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ACTUAL

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

Netherlands closes a special embassy

This week, the curtain officially fell on the Theatre Emabassy, a club of inspired people who had Dutch artists collaborate with artists in developing countries such as Honduras, Bhutan and Congo. The resulting performances were only sporadically seen in the Netherlands, but every now and then a project made a broad impression here too, such as a 'On Hope of Blessing', played by real fishermen, but from Mali.

Ed Spanjaard unleashes primal forces in Götterdämmerung Reisopera

The closing applause after the premiere of Götterdämmerung stormy, is an understatement. It seemed as if the completely sold-out auditorium wanted to surpass the primal forces extracted from the Gelders Orkest by Ed Spanjaard. History was made here: on stage, by the soloists and choir, in the orchestra pit and behind the scenes, for six hours and 20 minutes.

NFF 2012 - All student awards go to the Film Academy

The Film Academy can be satisfied. The two juries that handed out the three student awards at the Netherlands Film Festival on Monday night had also looked at graduation work from other Dutch academies with a film section. But in the end, all the lucky ones were students from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, as the Amsterdam programme is called in full. Magnesium again. The Tuschinski Award for best graduation film, this... 

NFF - 'The rules of Matthijs' mandatory curriculum for emergency workers

The crop of feature-length documentaries screened at the Netherlands Film Festival is good. They are extraordinary stories, sometimes startling, sometimes penetrating, sometimes fodder for much discussion, and almost all very beautifully filmed. We wish the jury much wisdom. The nominated documentary 'The Rules of Matthijs' is interesting for everyone, but should be compulsory reading for social workers,... 

Milestone in sight

We never actually pat ourselves on the back, but so once every few years it is allowed. For instance, when you are 'top story' within an hour on the global twitter story website 'storify.com'. Of course, we often have a sudden surge in visitors, and certainly last September was a top month with 15000 visitors, but something like this, more than 500 visitors in not even an hour.... 

NFF 2012: première van George Sluizers onvoltooid-voltooide Dark Blood

Misschien waren de verwachtingen bij de première van George Sluizers negentien jaar geleden opgenomen, en nu alsnog voltooide Dark Blood gewoon te hoog gespannen. Want natuurlijk is het geheel terecht dat het Nederlands Film Festival de gelegenheid heeft aangegrepen voor een mooi retrospectief van Sluizer, een van Nederlands’ meest vooraanstaande filmmakers met de wereld als werkterrein. Maker van de bloedstollende… 

#NFF Opening film Nono sings away from dull realism

What a festive opening film it was! The Dutch Film Festival's choice of Nono, the zigzag child had of course to do with the fact that Dutch family films will be specially put in the festival spotlight this year. But even apart from that theme, it was an unmissable kick-off. After all, we may like to grumble that the weather is not... 

'Collective copyright abuse is global problem'

A while back, there was a fuss in the Netherlands about the BUMA, the club that collects copyrights for musicians and publishers. Money had been lost in speculation and a director was engaging in nepotism. These cases do not appear to be isolated. At least, they are also mentioned in an overview of all known cases of abuse of power and corruption at collecting societies worldwide.

Archives Wim Kan and Louis Davids not in dumpster

The Theatre Museum's entire collection has been saved. The archives of luminaries such as Wim Kan and Louis Davids, as well as 50,000 theatre reviews, 30,000 theatre posters, 146,000 photographs of 22,000 performances, 26,000 portrait photographs of 2,450 theatre-makers and an extensive audio and video collection will be housed at the University of Amsterdam.The move is possible now that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), with the ever-money-hungry State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra, is no longer seizing the reserves of the Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN).

'Beading' at the Leiden Cloth Hall is a boundless experience

'Pearls' is an exhibition with the limitlessness, fantasy and dreamlike vistas that come with a fairy tale. Associations with the pearl roll in all directions. Those who wander around in 'Pearls' forget for a moment everything to do with sober everyday reality. Pearls appear everywhere. The artworks belonging to this exhibition are scattered among the fixed... 

