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.
My tip to the bonzes in Het Gooi: forget young people. Focus on the wandering forties and fifties, who yearn for disruption. This broadcast of VPRO's Mondo was unforgettable.
From over 100 entries, 24 young composers have been selected for the semi-finals of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble's (NBE) composition competition Towards the New Year Concert with the grand prize of a performance with the NBE at the New Year Concert on 1 January (19:00 NPO 2).
Weismann strikes me as too brilliant and intelligent a director to throw himself into an adventure that could break him for good. An alpha male, a big ego, it was well known. And couldn't keep his paws off young women.
I started temp work at a time when you were somewhat of a dickhead if you were a student or had just studied, because the corps ball imitation of Jiskefet was so unprecedentedly popular. So a common greeting among regular employees who wanted to be nice was 'Hey dick! Fucked?'
The Dutch Wind Ensemble's (NBE) traditional New Year's concert at The Concertgebouw on Friday 1 January 2021 is going to look completely different from all previous editions. As it is currently unclear whether, or how many, visitors The Concertgebouw is allowed to admit because of RIVM measures, the difficult decision has been taken to play the New Year's concert entirely without an audience.
In her programme Night Animals, Ryanne van Dorst again goes in search of night owls, night workers and other insomniacs. It is a fascinating and beautiful TV programme, and Van Dorst seems to have a patent on extraordinary encounters.
'Writing this book has made me realise that I cannot prepare my children for the world in which they will be adults. I cannot teach them now what they will need later in a society that does not yet exist.'
So on 18 October 2020, something happened. VPRO's Mondo had suddenly become an upbeat broadcast. And this in these times, when lamentation and mourning over lockdowns and impending bankruptcies dominate everywhere. What was going on?
Since everyone advised him to just give it a try, he signed up with almost a thousand amateur painters to learn the ancient craft of painting in six months and under the watchful eye of Pieter Roelofs, head of Painting and Sculpture at the Rijksmuseum, among others.
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 didn't care enough to...
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...
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 ...
In Verstoten Vaders, Elena Lindemans impressively highlights a major, 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Deadwood was one of the best television series ever. Despite its many awards, HBO pulled the plug after only three seasons. After the abrupt stop, HBO promised to end Deadwood in an appropriate way through two TV movies. However, despite fan requests and actor insistence, the promises never materialised. Until...
On 26 April 1986, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. To this day, it is one of the most catastrophic disasters caused by man. The effects of the nuclear disaster are felt even today. For many, Chernobyl represents a long-forgotten memory. Places with a macabre history have always drawn people and...
My generation probably immediately gets the famous Doe Maar song in its head at the obituary of Doris Day. There is no ball on TV, only a film with Doris Day. And you really didn't want that, your mother's goody-goody heroine. The wholesome star with whom you think of a glass of milk rather than wild...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français