by Marika Azzopardi

Walk into a pharmacy and meet the pharmacist, get your pills and walk back out. What about the pharmacist? The one I get to meet for this interview is 29-year-old Gabriel Micallef. I meet him in between his locum hours, curious to find out what his brush with film-making is all about.

“I graduated in 2005 from the University of Malta after the usual studies in pharmacy which included a stint in London as an Erasmus student. After graduating I spent five years working with the Medicines Authority at the Regulatory Affairs Department. However at a certain point in time I moved on to become a community pharmacist doing locum placements and part-time jobs. I am quite enjoying the experience…”

So where does film come in? It actually comes in pretty early on. At age 11 Gabriel had already filmed his first movie. “I ‘borrowed’ my dad’s camera, kidnapped my friends and proceeded to make a movie. It was my first brush with the experience of holding a camera and making things happen from behind the lens. In those days, the camera was pretty rudimentary of course – I could only use the VHS play/record system and my only editing tools were the record/pause buttons on the machine.”

Still, it worked out well and his friends and himself were pretty satisfied with the outcome. They became overnight stars, at least within their personal circle of family and friends. The young film-maker was soon in business ,,, “I started creating innovative school projects. Film-taking came in pretty handy for this purpose and every time I was assigned a school project, I filmed it all. It certainly attracted attention from the teachers who were used to the normal stuff – scrap books, papers, paintings … certainly not sit-down movies in class.”

Over the years, as he grew up, Gabriel started refining and honing his skills as well as increasing his equipment according to his budget and savings. “Today I have my own lights, my own equipment. Certainly I don’t have everything, but I have the essential basics which I purchased slowly, carefully and with my humble budget. I have to pay a loan on a house as most people do, so the pay packet can only stretch so far. But I work with what I have and so far have reached milestones which have reaped results.”

In fact, Gabriel Micallef has already participated in a number of short film festivals over the years. The first short film which he submitted was for a local film festival held in 2004. The film was called, ‘You can’t always get what you want.” Second movie – second film festival – ‘How to change your life in a minute’ and that was in 2005.

His third and latest complete short movie was for the Golden Knight Malta International Film Festival held in 2009. “This time, things were different. By then I had more equipment, such as a semi-professional camera plus increased knowledge of what I wanted to do. So I decided I’d go to a documentary styled film. I am very much into history and decided to tackle one period in time – the Norman invasion of Malta.”

The film was a mega job compared to his previous experiences. With some 16 actors on board, he wrote, filmed, produced and edited the movie himself. “As a docu-drama film it was only hampered by one regulation – its duration. To make it worth its while, I decided to divide it into two short clips – part one and part two, with each part not being longer than 17 minutes. I figured out that as a viable production, I could always invest in presenting the work as a TV documentary, one out of a series tackling varied epic moments in Maltese history.”

The movie participated in the festival and was subsequently uploaded on YouTube from where it registered 1000+ hits over a relatively short period of time. In the meantime Gabriel had been keeping busy promoting it. “I had shown it to most of the local TV stations and whilst the production was appreciated, I found that there is really very little financial back-up to support young people like myself.”

“The fact that a short film is a low budget film makes it possible for me to produce it with minimal expense knowing that I cannot dream of paying actors, have to use all my own equipment and consume up all of my spare time. At the end, if all extra work is done by myself, by searching for sponsors I can only hope to recuperate costs or at least break-even.”

So why do it?  “For the passion of it all. I am inspired by a number of big producers who started out as short film producers and have made it big……Take Robert Rodriguez whose first film was ‘El Mariachi’. Then there is the great Quentin Tarantino of course. Short films are usually low-budget movies, anyone can  make them and will have no famous actors. Producers have to make do with very little, and then of course there are different grades of low-budget movies as well. I like to listen to the directors’ remarks on their films as such comments are always greatly inspiring and provide a window onto all the background work that went into each production.”

As his portfolio grows, Gabriel has taken on a number of short films for local youth communities and the like. In the meantime, he is studying for an MBA, working hard in varied pharmacies and keeping his Iphone handy – “I use it to make a note of every idea that crops up during my day – and working in a pharmacy is a great opportunity to learn more about human nature and human realities. Who knows what my next film will be about ?” Maybe a series about a Pharmacist!

Find ‘The Norman Invasion’ by Gabriel Micallef on youtube –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqibhSipoLs