating on what is 'a parody of the historical discipline'.

The perceived lack of historical thoroughness was also a criticism levelled at Ellul by Mark Camilleri - former editor of beleaguered student newspaper Ir-Realta, and a history student - who said that he didn't even need to watch the film to determine that it's not a worthwhile effort.

'As an aspiring historian I have learned to judge historiography by its bibliography,' Camilleri writes in his blog, complaining that having Joseph M. Pirotta as a 'historical consultant', and using The Times as a historical media resource was not enough.

Given that a film on Mintoff was bound to cause controversy no matter what approach it took, is Ellul satisfied with the kind of reaction the film has been getting?

"Film is of course subjective: you can like it or dislike it - I have absolutely no problem with that, and any constructive criticism is welcome. But what I absolutely do not accept are people who claim that I'm spreading hatred, or that I made the film with malicious intent, or that I'm dishonest. These are fundamentalist comments, this is not legitimate criticism. It is actually these comments which are in fact dangerous," Ellul says, adding that he has yet to encounter a "healthy, honest and mature debate" about the film.

On whether the film stands up to rigorous academic scrutiny, Ellul says that this argument "does not hold. Historical documents and documentaries are two different media. I'll leave  academics and students to their theses. Bibliographies are meant for academic books and theses not for film. Evidently someone like Camilleri just looked at the credits to the film and thought these were all the sources used. He obviously does not understand what film credits are. Montebello's analysis is also incorrect because I have never claimed to know Mintoff inside out, as he says. Also I needed to condense a lot of history into an hour, and I needed to make it flow, not put people to sleep. Would the audience have sat through a six-hour film?" Ellul says.

Ellul also dismisses any claims that the film is a piece of PN propaganda as "complete hogwash".

"If that were true, I wouldn't have included any reference to the interdict for example or have ex-Labour minister Lino Spiteri as the key interviewee. The film is based on the reality on the ground. If you're not going to accept the fact that there are people who suffered under Mintoff, you're living in denial. I'm not denying that there were people who benefited during his time as prime minister. But if you benefited you don't have much to complain about, do you?"

Perhaps the most public criticism came from Dom Mintoff's daughter Yana Mintoff-Bland, who said in a TVAM interview that she was speaking to her lawyers about the film, which she described as being disrespectful to Dom Mintoff, and that its handling of crucial historical episodes was 'superficial'.

Ellul was not surprised by her reaction, however. "Well, he's her father, at the end of the day - it's understandable that she'd be more emotionally involved than the average filmgoer. I never expected her to tell me 'well done'."

Yana Mintoff-Bland was however kinder when discussing the first half of the film, which depicted Mintoff's early days as leader of the Labour party. It's easy to see why - in the first half of Ellul's documentary, we witness Mintoff as the fearless, charismatic reformer, taking on both the Church and British colonial rule, apparently single-handedly.

His diplomatic tug-of-war with the uptight baron Lord Carrington over the rent of a British military base in Malta shows him as both an expert negotiator and a witty, media-friendly personality: feeding sound bites to the press while remaining coy about any key political information.

It's quite telling how the 'bargaining encounter' between Mintoff and Carrington is required reading by a number of American universities as an example of 'David and Goliath' style negotiation.

"At one point, I actually considered zooming into this episode and basing the entire film around it - because it's fascinating to see how Mintoff played the whole thing. There's a record in British documentation which shows that while in Rome negotiating with Carrington, Mintoff visited Russian delegates at the Embassy of Czechoslovakia, because he knew the Russians always wanted to have a base in the Mediterranean. So he played that card..."

One wonders whether Ellul would have dodged accusations of superficiality had he in fact focused his scope a little bit, and opted against presenting such a broad sweep of Maltese history. There are several episodes that would have been ripe for the picking. Ellul flags up the interdict and the National Bank scandal as potential full-length documentary material.

"But I decided against homing in on just one aspect because, based on the hundreds of people I spoke to, I wanted to stay true to the strong emotions he still stirs up. In doing this I could not go into the full detail of the stories I covered but I hope that this film will entice people to read further. "

But this wasn't the only big decision that Ellul took while he was cooking up the film. The long process that saw Dear Dom finally reach our cinemas began in 2006, when Ellul began digging through the National Archives in London for Mintoff material when he had just completed working as an Assistant Director on the Hollywood science fiction film Children of Men.

"The original idea was to do a one-on-one interview film, in the vein of Oliver Stone's Comandante [an interview-documentary on Fidel Castro]. I got a hold of Dom Mintoff's number and called him. Our conversations were very brief, and he always insisted that I send him a fax... it wasn't very easy to find a fax machine in London! So I sent him faxes, and worked towards meeting him.

