Spazju Kreattiv Cinema continued into this new year with a highly curated programme of local and international arthouse films. With this in mind, the cinema continues to put itself on the local cinema scene with further collaborations with many entities across the country.

Our cinema boasts to be the only arthouse cinema in Malta showing quality films from across the world. Some of our season highlights  included critically-acclaimed and award-winning films such as Licorice Pizza, Lamb, The French Dispatch, Titane, Benedetta, Petite Maman, Parallel Mothers, Belfast and Red Rocket amongst others. 

Alongside these films, documentaries such as V&A Presents Alice: Curiouser And Curiouser, Sabaya, The Lost Leonardo and Wake up Punk were screened. This year, the cinema catalogue also included music related documentaries including Jazz On A Summer’s Day, The Doors: Live At The Bowl ’68 Special Edition, Ennio: The Maestro and George Michael Freedom Uncut. 

Annual appointments included the European Arthouse Cinema Day in collaboration with the Irish Embassy, Spanish Embassy, Istituto Italiano and The Alliance Française de Malte-Méditerranée; European Cinema Night which screened the film Undine worldwide, and lastly the LUX  Audience Week which included the screenings of Quo Vadis, Aida?, Flee and Great Freedom. 

Spazju Kreattiv hosted the first edition of the MedFilm in Malta 2022 with the main theme being “We love the Sea”, organised by Costantino Films Ltd in collaboration with the MedFilm Festival of Rome, chaired by Ginella Vocca and Giovanni Costantino, is part of an international partnership with the film festivals of Formentera, Palma de Mallorca, Menorca, Ortigia, Alghero and Montenegro and supported by National Geographic. 

The EUNIC Film Festival in collaboration with Malta’s European Commission, Arts Council Malta, the Alliance Française de Malte-Méditerranée, the German Embassy in Valletta, the German-Maltese Circle, The British Council, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, the Spanish Embassy, the Austrian Embassy and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura La Valletta showcased many great films from each respective country. 

Also, in November 2021, Spazju Kreattiv hosted the 17th edition of the Kinemastik International Short Film Festival 2021. This brought four programmes of international, award-winning shorts to the screen. This edition’s Main Screen International Competition section consists of four programmes — Rupture, Possibly Repair and We Are All Political (Animals), Ways of Seeing and (Don’t) Look Away. The films have been selected from Sheffield Docs, Berlinale, FIDMarseille, Cannes (Semaine de la Critique), Locarno, Animateka, Venice, IDFA, Guanajuato (MX), Winterthur (CH), Toronto (TIFF), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (UK) and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and consist of a variety of genres including animation, experimental, documentary and fiction, all under 30 minutes in length.

Collaborations with projects from the Visual Arts strand were also organised including the REFRACTION x SOURA Film Festival and The Ordinary Lives of Women Film Programme, with both endeavours included a selection of films expanding the exhibition’s theme to the world of cinema. The REFRACTION x Soura Film Festival: Queer Stories from the SWANA Region had a shorts programme that aimed to provide a broad selection of queer stories from the SWANA region through mixed genres, countries of origin, and especially a diverse spectrum of queer identities. Soura Film Festival’s mission is to create a safe and welcoming space for filmmakers from the South West Asia & North Africa region, whose creative vision has challenged heteronormativity and patriarchal environments, and have explored queerness and what it represents to them. 

Malta’s indigenous community continued to thrive in our cinema space. The continuous collaboration with the Malta Indie Shorts, a series previewing local short films alongside post screening discussions, contributed to more debates within this field and a community of local filmmakers with monthly meet-ups. In this vein, partnerships in our cinema calendar included the screening of In Arden by Teatru Salesjan, Is-Sriep Reġgħu Saru Velenużi directed by Martin Bonnici and adaptation of Teodor Reljic, the critically-acclaimed Luzzu by Alex Camilleri, Keith Albert Tedesco’s Uwijja, award-winning film Blood on the Crown directed by Davide Ferrario with a script by Jean Pierre Magro, and Blat: The Island Fortress produced by Reuben Pace and directed by Alan Fenech. Spazju Kreattiv also hosted preview screenings for Cats of Malta, The Great Beyond, Stejjer b’Distanza and Machination. 

The live and encore screenings of the Exhibition on Screen (EoS) series, the MET Opera Season 2021-2022 and the National Theatre Live continued with some performances from the latter being postponed due to the pandemic. Some of the season highlights include the MET’s Turandot, Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Boris Gudonov, as well as the NT film Romeo and Juliet and screened staged production of Prima Facie. The Frida Kahlo documentary by EoS was also highly popular with our audiences. 

The Bolshoi Ballet Season was cancelled due to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.  In an effort to contribute to the fundraising of the Russian-Ukrainian war  Spazju Kreattiv Cinema contributed with a screening where proceeds were given to the ongoing efforts. The film ‘The Earth is Blue as an Orange’ was a success in bringing together people across Malta to fundraise through the love of cinema. 

Our ever-growing relationships with local international embassies continue. The Spanish Film Days and French Film Days made a return, as well as Cinema Italia a Malta. To add to this network of collaborations  during this season Spazju Kreattiv Cinema started its first ever Irish Film Days, Lithuanian Film Days and Australian Film Days. 

Our cinema also hosted two screenings as part of Refugee Week in June 2022. And, continued its collaboration with the Malta Chamber of Scientists through the Ċinexjenza programme which also made a return and successfully ran another year of screenings and discussions. Other events included The annual Happy Chinese New Year Film Festival held in February.   

Through these efforts, Spazju Kreattiv Cinema seeks to  bring to the forefront arthouse cinema to the Maltese Islands and continue to foster the local indigenous film community and expose audiences to what best the international film industry has to offer.