Mediterranean theme at Evenings on Campus

This year's Evenings on Campus promises to get people's minds off the heat with an intense two-week summer festival of open-air events at the university.

The festival, which runs between July 15 and July 27, is organised by Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja (KKU) and the university, in collaboration with the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, University Students' Council (KSU) and KPMG. With the theme Waiting for Godo'... Around the Mediterranean, KKU is aiming to give the audience a taste of the joyfulness and the thoughtfulness which distinguishes the Mediterranean approach to life.

The reels for the open-air film festival will go up on July 18 at 8.30 p.m. with Roberto Benigni's La Tigre e La Neve, a comic drama that focuses on a love-struck Italian poet who is stuck in Iraq at the onset of an American invasion.

Other films include the 1961 French documentary Chronique D'Un Été on July 19, and Spanish drama Mondays In The Sun starring Javier Bardem on July 20, among others.

Evenings on Campus include a dramatised literary evening woven out of excerpts from the best works of Saydon in prose, poetry and translation called Sajdorama on July 17 at 8.30 p.m.

Between July 21-23 there will be three one-act plays brought together under the title Mediterranean Clutter. The plays are brought together in virtue of their portrayal of two archetypal Mediterranean characters - Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon.

The evenings, which start at 8.30 p.m., present Italian, Greek and Egyptian versions of the characteristic philosophical discussions of the absurdities of life and the constant waiting for something better to happen.

On July 24 the Saxybrass Concert will start at 9 p.m. The Medina Saxophone Quartet will be directed by Joseph Vella, who has trained at the Conservatory of Lyons in France and teaches at the Johann Strauss School of Music. The programme will include classical, semi-classical and jazz music.

Meanwhile, the Aboss Brass Ensemble will be directed by Philip Ciantar, lecturer in ethno musicology at the university and a leading authority on Libyan music. The ensemble will play baroque, classical, semi-classical, jazz and contemporary Maltese compositions. The two ensembles will also perform together to give a 21st century expression of Mediterranean creativity and structured spontaneity.

On July 26, Luigi di Pino, composer and singer/songwriter, together with his group of four musicians and singers, will take the audience back in time with Cantastorie, novel Mediterranean songs and storytelling from the Sicilian folk tradition at 8.30 p.m.