INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL entitled “Crete meets Hydra: Nikos Kazantzakis, 140 years of LIGHT”, which will be held in Hydra, from 6 to 8 July 2023.

The central axis and core of the Festival, which is under the auspices of the Region of Attica, will be the exhibition entitled “Nikos Kazantzakis: 140 years of light”, which is organized at the Historical Archive-Museum of Hydra. This is a collaboration between the “Mobile Museum” of Eleni N. Kazantzakis, the Hydra Museum and the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum in Myrtia, Crete. By illuminating the experiential aspects of Nikos Kazantzakis through rare personal objects, letters and manuscripts that have never been presented before, the visitor will have the opportunity to travel through the writer’s everyday life and his life full of ideas, emotions and love with his beloved wife Eleni. He will also be able to read letters written by the young Nikos Kazantzakis to his mother and sisters, feel his pain at the loss of his father, Captain Michalis, and experience a typical day in the daily life of our universal writer.

Nikos Kazantzakis with his wife Niki, July 1955

The Nikos Kazantzakis Museum participates in the Festival with the mobile exhibition entitled “Nikos Kazantzakis: The Life and Work”, which includes autobiographical and biographical elements of Nikos Kazantzakis on artistic surfaces that recreate the aesthetic perception of the Museum, which is dedicated to him and is located in Myrtia, Crete. Below are the contributors to the mobile exhibition. Exhibition design. Dimitri DimitriosKrykoy: Zambia Agrimaki. Life texts: LefterisCharonitis. Graphic design. Coordination and editing: Varvara Tsaka. The exhibition will close on 31 August with a concert by the Vamos Orchestra entitled “Musical Stigmata” (30/8). This will be a musical journey through the times and places where the author lived, with arias from operas and operettas, songs and melodies by well-known composers from all over Europe.

The concert is a production of the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum in the context of the 40th anniversary of its operation and will be held with the support of the Region of Crete.

The three-day festival (6-9 July 2023) will be accompanied by various parallel events on the island of Hydra, such as film screenings of films based on the works of Nikos Kazantzakis (the Oscar-winning Zorba the Greek by Michael Cacoyannis, the award-winning The Last Temptation of Christ directed by Martin Scorsese and He Who Must Die by Gilles Dassin), a musical and literary adaptation of the book The Sisters by NikiStavrou, accompanied by the musicians VassilisHadjimakris (lyre, singing, music composition) and Manos Karteris (lute), directed by Olga Moraitis and a presentation of the institutions that are mandated to promote the work of Nikos Kazantzakis worldwide.