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Gisteren las ik deze update van Madeleine Matzer op facebook: ‘Twee jaar geleden koos ik dit uitzicht. Zo mooi. Zo stil. Zo sereen. En zo goed passend in het hectische en dynamische leven dat ik normaal gesproken leid. Waanzinnig zinnig werk met prachtige en inspirerende collega’s, een groot en heerlijk sociaal netwerk, en dan ook nog al die kansen op…
Hollywood loves disaster movies and frankly, so do I. It's sort of a 'guilty pleasure' of mine. Generally, it is the visual aspect that attracts me the most: the eruption of a volcano, an earthquake tearing the world apart - as a resident of Groningen, I did adjust my opinion somewhat about the entertainment value of earthquakes - or...
Leon Giesen, also known as Mondo Leone, said goodbye to mainstream theatre some time ago. He played - until Coronoa struck - increasingly at meetings and seminars, where the audience is more massive and attentive. But now that market has fallen away, and Leon has come up with something new. Listen to this race storyteller's story in our podcast in...
'Like asking after a play or a concert which seats they had in the auditorium.' According to Gerrit Heijkoop, it is not interesting to know what software you can use to share knowledge online, or organise video chats. 'You can go to Facebook, to YouTube, and then there are all kinds of programmes. If you want to communicate, it goes...
Need to escape from all the misery in reality? Of course, you can binge-watch endless feel-good movies or exciting series, but opening a good book about a disaster in the outside world is just as effective - look, it's actually not that bad with us! You might also pick up a few valuable do's and dont's for emergencies; a warned person counts....
‘Het was heel raar om hier weg te gaan. Zo’n plek die altijd aan is, waar het altijd druk is, waar het altijd licht is, dat was nu gewoon zwart.’ Lieke Timmermans, manager Marketing en Communicatie van TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht kan het nog steeds niet helemaal bevatten. Donderdag 12 maart 2020, na de persconferentie van de regering, moest het programma…
When he started for himself in 2006, the CoC's question was not, how Oscar Kocken would later deal with a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, income-wise. This is just to point out what a stooge our minister of economic affairs is, and how we can yet gain some understanding of the wall of misunderstanding where the...
Last week, my in-box and my social media feed were full of cancellations. Screenings, film festivals and museums: everything I was looking forward to or contributing to was cancelled or shelved. Understandable and sensible. But also maddening, and a loss of income for me and many others in the cultural sector. Still, there are things that...
Last year it was suddenly buzzing around: Dutch animation film is going to break through, a real animation industry has emerged. The occasion was the premiere of Heinz, Piet Kroon's whimsical and out-of-print film version of Windig and De Jong's comics. Not a children's film. And certainly not a Disney clone. We are talking about feature-length animated films, and there are many of those in the Netherlands....
UPDATE Friday, March 13, 9:30 a.m.: After the Culture Council sounded the alarm on Thursday night, the Lower House passed a motion urging a support package for the affected cultural sector. The text of the motion, tabled by D66, Groen Links, PvdA, Partij van de Dieren, Denk and 50Plus, reads as follows: 'The Chamber, having heard the debate, whereas meetings with...
Fred Goessens has been dead, but is still alive. As uncompromising as ever. The Netherlands' most reliable actor makes an interim will after twenty-two years with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. 'I had shit on everything' This interview was published 10 years ago in TheaterMaker, the trade magazine for the theatre sector. As Fred Goessens is now leaving ITA, the company where he once...
With northern Italy cut off from the outside world because of corona and looking increasingly desolate, we are reminded of an interview we had a few years ago with writer Davide Longo about his book The Vertical Man. A book à la The Road by Cormac McCarthy, in which Longo outlines a desolate world that has changed dramatically as a result of...
