Culture Press does things differently. We bring you professional journalism, but don't put a pay wall around it. Instead, we ask you, the reader, to decide for yourself what these stories are worth to you. Want to post a general donation? You can: Contribute to Culture Press!
After three centuries of colonial oppression and exploitation, it is now pay-back time. However, we, the progeny of the navy that came to get nutmeg there, are not so good at it. Because we come back to Indonesia with mass tourism, cheap clothing dyers and multinationals like Unilever. We do little else but drain the place further. Economically, but also culturally. This can be subject...
Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly didn't quite become clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode. The great hall of the building that I just don't...
Whether we want to speak only of 's-Hertogenbosch from now on. Apparently, a last vestige of decency has bravely survived in the provincial capital of Brabant. Nazmiye Oral, master of ceremonies at a party at Den Bosch's citadel on 9 June, forgot right the first time. City marketers and old nobility fight hand in hand for a respected name to trump the vernacular....
We are a bit done with sex, drugs & rock'n'roll in culture. At least, not in what is presented through our galleries, film screens and venues, but in how that comes about. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven has asked the Council for Culture for advice, and the Council is going to set up a commission to do so. This was just announced via...
'To strengthen the position of self-employed workers, a regulation could be revisited that would make it easier to enter into several short-term contracts throughout the year with interim retention of benefits.' There is a lot of useful stuff in the Culture Council's advice published today, but this sentence made me the happiest. Not so happy yet...
Today I must write about A.L. Snijders, the totally idiosyncratic inventor of the Very Short Story. I have admired his work ever since I discovered it through Vrijstaat Austerlitz (1997-1999), a literary magazine that ran for only four issues. Those are probably the best literary magazines, the fewer issues they cover the better. Arjan Witte and Tommy Wieringa, two of the founders...
For the exhibition of the anniversary programme Vive le Cinéma! Art & Film, Eye Filmmuseum and the Rotterdam Film Festival invited five filmmakers to create work for the three-dimensional space. Intriguing installations that play with camera and viewer, image and meaning.
England is closed. The culture minister happily reports that artists can tour Europe again, as long as they do not go outside Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. We've always taken an ambitious approach in negotiations on touring artists, including in my meeting with @AbidRaja last month. Delighted that our new trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein will allow musicians, performers...
There are reasons not to live in Belgium, but yesterday I was intensely longing for an evening with my southern neighbours. After all, they have 'testing for admission' in the cultural sector just a little better regulated than here. When I attended a 'testing for access' performance in Antwerp, there was a tent in front of the theatre entrance where I walked in, with a time appointment, a...
Choreographer Ernst Meisner (1982) is artistic coordinator of the Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company and artistic director of the National Ballet Academy. As a former dancer, he knows that you have to get out of the rehearsal studio, onto the stage. That's why he makes sure his dancers and dancers-in-training keep dancing in front of an audience as much as possible, even if the performances are online because of corona. 'I...
For five years, writers Maartje Wortel and Niña Weijers walked endless laps through the Oosterpark every day. When that suddenly came to an end, Wortel was suddenly confronted with herself in a big way. 'I didn't feel I had anything to hold on to anymore'. Cheerfully waving, Maartje Wortel (38) approaches, a full bag of groceries in hand. 'Not handy no, for a walking interview,' observes...
Gerardjan Rijnders is considered one of the great theatre innovators of the post-1969 Dutch theatre field. Because he became personally involved in Aktie Tomaat and the Maagdenhuis occupation as a teenager, he is the ideal person to shine his light on current emancipatory developments within the theatre field. In the first part of the conversation, we talk...
Sometime in 2022, if you can again, please go to a theatre where you can see 'Sadness is the thing with feathers'. There you can watch and listen to Jesse Mensah's phenomenal talent - if he hasn't won the Song Contest before then - and experience the magic that sticks to Jacob Derwig. Forget, before then...
What does culture visit after corona look like? The topic came up regularly on this site in recent months. I myself wrote two personal contributions on it. Now that cultural institutions may almost reopen their doors, the crystal ball is giving way to reality. In my article on 'the promise of the empty hall', I noted a reluctance to...
With its closing chapter, the International Film Festival Rotterdam celebrates its 50th anniversary from 2 to 6 June. And the celebration of cinema. At least online. But whether audiences can experience the real festival feeling again in the theatres is far from certain. Opening film is The World to Come.
'The book is a declaration of love to Niña, I dedicated it to her unborn child.' Writer Maartje Wortel (38) lived right by Amsterdam's Oosterpark until recently. Her friend and fellow writer Niña Weijers lived on the other side. For five years, they walked laps of the park together, sometimes several times a day. In The Groove, Carrot tells about...
Actually, all his female characters are based on his powerful mother and grandmother, says Vamba Sherif (47). In his new, autobiographical book Unprecedented Love, the Liberian-born writer tells his troubled life story to his daughter Bendu. An ode to his homeland and the most important women in his life. I was born into a learned and influential family. The Sherifs...
Arts '92 means business. The umbrella of all umbrella organisations in the arts sector, which kept on poldering when everyone had long since gone into business for themselves, is angry. And rightly so. Enough has happened this week to break down the last shred of trust between the art world and the government. To the point where there was even note-busting over whether the opening up of sex work and...
Jeroen Bartelse is not only director of TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the former director of the Council for Culture is also a prominent member of the Taskforce that lobbies for the cultural and creative sector to support culture in times of Corona. Marijn Lems and Wijbrand Schaap look back with him on the first corona year, summarised in...
As part of its 75th anniversary, Eye Film Museum is making 75 restored classics available on this year's Eye Player. A fine collection, even if something is sometimes left to be desired.
A devil child she was called, and that is how her parents treated her. Angélique van Deursen (51) was mistreated and abused for 25 years. It marked her for life, but did not completely destroy her. Although it would have been too close. Two fathers As a child, I felt I had two fathers. During the day, my father was an angry man, who...
With journalist Bianca Stigter's book Atlas of an occupied city, you walk through today's reality, as it were, with historical virtual reality glasses on. An extra layer appears over the familiar backdrop of Amsterdam's streets: of World War II occupation. What wartime past is hidden in the streets and behind the facades? Atlas...
Today, both Koninklijke Horeca Nederland and the Cultural and Creative Sector Taskforce announced that testing to enter somewhere is controversial as far as they are concerned. The Taskforce wants to enforce testing for entry only in extreme cases, and not for cultural attractions that are already demonstrably safe. In fact, the hospitality industry finds testing completely unmentionable,...
It was Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven of OC&W who, under pressure from the unions, called for the Fair Practice Code in the cultural sector. One of its components is fair and market-based payment of artists. And what is the first thing that happens, now that society opens up somewhat during the Fieldlab Events? The artists are doing this for free, pro...
Distributor Cinéart, which specialises mainly in European arthouse, presents the Directors' Collection. New and old work by leading film authors.
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français