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'There is no other sector in the Netherlands that is as controlled and regulated as the cultural sector.' D66 MP Salima Belhaj sighed this towards the end of the debate organised by the assembled cultural sector lobby clubs on Monday 8 February. 'It takes an incredible amount of work, time and especially money. And the basis is distrust.' The most culture-friendly party of...
It is almost Christmas. Miss Kate and Miss Julia are giving their annual ball. One by one the guests appear, there is dancing, eating (greasy brown goose, marinated rib eye, pudding), there is apprehension about Freddy Malins who is bound to appear drunk again, and Gabriel gives a short table speech as usual. Gabriel fears his speech will be too pompous. He...
Maybe it's the snow, and my little dog that made me so happy. Maybe it's the sledding children in 'The Pit' of Lunetten, and maybe it's the lameness that creeps up on me after so many valiant attempts to keep up the fun of art in times of Corona. But I sat through the first minutes of VPRO's Onstage...
Critics by default have a different opinion than the average audience. That, says Marijn Lems, theatre journalist at NRC and Theaterkrant, is what this research shows. Reason for us to take a closer look at this in the Culture Press Nerd podcast on the deeper details of the art journalist's profession. Another three-quarters of an hour for anecdotes and exciting revelations about the private life of the...
No making shows for a while as if nothing happened, but developing concepts, experimenting, boldly going where no one in this sector has dared to go so far (sorry, I watch a lot of Star Trek during the lockdown). That strikes me as an excellent use of grant money and could also bring back some momentum in these crappy times.
News arrived this week that Andreas Fleischmann, the highly esteemed director of Amsterdam's DeLaMar Theatre, has now officially become director-director of Stichting MusicalMakers, the foundation he had set up last year, a day before the deadline for grant applications for four-year state funding. And that is not allowed.
It schmaltzes. It rattles. It is set in Brabant. And my name is underneath it, with 'free to' as a sham in front of it.
People will not be eager (in large numbers) to go to packed halls again. Many 'old' culture visitors can be considered lost. The cultural sector faces a twofold challenge: to minimise this loss and to look for new audiences even more than usual.
More than 1,500 hours were spent by theatre critic Marijn Lems last year in theatres, in front of TV and, most importantly, with games. That's a lot of time and it raises questions. Questions especially about how you organise your time as a journalist, and how you divide it between watching art for work and what we will call 'normal life'. That's what this podcast is about, for just under three quarters of an hour.
To get a subsidy in the Netherlands, you have to jump through a lot of hoops. Every farmer knows that, and so does every artist. In the cultural sector, for instance, it is important that you have a form of organisation that is controllable and approachable. You cannot have a profit motive either. That is why you can usually only apply for funding as a foundation, so you have statutes, a board and a...
On 1 February, the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off online. Here are some advance viewing tips.
Cinecitta Tilburg gets 280,000 euri a year from the province of Brabant, or rather the founder's mother. Despite there being quite a lot wrong with the application.
Good news from Friesland. The five larger theatres in the Netherlands' most independent province are going to cooperate intensively to tackle the corona crisis together.
Every writer dreams of being translated. Into English (world language), Chinese (big market) or, if necessary, into Icelandic (always wanted to go there on holiday). Sometimes it is necessary to give that dream a helping hand.
Yesterday, I finally saw 'Away with Eddy Bellegueule', the theatre hit of the previous broken and devastated theatre season, and saw that its creators had effortlessly bridged the gap between youth and grown-up theatre. The show is a nineties grunge concert with brilliant actors and intense visual direction by rising star Eline Arbo.
What happens in 2022, when refunds are due or not, we will determine on 17 March. But we may just have to count on the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science changing its name already.
Listening away, does the word exist? I did it. And still do. For music. Just as you can look away from something, I listened away from the CD that was so thoughtfully sent to me. Here's the thing. This autumn, I received CD Wounds & Brutality through the post as a gift from Tom America- composer, musician, quirky creator. I've been a fan of America since 2011. He...
With these five tips, we are sure to come up with a wonderful programme, in this bizarre summer we are facing, in which we will hopefully be allowed to hit the streets again at all. My fingers are crossed for both.
Moniek Merkx will step down as director of Maas Theatre&Dans on 3 February this year. She co-founded this Rotterdam-based company that makes theatre for people from small to large in 2013. A forced merger with two other youth theatre houses from the Maas city, it developed under her leadership into one of the most successful and interesting theatre groups in our country. In our podcast, I talk to her for an hour about how that came to be.
It is no coincidence that I am rereading The Twelve Year Wedding just now. Because the tightness in the story resembles the tightness of our own time. Like Delia and Martin Bagot, we are trapped in a suffocating existence. Shun contact with fellow human beings. Miss the fresh air of visits to cafés, museums, film houses and theatres. Dublin 1917 is the Netherlands 2021.
'It's really starting to become something with me now anyway,' poems Vrouwkje Tuinman with healthy self-irony in the collection Lijfrente. In her case, you could say that - Lijfrente won the Great Poetry Prize last year. It's a beautiful line, well suited to mumble to yourself on occasion. Too inappropriate is the most fun: you...
Due to the corona pandemic, 2020 was also a crisis year for the cinema industry. Attendance fell by 56% compared to 2019. But the cancellation of US blockbusters allowed the Dutch market share to rise.
Planning in 2021 can only be done in the very short term, or with so many fits and starts that it is actually impossible to deal with. Therefore, at Lowlands - if it goes ahead at all - we will have a lot of offerings from our own country and the very close neighbouring countries.
It is stupid and pointless to start comparing suffering. There is always someone who had it shittier than you, usually even closer than you thought. But reinforcing the delusion that writers and poets can live off their royalties, when that is literally true for less than one per cent of professional literary authors, shows little empathy.
'Seeing your loved one derail before your eyes is the worst thing there is: the most secure suddenly becomes the most unsafe. You can live with someone for weeks or months before it becomes clear that they are slowly slipping into delusions.'
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