All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
The Tuschinski Award for best graduation film of the Film Academy was awarded this afternoon at the Dutch Film Festival to Anne-Marieke Graafmans for her documentary If I didn't have you. What is special about the presentation of this award for up-and-coming talent is that the commercial cinema business and independent film criticism are here together for a while. The Tuschinski Award will be presented and with 5000 euro...
At the end of August came the figures. And what figures they were. Due to the stacking of extreme cuts by government, provinces and municipalities, the abolition of the successful Work and Income for Artists Act and the equally successful culture card, plus the VAT increase on the arts, the Netherlands' cultural sector would end up missing out on €1 billion in revenue. Berenschot had estimated that in...
Will classic cinema survive the digital iconoclasm of the future? The question is not new, but it comes to mind again upon seeing the programme of the Netherlands Film Festival, which opens tonight with André van Duren's De bende van Oss. Put that opening film next to Iconoclasm, the festival's main theme, and you see what...
Opinion pollsters take note: "People give the moderate answer to most questions they are asked in life. The characters in 'This is not a love story' are very ordinary, very average. In that, it clicks between those two. It's an ending where you feel an enormous satisfaction." Enthusiasm prevails after the opening weekend of The International Choice of the...
Let's start again with yet another sloppiness of the Rutte government: that damned VAT measure on the arts, which are the only ones to be bounced to the 'normal' rate of 19%. VVD doesn't like it, CDA isn't happy about it, but, because tolerance specialist Martin Bosma once had to play a red toadstool in the school play, he has forever...
Update: the poem in question was not meant to convince Voltaire of the Prussian thrust, but an Italian, Francesco Alegerotti. A scrabeus poem by Frederick the Great has surfaced. A poem, whose existence but content was unknown. Until now, that is. Today, the German quality magazine Die Zeit comes out with the full text. And Bild Zeitung has...
'The problem with art in public spaces is that you can't avoid it. At least with art in a museum, you can still choose not to go to the museum, but with these works, you are literally forced to walk a long way to miss them. That fact, and the fact that you can...
"My commitment to the city (Rotterdam) and the orchestra knows no end," Valeri Gergyev spoke on the occasion of the Gergyev Festival taking place in Rotterdam this week. This is good news, as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the former principal conductor still get along well. And to be backed by this global top-five conductor is...
On Sunday evening 11 September, the VSCD Drama Awards, the VSCD Mime Prize, the VSCD Youth Theatre Awards and the AVRO Toneel Publieksprijs 2011 were presented at the Gala van het Nederlands Theater. And that you then know that VSCD stands for the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors and AVRO for General Free Radio Broadcasting. The award for the best male lead of the past...
With temperatures above 25 degrees, it will be a sweltering but also unique summer day, that 10th September. The Cultural Press Agency will be present that day and Sunday with four journalists at the former Soesterberg Air Base to report on festival De Basis. When you get there, you will make lots of nature, even more impressive war history and a theatre performance or two...
Ok. It is not Victory Boogie Woogie, the Mondrian painting that, in a distant and then cultural past, embarrassed ministry and municipality of Hilversum, because of the planned sale of the canvas to pay for the renovation of the town hall. Still. 'Schoolboys' by Marlene Dumas is also a canvas by a cherished painter, and you don't sell that either
Pim van Klink is his name. He has been popping up everywhere lately. Especially when the malicious subsidy orientation of the cultural sector needs to be pointed out, every medium calls Van Klink first. Last week, he once again threw his hobbyhorse into the henhouse in the NRC and was invited to join Buitenhof. And according to our trench-coat-clad...
Arts organisations are subsidy-addicted and so we are withdrawing subsidies. The VVD's approach is clear. On the exact how, they appear to need to think longer about that, now that there is so much opposition from the country. Cold Turkey, the treatment proposed by tolerance partner (nice word in this context) PVV, could well result in deaths. To...
The Dutch Theatre Festival opened with combative speeches by its director, jury president and patron. Joop van den Ende called for a big lobbyist. We wonder who is strong enough for that.
Nice, that secretary of state of hard rock and Tom Clancy. Mr Halbe Zijlstra-san has once again lived up to his change manager name in China. But in a slightly different way. In the land of eternally sealed mouths, he opened the Dutch stand at the book fair there, with a speech that once again rammed Dutch values into the Chinese. Anyway...
Ever known that 'The Wedding of Kloris and Roosje' was first performed in 1707, and that it is the forerunner of today's New Year's Eve conference? Thanks to the theatre encyclopaedia, which will be available online from 1 September, these and many more facts can be found. The Theaterinstituut Nederland (TIN) is the initiator and provides much of the content of...
'And why do all these art institutions have to open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and even Thursdays? I don't understand that. I'm far too busy working on those days.' Just a question during the Paradiso debate,
Every disadvantage has its advantage: Whoever steals a sculpture from a public garden frees up space for a new work of art. Residents of Utrecht's Willem de Zwijgerplantsoen looked at an empty pedestal for a year because 'their' sculpture 'Homo Ludens' had been stolen by bronze thieves. As no one expected the sculpture to be returned yet, the municipality organised a competition for a replacement sculpture....
We have another letter from the secretary of state for culture. Halbe Zijlstra has sent it to parliament, to make it official that from 2013 a very bleak wind is going to blow in arts land. That makes cuts of 200 million final, still excluding the probably 150 million in so-called friction costs that the ministry also has to get from somewhere (u...
"I can fire anyone here. Except the actors." Sam Walters, artistic director of London production house the Orange Tree Theatre does not mince words. "Everyone in the office could leave. The directors too. But without actors no performance." The actor is unequivocally central to this theatre. As a director, you only prove yourself here when you get top performances out of your...
That's going to be fodder for chambers exegetes, though the question is whether it will make any difference. But Halbe Zijlstra says he did not say that the VAT measure "was not the most accomplished measure in the coalition agreement. Although that is what that interview with him in NRC Handelsblad of 8 July 2011. At the time, everyone thought that was a funny
The ANP brought it and all newspapers typed it up: 'Amsterdam gets a City playwright'. Big news, of course. After all: the theatre is rather under pressure as an expensive leftist hobby, so it would be nice if the Amsterdam city council had decided, together with the theatre world, to establish a city playwright, alongside the city poet and the poet of the fatherland, An honorary title, would...
Last week, they reached the US top lists. Nice for a British pop group looking to emerge from anonymity via a targeted Facebook campaign. Remarkably though, the pop group is not reaching the 'ordinary' top. In fact, with the song 'Trust', Bitter Ruin is on the opera list. But it is less surprising than it seems. At Amazon, the band falls...
National Theatre Week is new and very small. And, oddly for a small festival, advertises big on its site with the logo for the Home Shopping Guarantee. This raised questions. Because clicking on the logo for the guarantee produces a very different result. Criminal is not, by the way, if you use the logo of Thuiswinkel-waarborg without...
It's so simple that you think: why didn't we think of this before? After all, expensive inner-city restaurants already park your car in front of you and hang up your coat. So why just also arrange a babysitter for the stay-at-home kids? For now, Amsterdam's Theater Bellevue has the scoop. When ordering a kart (on pre-sale, of course), you can take the theatre...
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