Pirates of the Mediterranean: A Game of Greed and Power
ORF-Enterprise
VERDICT: This historical documentary combines an operation to uncover a 16th century shipwreck with re-enactment and talking heads to explore an overlooked element of Europe’s past.
When we think of the golden age if piracy, we think of the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the 16th and 17th centuries. Pirates of the Mediterranean wants to bring us new horizons.
Of course, tales of salty sea-dogs pillaging on the oceans are hardly confined to one brief window of time and strict, specific locales. Still, the richness of the history of piracy in the Mediterranean is somewhat ignored, despite North African corsairs raiding from the Barbary Coast and white, Christian privateers using Malta as a base from which to raid the same seas. This documentary directed by Danielle Proskar seeks not only to highlight how under appreciated these accounts are, but to relate a variety of them in amongst factual context to create a narrative of swashbuckling on Europe’s doorstep.
The film is very much non-fiction in the television documentary tradition – down to its 50-minute running time – but it’s crafted with enough verve and expertise to make it eminently watchable, and the relation of the history is like a treasure chest boasting a hoard of fascinating titbits. From the political machinations that led to military and economic alliances, and the religious underpinnings of clashes over territory, to the ways in which the corsairs of the Mediterranean engaged in the flourishing, state-backed slave trade of the period.
These stories are conveyed through talking head experts recounting the nature of life on the Mediterranean at this time, via the verité account of a crew of maritime archaeologists examining a shipwreck, and through narrativised re-enactments, primarily of the life of Balthasar Sturmer. Although it contains some slightly clunky elements – its fourth wall-breaking buccaneers and some of the action sequences strike a bum note – for the most part the balance between education and entertainment works well. Pirates of the Mediterranean offers some genuinely intriguing historical nuggets while being handsomely shot. Pirates of the Mediterranean is as polished to a doubloon’s sheen.
Director, screenplay: Danielle Proskar
Cast: Felix Stichmann, Daniel Attard, Khaled Riani, Erica Muscat
Cinematography: Harald Staudach, Gianmichele Iaria, Andrew Randon
Editing: Markus Wogrolly
Music: Dorothee Freiberger, David Bronner
Sound: Nils Kirchhoff
Costume: Didi Mitzi
Production companies: ORF, e&a film (Austria), ARTE (France), Urban Canyons (UK/Malta)
Venue: Mediterrane (Out of Competition – Malta Expanded)
In English, German
52 minutes
