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After the self-inflicted death of his beloved, writer Matteo Bianchi struggles with his grief, his anger and guilt. With Those Who Are Left Behind, he reaches out to others who went through the same thing. Conflicting feelings 'I hate him. I hate him so much for what he did.' Sometimes Matteo screams at the walls that his beloved S. is an asshole. And an egotist. But...
"Jazzenzo no longer welcome at venues and festivals," claims online jazz magazine Jazzenzo. The reason is a letter the medium received from the BIM House on 24 April. In that letter, co-signed by an impressive number of prestigious venues and festivals such as TivoliVredenburg and North Sea Jazz, the BIM house announces that it will no longer grant free tickets to the unpaid reporters of...
Mountains, trees, solitary inhabitants... Down in the valley is another 'real' Paolo Cognetti. You could call him the chronicler of mountains and mountain life. Few writers narrate life at altitude, in the middle of nature, far from the hustle and bustle of the city, as beautifully as Italian author Paolo Cognetti. With his filmed bestseller The Eight Mountains, he conquered the...
Everything from the 2023 film year in the new edition of the Film Yearbook. Dates alongside articles with depth. Including the vision of Nafiss Nia, who sees how new filmmakers are making Dutch film culture flourish.
A sensitive, moving novel about natural and human violence: The Night Trembles by Nadia Terranova is highly recommended. The major earthquakes in Umbria in 2016 are probably still on many people's minds. But who remembers that over a hundred years ago, the south of Italy was hit by a devastating earthquake, the most destructive even in Europe in the 20th...
We need to talk about the Ravine year for a moment. After all, in 2026, the government is cutting billions from the municipal fund. Until now, this has been quite abstract because, let's face it: do we have any idea what money in your city goes where and from whom it comes? Municipal spending is a black box. My city now has in a row...
The Utrecht School of Music, also known as DUMS, has decided not to apply for a subsidy from the municipality. In a letter the school sent at the beginning of April to consultation partners in the Utrecht amateur arts field, the management states: "Our teachers indicated at its foundation that they did not want to be subsidised in order to guarantee independence from the municipality. However, Cultural Affairs gave...
According to the site wbtr.nl, "more than a thousand times a year within associations and foundations something goes wrong, with major consequences. Think of financial mess, inattention of supervisors or entanglement of interests'. In the cultural sector, we are familiar with the Governance Code for Culture, which hopes to prevent 'things going wrong' with a series of recommendations. If an 'issue' hits the media...
Hidden treasures. Like other museums, the Groninger Museum houses many objects that deserve to be exhibited. Interesting paintings, sculptures or archaeological splendour of which visitors are unaware. Happy birthday is a treat. The Groninger Museum celebrates its hundred and fifty-year anniversary with - among other things - an exhibition in which you get a look behind the scenes. Objects...
5 April kicks off the Kaboom Animation Festival. It shows that the animation filmmaker has a kaleidoscopic palette of possibilities.
Free art is in danger. At least that is what the Free Left Foundation claims. The article goes around persistently on facebook: "Unfree art is not really art at all." Actress Femke Lakerveld breaks a lance for the free arts in this interview with journalist Joep van Ruiten. The occasion is a manifestation in Groningen, which will feature a number of speakers on whether...
It is with concern that we see an increasing number of polarisation-inspired incidents in our houses and on our stages. Everyone, from creators to staff and audiences, should be safe inside our houses and on our stages. In doing so, even in this antagonistic time, there is no place for actions or intimidations motivated by...
'What makes your performance unique? Why should people come to see you, what will they take home from it?' At the Delft Fringe Festival's first 'Makersday', at the end of January, it's little about art, but a lot about speed dates, workshops in marketing, pitching and making flyers. The 30 or so makers present also get a lesson in handling theatre criticism from...
As a holiday destination, the green, wide Italian valleys are lovely, but living in such a place is less idyllic, Ginevra Lamberti shows in her novel Everybody sleeps in the valley. 'The valley is not a place but a time that will not end, life here is not a time but a place whose exit cannot be found.' Which is not...
Even in a tiny hamlet with seemingly nothing to do, world history is at - or rather under - your feet. In his extraordinary novel The Village of Memories, Juan Gómez Bárcena (39) weaves together centuries of stories. 'I love to challenge myself considerably when writing.' More cows than inhabitants A village...
What happens behind the scenes at organisations when they face allegations of (serious) cross-border behaviour? Trainee Emilia accuses a theatre technician at a well-known theatre company of rape. This piece is based on her story and her own research, anonymised for privacy reasons. June 2022, beer, vodka, joints and a share scooter It's party time in a city park; students...
We already knew that IDFA is more than a festival. Now there is also the Documentary Pavilion, its own place where all IDFA's activities, both for audiences and makers, can flourish throughout the year. 16 March starts the official opening week.
An outsider or unexpected event that holds up a mirror to characters and turns things upside down - it is a classic literary feature. In the hands of Brazilian writer Autran Dourado, this produced a fascinating novel in which, above all, a lot happens in the main characters' heads. Once Luzia was Maria's nanny, now she babysits...
One of the most famous people to survive Auschwitz, writer Primo Levi, and a simple bricklayer who made sure that he survived - with such protagonists, an author has a strong subject on his hands. That can't go wrong, you would think. Norse bricklayer He had just graduated as a chemist when Primo Levi, twenty-four and Jewish, was rounded up and deported...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: the 1985 Budapest Cultural Forum and a renewed cold war. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Only a short time before, intense discussions between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries on security, disarmament and free cultural...
The 77th edition of the Holland Festival presents innovative international performing arts with more than 40 productions and over 380 artists at 21 different venues in Amsterdam. The opening takes place on Thursday 6 June with a special programme in the Gashouder, where Stravinsky's iconic Sacre du printemps will be accompanied by a film by Evangelia Kranioti, and Caroline Shaw's Music in...
It seems that at the inset performances of Maas Theatre&Dans' latest, 'Stuntkont', a few schools have already complained. Classes even walked out. Logical perhaps, at least for adult school teachers who can't take poop-and-pee jokes. Children from 6 to 106 can only laugh really hard at them. So poop-and-pee jokes turn out to be more amusing than I myself expected. At least when they are made...
After her acclaimed and award-winning debut novel The sky is always purple, Sholeh Rezazadeh impresses again with her second book. I Know a Mountain Waiting for Me is a tender, delicately sensitive and sumptuous novel. Stunningly sensitive It is hard to believe that Iranian-born writer and poet Sholeh Rezazadeh (1989) has only lived in the Netherlands since 2015. Her command of language and manner of...
The winning proposal of the European Cultural Foundation's open call to design and host The European Pavilion 2024 was announced at a press conference at The New Institute in Rotterdam on 14 February. An independent jury unanimously chose the proposal Liquid Becomings from the consortium led by the independent artists' collective espaço agora now, consisting of...
The old domain of VPRO, established in decades of Meticulous and Desperate Simplism, Tegenlicht and Zomer- dan Wintergasten, languished for quite a while. Viewer terror fragmented the safely elitist offerings. BNNVARA searched for a tone and didn't find it. Cultural omnivores like yours truly could no longer turn on the TV to 2 with impunity and then, after an evening of content, turn it against...
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