From Venice to Malta: MALETH Finds Its Home

Celebrating Maltese artists and their work, the Malta Arts Council’s RETOLD initiative brings the MALETH exhibition back from the Venice Biennale to its homeland. Featuring powerful works by Vince Briffa and Trevor Borg, this series invites local audiences to engage with themes of identity, refuge, and belonging through contemporary Maltese art.

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How Board Games Rediscovered Imagination, Sociality, and Play

Board games have, for a long time, been overshadowed by the rise of digital entertainment. In an age of constant feedback loops and the fraying of social connective tissue, Prof. Gordon Calleja, designer, author, and academic at UM’s Institute of Digital Games, unravels why modern board games can play an essential role in developing our imagination and strengthening social connections, in a time where such connections might be slowly fading.

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Why We Love Horror

You’re alone in a dark room, your laptop casting flickering shadows as a horror film builds to a crescendo. The music tightens. A breath catches. Something is coming. And you? You can’t look away. In fact, no matter how absolutely terrified you are, you’re loving every second of this. How does that make sense?

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The Fifth Edition of the EUNIC European Film Festival Comes to Valletta

Every September, Valletta opens its doors to stories from across Europe, told not through policy documents or speeches, but through the universal language of cinema. The EUNIC European Film Festival has become a fixture in Malta’s cultural calendar, bringing films that would otherwise never appear on local screens. At its heart lies a belief that cinema can transcend borders, spark dialogue, and foster empathy.

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Drawing Valletta: Tracing the Mind Behind the City

Exhibited for only the second time in Malta, at the Grand Ambitions exhibition at the Co-Cathedral of St John, Francesco Laparelli da Cortona’s 16th-century drawings provide us a rare opportunity to glimpse the architectural process behind the creation of Valletta. THINK traces back the journey of these drawings, from their birth in post-siege Malta to their return home, and uncovers the indelible mark Laparelli left on the city we know today.

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Fragments of Freedom: Emvin Cremona’s Glass Collage Revolution

Imagine walking into Malta’s National Museum of Fine Arts in 1969, expecting serene saints or picturesque landscapes, and instead finding canvases studded with shattered glass and swirls of cement. Visitors at the time were stunned. Was this really the work of Emvin Cremona, the nation’s beloved painter of churches and stamps? Fast forward to today, and those very works are on display again at the Victor Pasmore Gallery run by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti in Valletta, inviting a fresh look at a Maltese modern art pioneer who broke away, quite literally, from tradition.

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No Tongue nor Tome to Tell the Tale

Is-Siġġijiet is not just about chairs. It is also about nothingness and meaninglessness, miscommunication and isolation – that type when you look back and realise you never amounted to much. It’s a stark irrelevance that gnaws at you and makes you desperate to hold onto whatever significance you can and say ‘yes, it wasn’t all for nothing’. It’s not a comforting thought, but the script does well in hiding that with its quips and gags.

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