Gergiev Festival full of Sunday afternoon music

What could be the matter with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival - the official name to emphasise its international appeal anyway? As soon as you enter concert hall de Doelen, you immediately get the feeling that you have arrived at an ordinary, weekday concert, even though Valeri Gergiev is on the posters. No decoration of the large rooms... 

Artists paint artists in 'We, the Artists'

Unruly Gallery, a tiny underground art gallery on Amsterdam's Cliffordstraat, presents the group exhibition We, the Artists. Featuring portraits of artists created by other artists. How self-referential do you want it to be? Very worthwhile nonetheless. Unruly Gallery is one of the few artist-run galleries in Amsterdam with a refreshing do-it-yourself attitude. The gallery was set up by Niels Meulman and Adele... 

Culture Council knew about 'Hole of DUS'

Theatre company the Utrecht Games, city company of the Netherlands' fourth largest city, is on the brink of bankruptcy. It was recently revealed that the company led by artistic and business director Jos Thie has a deficit of €2.1 million. Correspondence that has since surfaced shows that it was already clear in May this year that the problems were getting out of hand. That was a month after the Utrecht subsidy advisory committee issued its laudatory opinion, and a few weeks before the Council for Culture issued its very thrifty advice.

Magnesium van Sam de Jong beste afstudeerfilm Filmacademie (volgens Nederlandse filmpers)

Het is nu officieel. Magnesium, waarmee Sam de Jong als regisseur afstudeerde aan de Filmacademie, werd eerder dit jaar al in diverse publicaties lovend besproken. Helemaal als een verrassing kwam het dus niet dat de Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten gistermiddag tijdens de borrel op het dakterras van de Filmacademie bekend maakte dat Magnesium zich winnaar van de KNF-Prijs voor beste… 

Drama awards party in year of gloom

It had to be a party, because there has been enough shouting and complaining and it doesn't help anything anyway. After a year in which the theatre sector in particular felt the hard hand of Mark Ruttes happy crisis policy, awards had to be handed out again. So the already not-so-huge crème de la crème of the Dutch theatre world gathered again for the gala at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. It was a valiant attempt at optimism, while

Bold p***o on the euro note?

There has been another interesting cultural twist to the 'Europe debate'. Someone has called out that it watermark of the new series of euro banknotes will include a picture of 'the rape of Europe' by the Greek supreme god Zeus. The anti-Europe and anti-Greeks in the various timelines need no more to frame the banking mafia's plot against the European citizen.

Eric de Vroedt: 'Eventually reached Obama too'

Winning two awards in one weekend, that doesn't often happen to a person, not even in the award-winning art world. Eric de Vroedt is a theatre-maker and writer who did happen to one. Entering his final season 'MightySociety' he got the Amsterdam Prize (35,000 euros) and the Prize of Criticism (a statuette), determined by a jury of newspaper reviewers.

The Promise main theme at 32nd Netherlands Film Festival - audience recruitment stepped up

Next year, the Netherlands Film Festival will have to face extensive budget cuts. Therefore, let's enjoy this year extra, was the recommendation with which festival director Willemien van Aalst closed the press conference presenting the programme of the 32nd Netherlands Film Festival this afternoon. Precisely in this time of economic headwind, the festival has chosen this year's The Promise 

Halbe Zijlstra: 'nothing to do with local arts policy'

Halbe Zijlstra is proud of his policy, and keen to come and tell it in front of the entire cultural sector. So on Sunday 26 August, he appeared on stage during the annual 'Paradiso Debate' to reiterate how well things had gone with the 200 million cut in the arts sector. He praised the resilience of the affected art world, and would be happy to do the same again.

'Windfall cuts': bricks saved, people sacrificed

The major research and management consulting firm Berenschot has calculated that, on balance, the cuts to the arts turn out to be not too bad. Client of the study, De Volkskrant, then headlined that big. And indeed, it is kind of good news that the pile-up of cuts (the state 24% less, the provinces 20% less and the municipalities only 9 % less) is so low in net terms. We were surprised for a moment, but when we asked around, we found out

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