The 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival program was launched last night, Tuesday 15 July by the Minister for the Arts, Lynne Kosky. In the company of VIPs, artists, industry guests, sponsors and stakeholders, Artistic Director, Kristy Edmunds outlined her fourth and final Melbourne International Arts Festival with an extraordinary program of work from some of the world’s leading contemporary artists.

From an expansive programming stream featuring icon Patti Smith to bold new dance works from Batsheva Dance Company, to the world premiere of Hidden Republic, a unique collaboration between the acclaimed music ensemble The Black Arm Band and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the 17-day Festival showcases over 90 events, comprising 19 world premieres and 28 Australian premieres with free and ticketed events geared to young and old alike.

Festival highlights also include the Netherlands' internationally renowned Schönberg Ensemble, Chamber Music Australia, Jerusalem Quartet, America's Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid with his large-scale multimedia performance work Terra Nova Sinfonia Antartica, USA's Grammy Award-winning sextet eighth blackbird, Italy's Venice Interpreti Veneziani Baroque Ensemble, acclaimed 'King of Balkan music' Goran Bregovic, composer and virtuoso of the Turkish ney flute Kudsi Erguner and his ensemble and renowned Indian sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri.

Australian premiere performances from international companies include Deborah Hay Dance Company with If I Sing To You, Lithuania's OKT/Vilnius City Theatre company with their adaptation of Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet, a daring no-holds barred commentary on parent-child relations, That Night Follows Day from director and writer Tim Etchells and Belgian theatre company Victoria and UK writer, director and performer Tim Crouch comes to Melbourne to perform his unique plays ENGLAND and OBI Award winning an oak tree.

Phillip Glass returns to present the concert work Book of Longing inspired by the poetry of Leonard Cohen, Liza Lim’s world premiere season of her sensual new opera The Navigator directed by Barrie Kosky and internationally heralded local companies Back to Back Theatre present the world premiere of their new work Food Court, as does Chunky Move with Two Faced Bastard and Lucy Guerin Inc with Corridor.

Each night of the Festival Chris Doyle’s Ecstatic City will convert St Kilda Road’s NGV International into a veritable moving sculpture of light. The world premiere of echolocation, an electro-acoustic installation from acclaimed US sound artist Alex Stahl, will nest under the Princes Bridge, swooping throughout Melbourne’s inner city for the duration of the Festival. 21:100:100 presents a free exhibition of 100 works by 100 sound artists produced in the 21st Century, the first of its kind to explore and chronicle the extraordinary developments that have occurred in contemporary sound art. Polyglot Puppet Theatre will create The Big Game a free, giant, fun, interactive public artwork for kids and families. The Famous Spiegeltent returns as does Beck's Bar@Meat Market, both with a brilliant line up of international and Australian musicans.