"When I came down to meet him, Dom Mintoff's health had taken a turn for the worse , so I then got in touch with his brother, Fr Dionysius.  After a five-hour conversation on the subject with Fr Dionysius, I realised my original plan  wasn't going to happen..."

Ellul believes that he might have been 10 years too late for a one-on-one approach to his documentary.

"His health was obviously an issue, and I also think it would have been unfair and disrespectful to show him in that state on the screen - knowing what a monumental part he played in Maltese history in the past. Not to mention the fact that getting him to actually agree on a feature-length interview would have been a challenge..."

Ellul also briefly toyed with the idea of including Fr Dionysius as a key character in the film.

"It would have made for a beautiful conflict, from a filmic point of view - you have Fr Dionysius the priest on the one hand, and on the other you have Mintoff, who was interdicted by the Church. So you'd have the external conflict between Church and State, and the internal conflict of brother vs. brother. But of course it didn't happen, Fr Dionysius wasn't that keen on it..."

The final cut of the film does however feature a priest who suffered a similar emotional, religious and political conflict. Can. Joe Abela, who contributes a telling insight into the tumultuous relationship between the Church and the government of the time, speaks from the heart.

"All of his family were drydocks workers, and all of them were interdicted, and then you have him as the priest. Really, it's the stuff of a feature film."

The figure of the priest is also an integral part of the jigsaw puzzle that made up Ellul's strategy with the documentary.

"After all the previous ideas fell through, I began to think about how to  put it all together. Based on a few informal chats I had with [anthropologist] Dr Mark Anthony Falzon, and more research on this aspect, I homed in on the idea of the 'the Maltese village' - where you had stock characters that make up the village: apart from the priest, there was the politician, the village doctor, and of course the people. So I used that idea as a springboard."

Slotting into the 'politician' roles within this plan is the economist Lino Spiteri, who was a former member of Mintoff's Cabinet. The doctor Joe Psaila Savona ,was also former PN Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism in the traditionally Labourite stronghold Zejtun. The interviews with these two former politicians are placed side by side in the documentary, creating the impression of a back and forth discussion on Mintoff's pros and cons.

The 'villagers' are also represented by two distinctly different people, both from a working class environment. Former drydocks worker Leli Saliba's testimonial is particularly emotional. The 82-year-old former drydocks worker, a staunch Nationalist supporter, lost his eyesight after being beaten due to his political beliefs - and, naturally, sees Mintoff as the personification of all of Malta's social and political shortcomings. On the other hand, the 81-year-old MintoffjanaTheresa Micallef provides a window into the social changes that Mintoff brought about following WWII, most notable of which were social welfare programmes.

With these opposing - though eerily parallel - viewpoints, Ellul appears to deliberately position Mintoff as a figure who can never really be pinned down either way. But the voice-over narration which addresses Mintoff in first person as if drafting a letter to the former prime minister - thus lending the film its title - isn't exactly neutral, particularly towards the end, where Ellul's script claims Mintoff left 'scars' on the Maltese psyche.

"I used the narration to tie up the different events, and  the different stories that make up the film. Some people have criticised me for not taking a strong enough position with this device. And yes, maybe that's correct. But I'm aware of the sensitivity of the subject. In the end I take a position, in the form of a reflection. I mentioned that throughout the 60s, Mintoff and his supporters were made to endure a lot of pain, shame and suffering. But then I question Mintoff's behaviour in the following decades and ask: did he behave the way he did throughout the 80s as a result of what happened in the 60s?"

Somewhat ambitiously, Ellul hopes that the film will help people see Mintoff from a different perspective, acknowledge the pain caused  and give courage to people to come forward and tell their stories.
"This pain hasn't been acknowledged, and in order to find closure, you need to acknowledge that you've done something wrong and you need to apologise - but it needs to be a heartfelt apology. Hence my reference to 'the scar'."

But over and above the minor furore that the film has caused since its release, and given that it's being classified as a 'local box office hit' - though what the benchmark is in that respect is hard to pin down - what are the economic realities of making a film like Dear Dom?

"Sometimes people forget that this is a commercial project. I'm not a hobbyist, filmmaking is what I do for a living. For Dear Dom I personally put up 40% of the budget, 10% came from a friend of mine while The Malta Film Fund put up 50%.

"I don't expect to ever make my money back from the film, let alone a profit. This is the reality of our market, because we're so small."

But despite this - and despite the fact that Ellul describes the process of making the documentary as "torturous" - Ellul is happy to have made what he believes to be a "balanced" film, though "it was extremely difficult to find that balance".

"I thought of throwing in the towel on more than one occasion, but my wife spurred me on. And thank God she did push me because I think it's an important piece. You may not like it - you have every right not to. But I still think it's important to have it there, to hopefully trigger a mature debate on this part of our history..."