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In the beautiful but overcrowded office of the director of Kunstuitleen SBK Amsterdam, on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, paintings, etchings, gouaches, photographs were everywhere against the wall. And ceramics too. At the meeting table, the entire board of the Federatie Kunst Uitleen (FKU) with whom I had come to meet as intended external chairman. I walked, enthusiastically shaking everyone's hand, around the...
Today in Trouw a few useful tips to culture bringers. They are responses to the reader question from a few days back, about why the halls remain empty in our museums, concert halls and theatres. Five responses are included, and each one is excellent. They also show something, and that is that the eagerness, with which the halls are vacated by the directors...
Just for fun, name one literary or cultural classic Dutch work that you are sure people around you know about. And I mean a work, like a book or a play, that pops up every few years in the lists, on our stages, in our cinemas. Something that everyone, even now, is on...
Lack of roots and parental love marks a person for life, Marina Jarre shows in her autobiography Far Fathers. Well-deserved place in literature Why is Marina Jarre not considered one of the great writers of post-war Italy, except by some connoisseurs? That is what fellow writer Marta Barone wonders in the foreword to Jarre's autobiography....
Dolores Reyes' darkly suspenseful debut novel Earth Food will bring readers to the edge of their seats. Those who sleep badly from suspenseful films might want to avoid reading Earth Food, the penetrating debut novel by Argentine Dolores Reyes, just before bedtime. Because it is a macabre story that gets under the skin. The narrator is a girl...
A hard but also sensitive novel is Like a stone in the stream by Mauro Corona (72), and a reflection of himself. On a daily basis, the Italian writer and visual artist becomes more and more like the hedgehog in his book, which eventually drops all its spines. 'I try to bring out more of the softness that is hidden somewhere inside,...
The Volkskrant on 18 May this year carried a scoop about strikes and drop-outs among technical staff at the country's largest company: ITA. In Trouw on the same day, the united theatre directors (VSCD) sounded the alarm about the lack of technicians. It is even so bad "that performances have to be cancelled". Two reasons in particular are cited: technicians have...
From now on, can we agree to replace all DJs with real drummers? I mean, what I witnessed at the premiere of Eros, Schweigman&'s latest project, was so overwhelming, I can't imagine I've ever gone out of my mind on a drum machine. Two living drummers, splashing and at the same time individually starring at the...
In Flanders, or rather in its cultural capital, Antwerp, the theatre sector is faltering. The Toneelhuis, founded in the late 1990s as a merger between the legendary Blauwe Maandag Compagnie and city company KNS, is in crisis after the departure of Guy Cassiers. It is now losing more than half of its grant after a scathing opinion. The Flemish government is stopping...
Screen Daily brought the news a fortnight ago that the International Film Festival Rotterdam is going to restructure. Not surprising after two corona years: this has hit every festival, every cultural institution, hard. It became worrying when in recent days social media was full of reports of mass layoffs at the IFFR. All senior programmers were supposedly fired. Because...
It attracted widespread media attention in late 2020. Putin opponent Alexei Navalny survived an assassination attempt with nerve poison, revealed the suspected perpetrators and ventured back to Moscow despite everything. In this documentary, we witness it up close.
Ok. One time I will say it. That Yara Piekema is the daughter of Harry Piekema. You know: that man who single-handedly gave that Zaanse Grootgrutter a human face. Harry was already a big one in Utrecht, and now it turns out he secretly, years ago, gave birth to an even bigger one: Yara Piekema, no longer the daughter of,...
In the week that already began dramatically with the deaths of Jan Rot and Arno Hintjens, Henny Vrienten has now joined musician heaven. Far too young at 73, but still 41 years older than he was in one of his most famous songs. A bit weird, but mostly very sad. One of the most sympathetic musicians...
In the best-read newsletter of cultural Netherlands (on average 60 per cent open and 12 per cent click links, where the national average for peers is 30 and 2 per cent respectively), I wrote recently that the news, that visits to theatres and museums have not yet returned to precorona levels, seemed to come as a surprise to some. I mentioned...
The Netherlands got to know French-Senegalese author David Diop a few years ago with his novel More than a Brother, an impressive tale of a piece of French-colonial history, which was awarded the European Literature Prize and the International Booker Prize, among others. His well-received new novel, Journey Without Return, or the Hidden Cahiers of Michel Adanson is another important book....
How beautiful art for children can be when a real artist is involved. When themes like death, falling in love, loneliness and exclusion are made palpable in such a beautiful way that you step outside with a deeper feeling about life? With theatre-maker Moniek Merkx, you can. A year ago, she stepped down as artistic director of...
That you are suddenly back in 1996 at Black Snow, the television series in which actress Tamar van den Dop managed to hook an entire generation of viewers at the time. Since then, her raven-black curls have turned into a dazzling cloud of silver, but those who go to the National Theatre's Distress trilogy suddenly see that young Tamar again. A miracle of talent in...
Babeth Fonchi Fothchind. Remember that name, because she's going to be big, if she wasn't already, but out of my sight. Can happen, with all the bubbles and tick marks we make our way through life. Her debut collection will be released in June 2022, and then you can read it for yourself. I saw her on a Tuesday night during...
What magnificent beauty of Dutch language from Tom Lanoye! What greatness of stage by Theu Boermans! What great acting by Romana Vrede, Mark Rietman and Myrthe Huber! Three hours of enjoyment at the very highest level that culture has to offer. And then the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague is not even sold out on a Saturday night. Did the big...
Ari Folman's (Walz With Bashir) new animated film Where is Anne Frank is the opening film of the Kaboom animation festival. Folman explains how it definitely had to be a film for young audiences, why it features an escaped girl from Africa, and why the concentration camp resembles the underworld from Greek mythology.
On this website (and still read here), we posted a post that we had had artificial intelligence (AI) write all the way through for fun. The post looked real, had even included some relevant-looking information from the internet and made up some names that provided quotes. Brilliant, on the one hand, but also a bit scary. Rightly made...
Update April 2022: Turns out it's not an April fool's joke, so all the beats we were holding back at first turned out to be unnecessary. Since 2018, Toneelgroep Amsterdam no longer exists, as does the Capital's Stadsschouwburg. Together they have since formed 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam', because that better suits the global ambitions of Ivo van Hove's Amsterdam city theatre. It was thus...
We always want to do the best, but usually fail horribly. Whether this is our habitual way of thinking, or whether we owe that idea to Ovid, we will never know. We can, however, say that the literary work 'Metamorphoses', published by Roman Ovid in the first year of our era, is the single most influential book of the...
Which sentence stuck with us? The question to the audience comes from Madeleine Matzer after the performance of 'Smart'. It is a rather loaded question, as the play is about very direct loss. When a child has just died in a stupid accident, every sentence you remember is worth gold. The blunt accident that the subject...
Few actors can portray timidity as aptly as Jan-Paul Buijs. With his wonderful Circus Treurdier, he made a catchy performance that anyone who has something against big mouths should enjoy. Especially at chattering show tables and on Twitter, but also with the incessant smattering of columns in the Volkskrant; the big mouths of the betwetervolk exert a power you...
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