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ACTUAL

All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.

Film summit on boosting film production in the Netherlands takes steps in the right direction

Yesterday, the long-awaited Film Summit was held. At this private meeting, ministers Bussemaker (OCW) and Kamp (Economic Affairs) met a large number of representatives of the film sector. The discussion focused on options to get the Dutch film industry out of an impending downward spiral.

Because Dutch film may be doing well in the cinema, but tough times have arrived for film production itself. And not only because due to government cutbacks the...

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Culture Council delights ministers with nice note

On Friday 12 April, there will be a 'Film Summit' at Eye, Amsterdam. Government, producers and financiers will spend a day there discussing what needs to be done to help the Dutch film industry get through the winter. This Film Summit came at the request of filmmakers, who hope for a Dutch variant of the 'tax shelter'. Such a tax measure makes it a lot more attractive for financiers to put money into films. In Belgium, very nice Dutch films have been made for a while, such as e.g. ...

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Cronyism at Codarts: 175000 euros.

That things were not going well at Codarts, the Rotterdam School of the Arts, was already known. Board chairman Jikkie van der Giessen had to step down in 2011 after a cesspool of malversations, nepotism and suspicions of outright fraud had opened. The case was already largely settled, but the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's inspectorate still wanted to know how much money was involved. Well: 175,000 euros was what the case cost: 25,370 euros unlawfully, and 150,000 euros un...

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Legendary film critic Roger Ebert died

It will take some getting used to he clicking 'external review' on the Internet Movie Database no longer to come across Roger Ebert's name. This legendary critic who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years died on Thursday at the age of 70. Two days ago, after an 11-year battle with cancer, he said goodbye on his website with the words 'I'll see you at the movies'.

Ebert was one of the few film critics who enjoyed worldwide fame and appreciation. Wars...

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Roland Sohier: 'I push boundaries and sow unrest'

Not miffy herself, but her mischievous and challenging cousins are at the centre of artist Roland Sohier's exhibition At miffy's attic. In the dick bruna house, he created an exciting attic where in every nook and cranny there is something to discover about this intriguing family of rabbits and hares. Think Roger Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Playboy Bunny and Brother Rabbit.

With sloping walls, a slide, viewing boxes, a mezzanine floor where only children can stand and a clothing...

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Thirty thousand euros for young top talents

The concentration is enormous, the mastery great. The boys and girls standing here dancing can do something. The apparent ease with which these 12-year-olds demonstrate their dance moves shows at the same time how difficult ballet is. After all, the movements have to be performed perfectly, and splashily. Moreover, of this group, only a few will make it to the world's top: The National Ballet. Students of the... 

Minister finds important advice from Culture Council too pricey

The Council for Culture, recently reinforced with new members with a lot of management talent and business acumen, has to accept a defeat. This is because Culture Minister Jet Bussermaker is disregarding a key pillar of the Council's latest advice. In a letter to the room, she reveals that she is looking for alternatives to the Council's proposal to protect 'Objects of National Importance' through the designation of a 'Core Collection'. Instead, Bussemaker says: "My starting point ....

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Wishful thinking in press and politics? "Cultural subsidy saves Iceland's economy"

It is as persistent as the message that everything is better in Germany. Infatuated lovers of culture who still (and rightly) resent the breaking up of the status quo by Rutte I's hate policies often shout it. We wrote before that the German miracle is disappointing to say the least, and now have to report here that Iceland's creative sector boom is not obviously the salvation of the Icelandic economy.

Source of the success story is a rather WC Duck-like situati...

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Culture Council with two new women on business tour.

Two new members of the Council for Culture are once again showing how thinking about art is changing: Jessica Mahn and Annick Schramme are women, which was necessary in this white male stronghold, but they are mostly business-minded. Mahn is a partner at global player KPMG, Schramme is a professor at the University of Antwerp and specialises in Culture Management.

The council, once established as an advisory board in which mostly people from the art world itself zi...

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16th Holland Animation Film Festival opens with Monty Python and abstract animation in 3D

That almost all major US family films and many action films are in 3D is by now self-evident. But contrary to predictions a few years ago, similar breakthroughs in the arthouse sector are still scarce. Still, it remains an intriguing promise. The programme section featuring 11 artistic animation experiments in 3D on show at the 16th Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht (20 to 24 March) certainly makes one curious. Composer Marc Bertrand of the ...

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Vredenburg Friday in 'Red Box' for one more season

When Muziekcentrum Vredenburg closed its doors for an ambitious renovation in 2007, the symphonic concerts were moved from the centre of Utrecht to the emergency location Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn on the A2 motorway. The broadcasting series 'De Vrijdag van Vredenburg', created two years earlier, moved along to this temporary accommodation, which was soon renamed 'Red Box'. Against all odds, programmer Astrid in 't Veld managed to develop the fledgling concert series there into a public...

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How to choose from the profusion offered by the Tefaf

Suppose you have a small capital in your pocket. And you go to the Tefaf for a day. That's a festive feeling: an art gift for yourself. But once inside, there's a good chance you'll be shocked. Because how to choose from 30,000 objects? In those 265 stands from renowned galleries from 20 countries: Argentina, United States, Canada, Italy, Japan? And which corner will you look in? Antiquities? Or modern, antiquarian, design? Will you go for a sculpture, a canvas, jewellery, chair or a book?....

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Help! England is also going to cry out for culture

The Scream for Culture with which the Dutch cultural world launched its opposition to the scrapping of art subsidies in 2010 was, in retrospect, a publicity disaster. Perhaps not as unfortunate as the naming of the 'March of Civilisation', but it did not generate much goodwill either. Yet people think differently across the North Sea. This month, a new campaign was launched there entitled: My Theatre Matters. In that campaign, people are urged 'to shout abo...

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The best woman in the best place: Ellen Walraven director Rotterdam Schouwburg

This was a possibility not many people initially thought of. After all, after her tropic years as director of the Amsterdam debating centre De Balie, Ellen Walraven was in need of some more substantive work and peace and quiet on her mind, So we suspected she would stay on in her new position as dramaturge with the country's first company Toneelgroep Amsterdam for a while. But apparently - and not entirely unexpectedly - she did not like working under Ivo van Hove as much as she liked the mog...

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Mini festival of extremes at Nederlands Dans Theater's young guard

ADVERTORIAL They could hardly be further apart. Alexander Ekman and Sharon Eyal both make dance pieces, and are both children of Nederlands Dans Theater, but that's about where the similarities end. The new programme of NDT2, the young makers' house of the internationally leading dance company from The Hague, features world premieres of new w...

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Peter the Great: the curious tsar is back in Amsterdam

The Netherlands-Russia year is kicking off and what better way to start than with an exhibition dedicated to the most famous Russian of all time? The Hermitage Amsterdam is therefore hosting the exhibition 'Peter the Great, an inspired tsar'. A biographical exhibition revolving around his life, wars, passions, collections and, above all, his boundless curiosity. These brought him to Amsterdam on two trips and inspired him to reform his country. Without him, today's ...

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'A lot of art is too much about pleasing'

It started with an email out of the blue. Artist Joncquil had Googled my website and was struck by the name. I myself had almost forgotten how I had ever come up with the name, Joy of Irony: a song by the legendary, highly underrated English noise/metal band Fudge Tunnel. Joncquil came to my site because of his expo at the time, Himmel und Joy. He had read some of my pieces and introduced himself. Maybe one day we could have coffee to talk a bit about art.

Thus it happened.

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