All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Theatre festival Boulevard has a theme. This is new, and actually unusual for a large-scale festival like the one in Den Bosch. After all, how do you find so many performances for those claimed 120,000 spectators that are all about that same theme? The solution is simple: you don't have to. You can also attach a theme to a few appealing performances and a single part...
While the young musicians of the NJO Symphony Orchestra emit fearsome war sounds, behind them we see two toddlers frolicking uninhibitedly across the Veluwe moor. Moving and at the same time oh so appropriate, because although Carl Nielsen composed his overwhelming Fourth Symphony during the First World War (1914-16), he remained convinced of the good in man. He christened it Det Uudslukkelige, which means as much...
Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, which started on 6 August, has a new boss. This woman, Viktorien van Hulst, had a hard time even before the start of her first festival. Someone had suddenly found a tiny asbestos fibre in a drainpipe at the special new festival site on the Bossche Tramkade, a day before the opening, and so had to...
From today, it is not Leeuwarden, Amsterdam, Utrecht or The Hague that is our country's cultural capital, but Den Bosch. For eleven days during Theatre Festival Boulevard, there will be more to see in that city than all to follow. Lots of new and unique work for Den Bosch, but also some performances that have already played in other places. Herewith our five recommendations. Have...
There really is no better place to display press photos than a church. At least, as long as it is one of those Dutch churches like the one in Naarden. White plastered walls, no distracting statues and paintings. And yet that hallowed atmosphere that sort of belongs to what all those winners of World Press Photo 2015 portray: terrible stories, glorious victories and mysteries that...
If all goes well, the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival will kick off on 6 November. Less well-known than Rotterdam, Berlin or Locarno, but the most important festival in southern Europe. And they have quirky and broad programming, where you can discover all kinds of new filmmakers. But is it going well? The first festival dated back to 1960 and was...
More titles available for Dolby Cinema. Mission: Impossible 5 and other Hollywood blockbusters will be shown in this format.
Three days of classical music among the trees and cows. Festival Wonderfeel presented a unique classical music festival last weekend from 24 to 26 July, under the smoke of 's-Graveland. Top musicians from home and abroad gave dozens of concerts. Lectures were given and, as befits a festival, there was also plenty to eat, drink and...
It is a lovely summer book: Harem, the new novel by Ronald Giphart. And for the first time in years, a good dose of sex appears in a book by the Utrecht-based writer. 'Just the other day at a reading I was announced by a librarian: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the man who knows all about sex!" Interview so with...
Brilliant marketing strategy: call your new record Star Wars at the time that trailer is the most viewed ever, put a cute cat on the cover, temporarily give the album away for free and then let social media do the work. 'If you can't beat them, join them' squared away. And meanwhile merrily mixing old Bowie with Captain Beefheart with a...
The CD Sax avec Elan! is the latest project by the ever enterprising Amstel Quartet. The four saxophonists made their name with impeccable and inspired performances of contemporary music, but do not shy away from the beaten track. For this CD, they joined forces with French chansonnier Philippe Elan. To my pleasant surprise, the...
Those who apply for grants but do not receive them must be given insight into the applications of others who have been honoured. That is the most remarkable ruling by the Council of State in the case Holland Opera won against the Performing Arts Fund. Much more important for the company itself, of course: according to our highest court, in 2012 the Performing Arts Fund decided Holland...
Laser projection opens new vistas for digital film screening. On Wednesday, the JT cinema in Hilversum had the European premiere of Dolby Cinema with the screening of Inside Out.
Following the euro crisis, Culture Press focuses on Greece in a series of articles. In the first part, George Vermij looks at how film has influenced our image of the Mediterranean country. Is there not a more striking image of Greece than Antony Quinn as Zorba dancing the Sirtaki and finding resignation despite the harsh setbacks life offers? The...
Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by the Dutch Comedy in 1964, or Live, the 1979 video ballet by the Dutch National Ballet. You can now do so at the Theatre Encyclopaedia. Thanks to the crowdfunding campaign Being/Not Being. Theaterencyclopaedia had wanted for some time to put videos of a number of crown jewels from Dutch theatre performances on the internet. A nice start has now been made on that. Through a Voordekunst action, even more money has been raised...
It could just be a solution to Greece's problems: investing in culture. For Britain, at least, the softest of all sectors has proved a fertile cash cow. The cultural sector added 15 billion in value to the economy there last year, almost 3 billion more than two years ago. In other words: for every pound the government put in...
The fall of Muslim enclave Srebrenica on 11 July 1995 is still occupying minds. On Saturday 11 July next, the Democratic Europe Association will commemorate the genocide of more than seven thousand men who were under the protection of a Dutch UN battalion, with a symposium and a commissioned composition by Pablo Escande, The Killer and the Piano Player. Immediately after the shocking event, the...
In 1969, Reinbert de Leeuw et al's opera Reconstruction caused a huge uproar because of its anti-American tenor and glorification of Cuban freedom fighter Che Guevarra. Journalist Henk van der Meijden started a smear campaign in newspaper De Telegraaf, parliamentary questions were asked, but the production went ahead despite - thanks to ? - all the commotion and Theatre Carré was...
Concert & Congress hall De Doelen in Rotterdam will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. That is, 50 years ago, the current venue was festively opened. The building by architects Kraaijvanger and Fledderus was the first major public building of the reconstruction after German bombs destroyed the city on 10 May 1940. However, its name goes back much longer. The at...
The Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra is getting a new main hall. Questions about exploitation were carelessly brushed aside in the Arnhem city council last night. And so construction-minded Holland is happy. Moreover, Arnhem will save half a million a year on its culture budget by immediately making the yet-to-be-built new hall independent. Another headache file closed. Until huge budget deficits arise at the independent halls....
Three years ago, the suspicion was already expressed in America, now it is also penetrating Europe. People are reading far more than bookshops and publishers think. And this is not even due to the illegal downloading of bestsellers that everyone is so worried about. Logical, because what people are reading so fanatically is not the book you buy in a bookshop,...
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The second chamber was also keen to know what exactly Culture Minister Bussemaker meant by that 'cash shift'. After all, it was that cash shift with which she could festively announce that she would put an extra 18 million into culture, after 2017. In a letter to the chamber, the minister has now shown how creatively she can bookkeep. A few costs...
Five hours of talks with more than 30 invited guests. That's what the Round Table discussion on the 'Principles of Cultural Policy 2017-2020' offered. There was hardly any debate. It consisted mainly of repeating one's own views, but very carefully so as not to offend anyone. The chairman mainly watched the clock. The debate in five quotes. "How do we do it? Very simple: about the...
Last night Nazmiye Oral, together with a large group of Turkish colleagues, played the performance Niet Meer Zonder Jou for the third and, for now, last time. It is an intimate and overwhelming theatre production by Adelheid Roosen, Female Economy & Zina, co-produced by and performed during the Holland Festival at Broedplaats De Vlugt, far west in Amsterdam-Slotermeer. Tearing die Nazmiye Oral calls...
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