All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Timo Vuorensola has done it to him. Perhaps reading the name of this Finnish director and music video maker does not light up a light yet, but then you do not belong to the extensive internet fan club that has been closely following the genesis of the potential cult hit Iron Sky for several years. Its world premiere at the Berlin festival is now the...
It saves Liverpool's GGD millions on dispensing antidepressants. And it only costs them a tonne and a half. They spend that much hiring Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra musicians for workshops in addiction clinics. So, no idealistic preaching, as in the countless columns and reactions to Halbes culture cut, but hard pecunia and proven effects. In England,...
The 62nd Berlinale opened tonight with Benoït Jacquot's Les adieux à la reine, a French costume piece that does not play by the rules. The dresses worn by Queen Marie Antoinette's servants get dirty and one of the main characters stumbles in her haste and passes out twice. As the film begins we write 14 July 1789, and the...
We don't know how many BMWs are involved in terms of countervalue, but the fact is that the German car conglomerate of search cars has taken another step away from the fast kid street racing circuit now populated by Audi and VW anyway. Although. The new generation that the company wants to engage is equally young, but thus considerably more cultured. They are the young...
We already noticed it in the daily twitter stream: when it comes to book reviews on twitter, the 'low' genres (at least according to connoisseurs) dominate the charts: fantasy, diaries of disease sufferers, 'regional work', howto's and erotica. No news, you may say, but there is more to it.
Last month, it was announced that Erwin van Lambaart, once brought in as heir apparent to his company Stage Entertainment by Joop van den Ende, is leaving as CCO 'to spend more time with his family'. Last week, a press release appeared in which the group reported that it had signed a so-called €75 million club deal with ABN-AMRO and ING.
We tweeted it, but that doesn't yield much. That's why we're just showing it here. That they can handle social media very well in the government. Because social media, that's like email for the advanced.
According to the Volkskrant, Rick van der Ploeg was state secretary of culture in the early 1990s (in reality, he was at the end of those years), and in Het Parool columnist Gerard Mulder claims that the fact that he "thankfully knows nothing about art subsidies" need not deter him from some wild speculations...
Smiling, she lets a boy film her with his mobile phone and she happily wriggles into lascivious curves in the process. But when he really wants to see her breasts she flinches. Yet later she will go much, much further and she gets staggeringly little in return. Jasna, the rebellious protagonist from Cliff (Clip), is a Serbian teen...
We got another press release, and wondered: top or flop? How does idiosyncratic artistry rhyme with audience-determined repertoire choice? Andne: do all those people who chose the winning piece also get a free-or at least discounted-ticket to the performance of their choice? Andne: who checks the results, as there is no notary. Enne:.
That Martin Scorsese's mesmerising Hugo was number one in the audience rating for a while at the Rotterdam festival is not so surprising. What is surprising, however, is the film that emerged as number two yesterday and has now ousted Hugo from first place: the documentary Back to the Square in which filmmaker Petr Lom looks at how things stand in Egypt after the...
Last night, Rotterdam festival-goers in Pathé's Hall 4 witnessed a small miracle. Some film fragments from 1906 by the legendary Georges Méliès were now shown in stereoscopic 3D for the first time. So that you could, as it were, imagine yourself present on the set of this French pioneer who was the first to understand that cinema is not there...
Compared to previous editions, you could almost call the choice of opening film that kicks off the Rotterdam Film Festival tonight almost un-Rotterdamian. No wild young debut, exotic Asian or artistic crossover this time. The French book adaptation 38 Témoins, which has its world premiere in Rotterdam tonight, is the seventh feature by Walloon actor/director Lucas Belvaux and has already been acquired...
In the debate Burger King & Citizenship give Patrick van der Hijden, David van Reybrouck, Chris Keulemans and Samuel Vriezen Their views on the state of the citizen. Public may, but need not, participate. Below is the column State of Indulgence, recited by Patrick van der Hijden - as a kick-off to the debate.
