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ACTUAL

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

Disquiet TV takes classical music out of a straitjacket

Classical music on television always has something boring about it. Often a short introduction by a neat gentleman or lady, followed by the concert itself. Close-ups of the conductor and soloist, a longshot of the entire orchestra and applause afterwards. As if the medium is trying to emulate concert hall etiquette as scrupulously as possible. Even the webstreams that more and more large orchestras are increasingly turning to barely deviate from this formula.

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Dance group LeineRoebana breaks boundaries in Cello Biennale

Dance and music belong together. Yet there is always something new to discover in this combination. The Amsterdam Cello Biennale invited dance group LeineRoebana to create a dance and music performance with cellist Jakob Koranyi and CvA Percussion to music by composer Tan Dun: 'Snow in June'. In recent years, LeineRoebana has shown like no other group how enriching unconventional combinations between dance and music can be.

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Subtle and playful Ernest et Célestine big winner of Cinekid

It is rare for the same film to receive both jury and (children's) audience awards at the Cinekid festival. But about the subtle and sparkling French animated film Ernest et Célestine everyone agreed this time. This story based on picture books by Belgian illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, who died in 2000, won a double award, making it this year's big winner. Ernest and Célestine are a bear and a mouse who have to find that their friendship is poorly understood in the bear and mouse world.

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DUS retains grant, leadership leaves

The Netherlands' most striking company when it comes to handling grant money has been saved. The Theatre newspaper reports that the central government has agreed to the new adjusted budget, which had to be prepared after earlier this year a loss of over 2 million euros had arisen. So the company keeps the one and a half million euros and artistic director Jos Thie and his business partner Jelle Snijder are chased out of the city with pitch and feathers, where they can join the Supervisory Board that had already turned a little too blind eye. After all, putting in an overpriced production to make up for the deficit from an earlier run of that same overpriced production: no entrepreneur would ever allow that.

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41.5 million a year for improving cultural education

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is investing time and money in improving cultural education in primary schools in the coming years. Through a combination of existing pots and money contributed by the state, municipalities and provinces, 41.5 million euros a year will be freed up for arts education in the coming years. And before every self-employed artist starts making plans now: that money will mainly go towards research and procedures, with the most concrete goal being: 'the development of a curriculum for cultural education'.

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Cinekid honours French animation filmmaker Michel Ocelot with Lifetime Achievement Award

The feature-length French animated film is on the rise. To emphasise this, Michel Ocelot, one of the pacesetters, has been invited as guest of honour by the Cinekid children's film festival. Tonight, he was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award, which he accepted with a modest protest. As an animation filmmaker, Michel Ocelot (1943) still considers himself an adolescent with much to discover.

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Art for all: €3 per person, per month

The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.

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New impetus by young dance talent at PUNCH! Festival

PUNCH! is a fantastic festival. It shows how much beauty, news and surprise emerge when the line between dance and performance is dissolved. PUNCH! promotes a refreshing view of the world and shakes loose entrenched interpretations. The young dance makers and performers show tremendous originality and creativity that you will not only enjoy watching, you will go... 

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Marion von Tilzer wins Women's Composition Prize MCN with Rote Schuhe

Amsterdam, 8 October 2012 During the well-attended Classical Music Day at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ the prize winners of the competition for women composers were announced this afternoon. The day was organised for the 11th time by Music centre Netherlands (MCN), which will cease to exist on 1 January. Thanks to an anonymous bequest, explicitly intended for women composers, three prizes could be awarded.

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Internet users can comment on plan to abolish CKV

Minister Bijsterveld of OCW is going to ask the country for advice. A so-called internet consultation was launched this week on her ministry's intention to abolish Cultural and Artistic Education for Havo and VWO pupils. 'The Field' can now respond, so we suggest you make your views, and especially your substantive arguments known to the ministry, via this link:

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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.

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Ed Spanjaard unleashes primal forces in Götterdämmerung Reisopera

The final 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.

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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 of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, as the Amsterdam programme is called in full. Magnesium again. The Tuschinski Award for best graduation film, this... 

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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,... 

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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 that, more than 500 visitors in not even an hour.... 

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NFF 2012: premiere of George Sluizer's unfinished Dark Blood

Perhaps expectations were simply too high at the premiere of George Sluizer's 19-year-old, and now completed Dark Blood. Because, of course, it is entirely appropriate that the Netherlands Film Festival has taken the opportunity for a fine retrospective of Sluizer, one of the Netherlands' most distinguished filmmakers with the world as its purview. Maker of the blood-curdling... 

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#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. Because we may like to grumble that the weather was not... 

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'Collective copyright abuse is global problem'

A while back, there was 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.

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Archives Wim Kan and Louis Davids not in dumpster

The Theatre Museum's entire collection has been saved. The archives of such luminaries 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).

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'Pearls' 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 works of art accompanying this exhibition are scattered among the fixed... 

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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... 

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