Valletta 2018’s ‘Gozo weekend’ kicks off with three fun activities for the whole family, all taking place tomorrow and on Sunday.

These include a performance by Magna Żmien’s Magnificent Memories Machine which will be at Cathedral Square inside Gozo’s Ċittadella, Victoria, tomorrow at 8pm.

The night will be dedicated to the collection of local memories from Gozo, with a programme featuring a time-machine performance by Armchair Voyager No. 35, Wistin, and the Banda tal-Memorji Meraviljużi.

The audience is invited to engage with the Magnificent Memories Machine itself during this performance, and to enjoy a sound installation by Timothy Garrett and visuals by Andrej Vujicic.

Magna Żmien’s Magnificent Memories Machine. Photo: Elisa Von Brockdorff

Magna Żmien is a movement to collect, convert and make available fading memories through the digitisation of sound and image home collections.

From the project’s inception, 54 audio cassettes, 31 audio open reels, 64 8mm film, 24 Super 8 films, 422 photographs and 294 negatives have been digitised.

These salvaged memories will provide a fertile collective context for present and future cyberspace navigators and storytellers. Copies of the material generated will be given to the National Archives at the end of the project.

1001 Dreams – an installation consisting of a collage of film sheets and audio recordings which come together to tell a story of dreams and memories – will be launched at the Gozo General Hospital tomorrow. The exhibition will remain open until September 26 and will be open every day between 9am and 7pm.

During workshops held over the summer months, a group of Gozitan secondary school students and a group of elderly people from different villages in Gozo, worked together to discuss each of their stories, memories and dreams.

They were encouraged to document these in the form of audiovisual stories, using voice recorders to create sound recordings and polaroid cameras to take pictures. The objective is to document the Maltese story from two different generations by encouraging them to interact with each other as well as with their surroundings, by using photography and visual storytelling to build and enhance relations. 

Five short films, created by a group of Form 2 students for the Valletta 2018 project Tafxnaf, will be screened at the Citadel Cinema in Victoria on Sunday at 2.30pm. 

These films were premiered earlier this year during the Valletta Film Festival. 

Tafxnaf gives children a voice through storytelling and film-making, encouraging young people to develop a sense of ownership over creative projects.

Born out of a collaboration with like-minded institutions in Leeuwarden-Friesland 2018 and Aarhus 2017, this project invited all students in Form 2 or its equivalent to submit their stories for publication and to film and produce these stories to create their own original short films.

This weekend-long event is being held as part of the European Capital of Culture Cultural Programme.

Entrance to all activities is free of charge. For more information, visit www.valletta2018.org.