"Our life was invented in the 18th century.
Members of the upper classes - the elite - had their own homes, often with gardens. They sent their children to school, which then started further education. They had free time and generally arrived at their appointments on time, due to the watches they wore and the train barges that left on time (they complained when delayed). Citizens who lived outside the city commuted - by carriage, that is. They drank coffee to stay awake. They visited restaurants with menus. They were vaccinated against smallpox and had pets. A great source on that life is the diary of Otto van Eck, who started it at the age of 10 under pressure from his Enlightenment-obsessed parents, in 1791. I borrow the above examples from that.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this life is not lived by a small minority, but by a large part of the Dutch population. These do have to do without staff. That, in fact, has been replaced by technology.
Dinaw Mengestu shares his surname with the first name of one of Ethiopia's former dictators. "For now, I am a writer, but aspire to a career as a dictator," he says. Dictators do not arise in a vacuum, Mengestu argues. "We as citizens create our leaders," he says. In his recited story, citizens hand over all their dreams. They shift all their responsibility towards those in power. And.
Sweet and quite tasty, although some of the guests said they were less enamoured with the hutspot with gravy that the Haagse Hapjes had prepared for them. Most guests would have preferred a bit more spice with their welcome meal. Tonight, Africa is on the menu. The local pepper farmer must be having a party because of increased sales, we suspect.
"The cultural sector employs many part-timers. It is conceivable that they
We do not have much to comment on Halbe Zijlstra's explanation. Other than that the state secretary of formerly culture breathes an almost legible sigh of relief now that he can almost close the 'arts' headache file. His "masterpiece", the amendment to the Specific Cultural Policy Act, is before the chamber and if it is approved (hammer piece), the state secretary does not really need to do anything more.
"A beautifully drawn portrait, sublimely expressing a mixture of cunning, intransigence and power-seeking, Implicit and without text." So says the Inktspot Prize jury about the drawing Sigfried Woldhek made for the NRC of 30 March 2011. Pictured is Henk Bleker, former CDA party leader candidate and state secretary for former nature. Woldhek, who has been...
These are data that somehow do not make the press here, because they are about America, which is not in the Netherlands. Still, it is interesting to take a closer look at the composition of the audience on Broadway. After all, that is where, in the wet dreams of VVD/PVV celebrities like Bart @deliefde and @halbezijlstra, the future of...
That was a bit of a shock for culture lovers in Utrecht and beyond. the dear youth theatre house Het Lab turned out to have an artistic director with an annual salary of 214,975 euros. A salary that made him equal to the dozens of air traffic controllers, medical specialists and broadcasting staff who all earn much more than the Balkenende norm (193,000 euros a year, including pension). But no. The ever amiable...
We reported last week on China's huge art market, which is growing so fast that insiders say it is a bursting bubble. But, before the market collapses because rich investors come up with another hobby, it could collapse even faster as the art loses quality. This is particularly likely to happen to the works of the...
They made the better Bordeaux wines unaffordable, and in Southeast Asia, record amounts are being paid down daily for Western modern and antique art. Chinese collectors and speculators now determine what counts and what does not in the art world. Latest development: they are discovering their own artists. Meanwhile, for a painting like 'Eagle Standing on a Pine Tree' from 1946 by self-taught artist Qi Bashi, more...
The art sector's victory over government policy will last until 1 July 2012. Until then, a transitional scheme applies to artists who were eligible for WWIK benefits until 1 January 2012. This is because this highly successful scheme, which gives artists a chance to build a profitable professional practice at an amount of 70% of the welfare level, had been abolished by...
The good man himself lived to be barely 44. But on his deathbed, he thus wrote a play for which you have to be at least well over 50 and have experienced a lot if you want to do it justice as a director. So we are talking about Anton Chekhov and The Cherry Garden. And about Willlibrord Keesen, who in his now third...
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