Kaboom Animation Festival - all corners of creative imagination
5 April kicks off the Kaboom Animation Festival. It shows that the animation filmmaker has a kaleidoscopic palette of possibilities.
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The Free Left fights against code diversity without sound arguments.
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...
Stages should be a safe place for everyone
Met zorg zien we dat er in onze huizen en op onze podia in toenemende mate sprake is van incidenten die door polarisatie zijn ingegeven. Iedereen, van makers tot medewerkers en publiek, moet veilig zijn binnen onze huizen en op onze podia. Er is daarbij ook in deze door tegenstellingen gekenmerkte tijd geen plek voor acties of intimidaties ingegeven door…
How Delft Fringe Festival is reaching audiences open to experimentation: 'Away with theatrical codes'
'What makes your performance unique? Why should people come and see you, what will they take home from it?' At the Delft Fringe Festival's first 'Makersdag', 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...
In the novel 'Everyone sleeps in the valley', Ginevra Lamberti shows why blood ties should actually be banned
Als vakantiebestemming zijn de groene, weidse Italiaanse valleien heerlijk, maar op een dergelijke plek léven is minder idyllisch, toont Ginevra Lamberti in haar roman Iedereen slaapt in de vallei. ‘De vallei is geen plek maar een tijd waar geen eind aan wil komen, het leven hier is geen tijd maar een plek waarvan de uitgang niet te vinden is.’ Die niet…
'The past has a strong influence on the present and the future'. Juan Gómez Bárcena wrote a novel about world history in an insignificant Spanish village
Zelfs in een piepklein gehucht waar ogenschijnlijk niets te beleven valt, ligt de wereldgeschiedenis aan – of beter gezegd: onder – je voeten. In zijn bijzondere roman Het dorp van de herinneringen weeft Juan Gómez Bárcena (39) eeuwen aan verhalen door elkaar heen. ‘Ik vind het heerlijk om mezelf flink uit te dagen bij het schrijven.’ Meer koeien dan inwoners Een dorpje…
Rape under the carpet
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...
Vondelpark Pavilion becomes IDFA's Documentary Pavilion - meeting place for people and ideas
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.
'The human ship' by Autran Dourado reads like a whirlwind
An outsider or an 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...
The bricklayer who saved Primo Levi but went down himself. In 'A man of few words', Carlo Greppi gives silent Lorenzo a face
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 PERSPECTIVE 20: BUDAPEST AND FREE SPACE FOR CULTURE
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...
Intersections, encounters and coming home in Holland Festival 2024
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...
The best shit show in years comes from Rotterdam
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...
Sensitive and scintillating: Sholeh Rezazadeh's beautiful new novel is one not to be forgotten
Na haar geprezen en bekroonde debuutroman De hemel is altijd paars imponeert Sholeh Rezazadeh met haar tweede boek opnieuw. Ik ken een berg die op me wacht is een tedere, fijngevoelige en weelderige roman. Verbluffend sensitief Het is haast niet te geloven dat de van origine Iraanse schrijfster en dichteres Sholeh Rezazadeh (1989) pas sinds 2015 in Nederland woont. Haar taalbeheersing en manier van…
Liquid Becomings will be the 2024 European Pavilion
Het winnende voorstel van de open call van de European Cultural Foundation voor het vormgeven en hosten van The European Pavilion 2024 werd bekendgemaakt tijdens een persconferentie in Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam op 14 februari. Een onafhankelijke jury koos unaniem voor het voorstel Liquid Becomings van het consortium onder leiding van het onafhankelijke kunstenaarscollectief espaço agora now, bestaande uit…
TV Sunday night is fun again for people who don't like farming and baking.
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...
Becoming a member of NSC? - Academy of Arts stage of desperate search for engagement
"The vote for Wilders may be a dissenting vote, but apparently explicit racism is not a dealbreaker for all those people. That's terrible for someone of colour." In the stately Trippenhuis, seat of the Academy of Arts, this high word from Karin Amatmoekrim sounded extra emphatic. She was responding from the stage to a late-arriving audience member, who felt that "we...
Turbulent Greek history. 'Niki' by Christos Chomenidis is a captivating family chronicle
In zijn bekroonde roman Niki vertelt de Griekse schrijver Christos Chomenidis het roerige verhaal van zijn moeder en haar familie. Maar bovenal vertelt hij de lezer over dertig jaar roerige Griekse geschiedenis. Familiekroniek Met de boeiende familiekroniek Niki, twee jaar geleden bekroond met de Prix du Livre Européen, vertelt de Griekse schrijver Christos Chomenidis (1966) twee geschiedenissen: die van zijn moeder Niki en…
Writer Javier Zamora fled motherless alone from El Salvador to the US as a child: 'Only now do I sometimes feel happy'
When he was nine, Javier Zamora (33) travelled with the help of people smugglers from El Salvador to the United States, where his parents had been living for several years. For two months, he had no contact with his family and no one knew where he was. The deep marks this journey left only healed two decades later, partly through the writing of his memoir Solito....
The dark backrooms of the mind. Masterfully Philippe Claudel dissects human behaviour in his new novel 'Twilight'
In his new novel Twilight, Philippe Claudel dissects man's dark motives as usual. French author Philippe Claudel does not have an overly cheerful view of man, as his compellingly told novels show. Twilight is the latest shoot on the impressive tree of his oeuvre, and fits in seamlessly. As he did in previous novels such as Grey Souls (2003), The Report of Brodeck (2007)...
In Perspective #19: The Branch and the Blossom
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: cultural education in primary education. Ambitions of a new cabinet Spring 2003. The sun began to shine a little more and branches began to blossom. Here presented the metaphor that could serve as a title for the report that...
Why the Culture Council's Design Thinking is going wrong
The 'Access to Culture' advice presented by the Council for Culture on Friday 25 January 2024 is causing quite a stir. The newsletter we wrote about it on Substack was eagerly received, even though it did not ask, let alone answer, all the questions raised by the advice. Since, at 230 pages, it has also become a rather voluminous document, it...
The 10th and final Critics' Choice at IFFR. Time for a new stir
The tenth and final Critic's Choice programme at IFFR: anything that provokes conversation.
Digging in the earth to dispel grief. The Plains is a beautiful, wistful novel by Federico Falco
In The Plains by Argentine writer Federico Falco, a writer returns to life in the country after breaking up with his lover. This makes for a beautiful, wistful novel about grief, origins and the nature of life itself. 'No single word tames grief. No word dispels it. No word can truly express it.' Those thoughts...
Access to culture; Towards a new system in 2029
People do not have equal access to culture in the Netherlands. This is because the supply of culture varies greatly from region to region. Also, artists or cultural institutions do not yet have an equal chance of financial support everywhere. There are calls for change from the cultural and creative field. Therefore, at the request of the State Secretary for Culture and Media on 26 January, the Council for Culture...
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