I have long put myself on the 'listen first, talk later' mode when it came to how we all deal with the festering sore of racism in the Netherlands. There's so much we don't know about each other, and there's especially so much I can't know about my fellow Black people, because for a long time I felt too little...
The three of them are back together in the office for the first time since the lockdown on 13 March. The interview, in which director Emily Ansenk, music programmer Jochem Valkenburg and theatre programmer Annemieke Keurentjes take stock of the first - and hopefully only - online edition of the country's most prestigious performing arts festival, takes place a day after the lockdown. There was no...
From 11 to 21 June, the Holland Festival will present an online programme as close as possible to the core and essence of the original programme, which was cancelled due to the corona crisis. Together with artists from around the world who were due to perform in the 2020 festival, an alternative online programme has been put together. The festival theme, suggested by...
We are fairly bombarded to death with online theatre experiences. Frankly, I avoid them. I always thought theatre was something to be experienced live. Bobbing shoes are terrible, visible consumption when speaking is something I can't stand at the moment and the sound is always mediocre. I want live theatre, and nothing else. Leave TV to the TV makers, they have studied for that. Still...
With amazement, I become aware of the 'sacrificing your elderly fellow man' attitude of many here in the Netherlands. Dor wood. Not money, but the love for it is the root of evil. Right now, I wish a virtual heaven were possible - so that those who have lost someone and may not be able to say goodbye to them either...
We must continue to get through the already theatre-less weekends this spring and summer without Sunday with Lubach and This Was The News. Their season is over. The latter remained witty without an audience, Lubach in my opinion did not. How did that happen? Five weeks ago, when the shows first recorded it without an audience, it was noticeable that Sunday with...
Lot Douze delivers to your home. By bicycle. With her bookshop Over Het Water, she focuses very specifically on her neighbourhood, Amsterdam Noord. Now that everyone has to stay at home as much as possible because of the corona situation, she experiences an increase in demand. Online, customers in Amsterdam Noord now also know how to find her well. Because of her customer focus, she has a...
Machteld Kooij sees at least three or four people she has trained pass by every night on the news or the big talk shows. She calls herself The Secret Weapon of Hilversum and now there is also a book: The Monster with the Golden Eyes. We all have to deal with it from time to time: stage fright. And Machteld Kooij has excellent tips ...
We spoke to Andreas Hannes about the cancellation of Cinedans 2020. As a programmer, how do you deal with cancelling a festival you've spent a whole year working on? How do you still retain some of the sense of community that is so important to a festival when you are only online? For now, the festival will not go into the existing...
In Verstoten Vaders, Elena Lindemans impressively highlights a huge, tucked-away social problem: of many tens of thousands of children who have to let go of one of their parents after a divorce. Elena: 'While making 'Wife Beats Husband' - a film about men who are victims of domestic violence - I came into contact with fathers who are abandoning their children - almost...
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...
'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...
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...
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...
When I tried to explain to secondary school students the other day how little the orchestra members who perform the musical surprise act at the Eurovision Song Contest were paid, they looked at me in bewilderment. After all, it was more than you earn as a 16-year-old as a stock boy at the average grocery store. So what was really the problem? So now let's do some other maths, thanks to the...
Fascinating front-page news and headliners for all talk shows: Matthijs van Nieuwkerk quits DWDD after 15 years. Obviously a disaster of national proportions. The book industry proclaims the end of the world, bands can no longer break through, and the successor to De Correspondent can never again meet its crowdfunding target in six minutes. An institution disappears, and everyone panics. Who...
Those who want to be musicians have to bleed. Earlier, we reported that the highlight of the Dutch edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was going to be performed by professional musicians and conservatoire students who would receive 100 euros a day for it. Outrageously little, when you know that full days of work were going to be involved anyway, for eight days. Well: it's even worse than...
In April 2020, the Persgroep, now DPG Media because it smells better internationally, will stop regional art supplements in its newspapers. No more art reports and interviews, hardly any reviews. Local bookshops will lose their stage in all Dutch regions, as the publisher of Volkskrant, Trouw and AD has a regional monopoly. The message, brought by a reporter from the Eindhovens Dagblad, struck...
In the 1990s, BBC 2 was a reason for me to stay at home. For a while then, it was not about the episodes of Star Trek they kept broadcasting, while Dutch TV tried to shut out any kind of imagination. No, it had to do with The Late Show, a culture programme. At quarter...
Where is the Metropole Orchestra? A unique orchestra, the only one in the world that can pull off the complete repertoire from classical to pop and jazz? The orchestra that used to accompany the Dutch acts at the Song Festival when everything was still live? The orchestra, which as recently as December was on tour with our new Song Contest candidate,...
[update: they get even less, see post below] We received confusing news last weekend. The occasion was the festive announcement by the organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the final in Rotterdam. Invited were third-year and master students from Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians. For the performances...
In the first version of this post, we assumed 100 euros for 8 days. We turned out to be misinformed. The application of the remplaçants' collective agreement, mentioned in the explanation by the Song Festival, gives a bit more leeway, although its hourly and daily rates are still controversial. But 1,000 euros for eight days is now apparently the going rate....
With much fanfare, Netflix's The Witcher was announced. Except for some comments about Superman in a white wig, there was and is a lot of interest in the film adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy book series. Successor to Game of Thrones. With the way that one ended? No thanks! I'm not familiar with the books or the games myself, but Netflix's description...
At a time when comic book movies, superheroes and alternative dystopian realities reign supreme, I feared the worst when HBO announced Damon Lindelof's Watchmen. Not having extensive knowledge of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book Watchmen myself, I found the 2009 film a disappointment. Lindelof is the man behind the infamous series Lost. Where with Lost, the viewer...
Virtual Reality is taking off. On Friday 11 October at 15:00, you can experience the world premiere of the chilling Walking through the Walls, a totally immersive work made for the Oculus Go and MEZE AUDIO headset, together the most complete portable VR set available. The event takes place at Mediamatic in Amsterdam, in collaboration with Stichting...
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