The Picasso Museum and MaF present lectures, dialogues, and a screening about Milan Kundera

The Picasso Museum Málaga once again collaborates with MaF (Málaga de Festival, expanded program of the 28th Málaga Festival), celebrating culture with over a hundred activities in the city. The auditorium of the Picasso Museum Málaga (MPM) is one of its usual venues, and this edition will host four of its activities. The program will pay tribute to the writer Milan Kundera, a key figure of 20th-century literature (who passed away in 2023), with events featuring Tusquets' editorial director, Juan Cerezo, writer Corina Oproae, filmmaker and critic Esteve Riambau, and the professor of art history Maite Méndez.

The Czech writer based in France, Milan Kundera (Brno, 1929-Paris, 2023), one of the great names of 20th-century literature, is the main focus of the four planned activities by Málaga de Festival (MaF) at the Christine-Ruiz Picasso auditorium. The MPM hosts, as part of its usual collaboration with the Málaga Festival, a tribute cycle to the figure and work of Milan Kundera titled '25 del 21: Beauty in the Lack of Hope'.

Thus, the public is invited to reflect on Kundera, described as "an intellectual who, through his novels and essays, pondered the trajectory of the ideologies that crossed Europe in the last century." The writer, persecuted in his home country (former Czechoslovakia), marked "the muscle of time" in Europe "and European time" on many levels, "in the aesthetic, symbolic, conceptual, and political realms."

The first of these activities, within the cycle, will take place on Tuesday, February 25th at 7:30 PM. Under the subtitle 'The Persistence of Kundera, the Total Creator,' Tusquets' editorial director Juan Cerezo and Romanian-origin writer Corina Oproae (last Tusquets Prize, the Spanish publisher of Kundera's novels) will discuss the author of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' (1984). Both will delve into the Czech author's literary trajectory and discuss his perspective as a novelist and essayist who lived through transitional times, with the collapse of Soviet Europe.

Málaga de Festival includes 125 activities in 49 spaces this year

On Wednesday, February 26th, there will be a screening and discussion about Kundera's strong connection to the cinematic discipline, not only through adaptations of his novels. At 5:30 PM, the film 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', directed by Philip Kaufman in 1987 and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin will be shown.

Following this, at 8:30 PM, there will be a discussion between filmmaker and critic Esteve Riambau and the professor of art history at the University of Málaga (UMA) Maite Méndez, moderated by Cristina Consuegra. The representation of worlds in the novel and its narrative in cinema strongly marked Kundera as a creator, who also leveraged cinematic arts to reflect his unique concept of eros.

Tulsa opens at the Albéniz for MaF 2025

Finally, on Saturday, March 1st at 6 PM, a conversation will take place in the Auditorio del MPM with philosopher José Carlos Ruiz, one of the most fundamental thinkers of our time, who is now debuting in fiction with 'An Educated Woman' (Destino, 2025), a novel in which the Cordovan infuses the narrative with philosophical issues that define the human being.

The activities will take place on the dates mentioned in the Christine Ruiz-Picasso Auditorium of the Picasso Museum Málaga, located in Plaza de la Higuera with access via Calle Alcazabilla. Admission is free until full capacity is reached.