Talent ontwikkel je vaak dankzij forse tegenwerking. Rodaan Al Galidi kreeg talent voor het leven dankzij meer tegenwerking dan een witte, voormalig blonde Nederlander als ik ooit zal ontmoeten. Hij ontsnapte uit Irak en bracht vervolgens jaren door in het vagevuur van de IND en het COA, de afkortingen die de grens van Nederland bepalen. Hij schreef op wat hij…
There is something incredibly cosy about it. While outside the storm is howling through deserted, boarded-up shopping streets full of demolished mini houses, baking pasties against the malady. But so it does work. On the side of The Kop, the most famous stand at the Anfield stadium on Liverpool's Oakfield Road, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk established a neighbourhood cooperative in 2012, when megalomaniacal urban renewal plans...
After all, we did spend just under three hours on something completely nonsensical. Stupid, of course, because we had already written ourselves on 27 November 2019 that today's little debate in the Troelstra Room of the Lower House would be totally pointless. Everyone already knew that too, not least the movers of the motion, including Lodewijk Asscher ...
I had the chance to attend the 500th anniversary - it took place at the beautiful Teatro La Fenice - of the first Jewish ghetto during my visit to Venice in 2016. One of the speakers was historian Simon Schama. During his lecture, I was given a brief history of Jewish suffering in Italy. According to...
When a Dutchman thinks of art, he thinks of buildings that cannot support themselves, played by, or hung with work by, people who cannot sustain themselves. So money must be added, and we call this subsidy. In this way, art subsidies become a suspicious form of welfare, more suspicious than the billions in income support that wealthy...
With his novel The Eight Mountains, Italian writer Paolo Cognetti (42) broke through internationally in 2017. Without Reaching the Top again takes place at great heights. 'The mountains give me a lesson in humility every time.' Without Reaching the Top is the travelogue of Cognetti's mountain trek in late 2017 through a high plateau in Nepal near the...
A real estate agent once confided in me that a bookcase in the living room saves thousands of euros in the resale value of a house. In a negative sense. This fact always does well at parties, and book lovers (my network is full of them) grudge it. On a tour of Manchester Central Library, the head librarian proudly told us that the café...
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a composer, scientist, writer, doctor, mystic and founder of a convent. So a Catholic nun, but one who did explore female orgasm. The latter paradox resonates, Herman Finkers obviously realised when he wrote the screenplay for 'The Legs of St Hildegard'. Hildegard's description of orgasm read: 'When a woman makes love...
Travelling makes you a better person. Everyone thinks so, and it is a great favour to be able to travel. A privilege to be able to do it. If you go to England by train, the last few minutes before you disappear under the Channel at Calais, you see more and more fences appearing. And we are not talking about the average...
While I was walking around Manchester with some cultural sector leaders, minister Ingrid van Engelshoven sent a letter to the House, telling it how much it would cost to enable state-subsidised arts organisations to get fair pay at the current offer. So that letter contained quite a few omissions: the minister was silent on the role played by regional and...
Toen ik laatst aan middelbare scholieren probeerde uit te leggen hoe weinig de orkestleden betaald kregen die bij het Eurovisie Songfestival de muzikale verrassingsact verzorgen, keken ze me verwilderd aan. Immers, het was meer dan je als 16-jarige verdient als vakkenvuller bij de gemiddelde grootgrutter. Dus wat was eigenlijk het probleem? Daarom nu maar even een andere rekensom, dankzij de…
The great philosopher of the 1968 left-wing uprisings was untrustworthy both privately and in his philosophy. His muse Simone de Beauvoir was also a victim. In almost an hour and a half, theatre company OT Rotterdam unfolds the disenchantment of De Beauvoir in a brilliant role by José Kuipers, opposite Tim Linde as ex-student leader Benny Lévy and confidant of Sartre. Kabbala Piece...
"We are hopeful," is the reply when I speak to a colleague just before the start of the Berlin film festival. For curious as to how the choice of Carlo Chatrian as the new artistic director has fallen among German critics. Chatrian, previously director of the leading arthouse festival in Locarno, lies well, I understand. Whether this 70th Berlinale will see all that new momentum...
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