International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021 - Viewing tips for the 50th edition
On 1 February, the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off online. Here are some advance viewing tips.
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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.'
My friend informed me of his decision to stop writing prose. There was no dry bread to be earned from it. Going forward, he went through life as a freelance journalist and lyricist. The money he earned he spent music festivals
Especially in a bizarre year like this, I need hot films: classics, found footage or children's film, all are allowed. As long as it deals with big emotions or offers the perfect escapism. Like every year, there is plenty to enjoy on TV. Not like every year, there is no option to seek refuge elsewhere, but streaming offers the solution. Five tips to get through Christmas.
Germany has 80 million people, the Netherlands 17 million, so we can multiply the Dutch aid by five if we want to test the German claim. Still, we arrive at an amount three times higher.
Four years ago at the Winternachten Festival in The Hague, we spoke about it with Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswani, who was disarmingly upbeat despite the fact that he can barely publish in his own country. On lack of freedom of expression and fiction in times of fake, this year's theme, Al Aswani could have a word. 'Freedom of expression is even worse now than under dictator Mubarak.'
I understood the dilemma. If the violinist renounced her old violin she was acting contrary to her pure nature. It felt like infidelity.
I have come to realise that guilt creates a distance. To others, I sometimes come across as cool and reserved; this is because I unconsciously shut down to suppress my feelings and desires. I don't want to get in the way of others with my emotions. But that also means I rarely let the other person get close.
In this podcast, I talk to Marjolein Verhallen and Paul Adriaanse from Public Administration, Nanna Verhoef from Media and Iris van der Tuin from Philosophy, and artistic directors Lars Ebert and Jente Hoogeveen about what that is: leadership. And we talk about how you can learn it.
These actors sit at their kitchen table and we fly through space with them. Art can be that simple, because we, the viewers, actually make the story.
Splendid Isolation is about the happiness of loneliness, but, Elgershuizen stresses, it is best experienced together. 'It needs to be performed, because as humans we need to be able to be together'.
If all goes well, it can be experienced on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 December.
Earlier this year, Cinekid was in danger of dropping out of the basic cultural infrastructure due to a 'no, unless' advice from the Culture Council. An updated application has now changed the Council's mind. If the minister adopts it, Cinekid can go full steam ahead for four years. An interview with Cinekid director Heleen Rouw.