International Theatre Festival Malta was established in 1991 in a city regarded as pragmatic, oriented towards investment and economic development, with a high standard of living of its inhabitants. A project, which is now a mature cultural event associated specifically with Poznań, originated and developed step by step in such - by no means obvious - context.
READ ABOUT HISTORY OF MALTA FESTIVAL POZNAN
IDIOMS
New World Order / Nowy Ład Światowy Idiom (2015) - Tim Etchells
The curator of the New World Order Idiom will be Tim Etchells, the founder and leader of the legendary theatre company Forced Entertainment, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year. Tim Etchells is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest personalities in contemporary performing arts. He has developed his own distinctive style of speaking about complicated matters. This brings together a social and existential perspective in an approach that employs brevity, metaphor and simple theatrical devices that are often inspired by the mechanisms of everyday life or the media.
Latin America: Mestizos / Mieszańcy (2014) - Rodrigo Garcia
This year at the Malta Festival, we once again encourage you to cross various limits: geographical ones, the limits of everyday habits, those of your own imagination and, of course, the limits between the particular fields of the arts. We believe that the festival’s mission is to invite everyone to confront what we do not know too well, and to look at the surrounding world in a holistic way: as a combination of mutually impacting narratives, orders and themes.
In June, over the course of three weeks, we want to show you how close Latin America is to us, and how original and inspiring its artistic life is. We do not want to “discover America”. We try to avoid the position of a new cultural coloniser who violently conquers a new land and then delights in 'discovering' the new world. Instead, we ask the artists from Latin America to help us verify our own views and conceptions, and to widen the spectrum of our perspectives. We want to accommodate these artists and invite them to take part in a dialogue about the contemporary world, in which the global scale draws us very near. After our encounter with Asia in the Akcje Azjatyckie / Asian Investments Idiom (2012), we look to the other side of the Atlantic, to find a reflection of the European experience in the mirror of Latin America. One person who connects both these worlds is Rodrigo García, the curator of this year’s Idiom Ameryka Łacińska: Mieszańcy / Latin America: Mestizos, a unique socially involved and radical artist from Argentina who has been living in Europe for many years.
Apart from the Idiom, the programme of the twenty fourth Malta Festival Poznań also features numerous other events, each of which celebrates a different kind of togetherness and encounters with the arts. These include Generator Malta, a project that focuses on the urban space of Poznań and transforms Wolności Square into a cinema and stage, then into a venue for workshops, discussions and experiments. There is also Old Brewery New Dance at Malta, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, and the Malta Stage, which focuses on presenting Polish theatre and dance projects. Furthermore, this year’s extremely rich musical programme emphasises alternative music from Latin America. The festival will end with a concert by Damon Albarn, one of the most charismatic musicians in the European alternative scene, who will perform in the spectacular interiors of the Old Gasworks. Another exceptional guest in Poznań is the legend of contemporary dance, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker. This Belgian choreographer will present to the Malta audience Fase and Drumming, two shows that have become points of reference for subsequent generations of artists.
Every edition of Malta Festival is an invitation to take part in our festival discourse and to celebrate. It creates an unforgettable landscape of reminiscences, experiences and images. I strongly invite you to contribute to its creation.
MICHAŁ MERCZYŃSKI
Festival Director