Philip Glass’ Days and Nights Festival returns to the local area Sept. 25-28, with a big contribution from CSU Monterey Bay.

Enid Baxter Ryce, chair of CSUMB’s Cinematic Arts Department, has planned the daytime portion of the festival, putting together a lineup of films, an animation and puppet workshop, talks and a social event, all free to the public.

At noon on the festival’s opening day, Sept. 25, filmmaker Godfrey Reggio will talk about and screen his short film Evidence – which is scored with music by Glass.

Jaron Lanier, classical music composer, computer scientist and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, will also speak at the screening.

The event will be held in the Cinematic Arts studio on campus. Driving directions and a campus map are available here.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, Sunset Center hosts a screening of H20 MX, a widely praised documentary about water issues in Mexico City. Compared to An Inconvenient Truth in its attempt to raise awareness, the film makes an urgent plea for action. A discussion with the filmmakers will follow.

At 4 p.m., Soyeon Kim, a professor of animation at CSUMB, will lead a spaceship-themed puppet and animation workshop in Sunset Center’s lobby, followed at 6 p.m. by a pizza party for youngsters.

On the festival’s final day, Sept. 28, Professor Ryce will present Planet Ord History and Ecology – a collection of CSUMB student films that explore Fort Ord from a variety of angles. Showtime is 1 p.m.

In 2013, the CSUMB-based Monterey Bay Film Festival became part of the Days and Nights Festival; its role is to create daytime film programming and workshops to compliment the evening events.

A complete schedule of events can be found here.