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The winners of the Dans Publieksprijs 2013 have been announced. On Friday 14 February, the prizes, divided into seven categories, will be awarded at The Hague's Theater aan het Spui. Besides winners Pascal Schut (Introdans) and Davide Cocchiara (The Red Piece), they are choreographers Conny Jansen Danst for the performance 'How Long is Now' and Isabelle Beernaert for the performance 'Red, Yellow & Blue'.
Contrary to what some expected a few years ago, 3D in artistic film is still a rarity. So then, when something pops up in this corner again, it immediately makes one curious. And so I don't mean Cathedrals of Culture, the 3D film project by Wim Wenders and five other filmmakers starring buildings. That Wenders is a 3D believer we already knew.
I mean that other 3D premiere at the Berlin festival: Above Us All of the Dutch
Imagine an old-fashioned sophisticated comedy, but filmed with modern speed, in the colourful and baroque style of a richly detailed comic strip full of plots and escapes, rounded off with a perfume of melancholy. Then you come close to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the new film by
Regional newspapers hardly do any real cultural journalism anymore. We know this, because it was the reason why we Culture Press once founded have. How bad things are now, five years later, with art in the region and the way the newspaper handles it, was evident this month in Tilburg.
Culture cuts have now reached 450 million euros. The Lower House earlier decided on cuts of 200 million. The cut in the municipal budget by the same House of Representatives now leads to a further cut of 250 million euros. This is calculated by research firm Berenschot in a report which will be presented on Thursday 30 January in Rotterdam.
The cuts to arts have prompted many people to stress that art should be socially and politically relevant. For Samuel Wuersten, artistic director of the Holland Dance Festival, social and political relevance is a broad concept.
A sitcom they already have. Women. Girls is a resounding success, so who better than slightly snobby Girls star Jemima Kirke to explain why women have been kept out of art? Indeed. No one, they thought at the rather innovative Tate, and so they had her explain in a cheerful but also aptly-named way where things went wrong between the art world...
9,000 euros was the amount with which Indian director Anup Singh's Qissa got off the ground a decade ago. That money came from the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) affiliated Hubert Bals Fund (HBF), which has been supporting filmmakers in developing countries for 25 years now. Last night, Qissa opened the 43rd edition of the Rotterdam festival. This makes the port city
world capital for independent film for ten days, as business director Janneke Starink stated at the opening in the Doelen.
A gala should be festive. So the Ballet Gala of Dancers' Fund '79 Foundation celebrates. On Monday 20 January 2014, the fund's 17th gala took place at the DeLaMar theatre in Amsterdam, Joop van den Ende's glamorous stronghold.
A few tips for a successful gala.
Because Writers Unlimited collaborates with one of the last literary magazines in the Netherlands, and because that magazine is called 'Tirade', the last festival in The Hague included a place for tirades. And what might those be? The online dictionary says:
During Writers Unlimited, writers often mingle clandestinely among the common folk. And especially younger, international authors, unlike the Adriaan van Dissen of this world who cannot take a step without being buried in a scrum of literary groupies. So it can happen that you find yourself drinking beer several times with someone who suddenly, completely unexpectedly, turns out to be a genius author. Like Andrès Neuman.
"A good book is a man seducing me is like sex with a stranger." Anne Provoost, the securely Flemish-talking essayist managed to shake P.F. Thomése and Hermamn Koch for a moment. In a debate during Writers Unlimited, she made a plea for the not-true story, and did so in a metaphor that rather stirred the imagination. She quoted her own work "Fiction and Power" in which reading indeed becomes a rather physical affair:
It's because of Facebook. Says Ton van de Langkruis, artistic director of writers' festival Writers Unlimited: "You can no longer be that anonymous figure bombarding the world with hermetic texts from a locked attic room. The market is no longer for it. Your main means of communication is facebook. There you have to be open to questions, you communicate with your readers. We are back in the village square where the first stories were once told."
The latenight closures of Winternachten at Writers Unlimited are always upbeat. That's because the poets have already loosened up and the audience has drunk a bit more. And this time it was also because of mega-audience favourite (on other occasions) Arie Boomsma. Out of wantonness, the cheerful ratings canon smashed poetry books of his programme's guests.
"Don't listen to the experts, they are actually always wrong." The gist of 'Eyes wide open', Noreena Hertz's latest book, is clear. That she is an expert herself, and therefore her views should be distrusted, makes sense. That the conversation she had on the subject with former politician Femke Halsema became increasingly bizarre was not so logical. Downright shocking was the fall that the terror of all the world's bankers took at the end.
In the rich tradition of writers who can drink each other's blood and foaming at the mouth with their pen, Writers Unlimited orchestrated a 'polemic'. In this debate, Abdelkader Benali expressed the voice of the people, and Saskia De Coster that of the elite. Both hacked at each other with help from moderator Elsbeth Etty. Result: a lot of incoherent banter.
Writers Unlimited is the most fun literary festival in the world. We can know, because we have been there twice now. Whether the comparison with all those 20 million other literature festivals in the world is entirely pure, we don't know. We do know that a lot of the writers who attend Writers Unlimited agree with us. At least during those few days and especially nights in January.
A few reasons.
Police cracked down on the March of Civilisation on 27 June 2011 in The Hague. The demonstration against art cuts, which was controversial because of its rather elitist naming, ended with a few charges by the ME on artists. Their friendly sit-in thereby degenerated into something that opponents of all those elitist subsidy slimmers (according to Martin Bosma of the PVV) were only too happy to see: violence.
Having their own magazine - glossy or otherwise - is the ideal way for more and more art institutions to engage customers. Although relatively expensive to make, art institutions use such a magazine for background and depth. Exactly what they often lack with traditional, paper-based media.
Christmas saved the 2013 cinema year. While it seemed that cinema attendance was going nowhere at the beginning of December, the last three weeks of the year made up for a lot - thanks to Hobbit 2.
2013 closed with 30.8 million visitors, Wilco Wolfers, president of the Dutch Cinematography Federation announced at the cinema industry's New Year's meeting. Best-attended film
The first assessment of the cold clean-up by Rutte 1 is there. Bussemaker sent it to the 1st chamber. In the Netherlands, 41 arts institutions have been closed down, while 132 other clubs are bravely holding on without subsidies (and therefore without staff). How long these firms will continue to run on volunteers is still unknown. Next year, we will surely be able to add a few to the list of the deceased.
Members of the Dutch Circle of Film Journalists (KNF) and other film critics reviewed the Italian tragicomedy La Grande Bellezza voted best cinematic film of 2013. According to the same critics, Borgman by Alex van Warmerdam the best Dutch film of this year, the KNF announced.
La Grande Bellezza by Paolo Sorrentino received the most points after
We congratulate Marwan Kenzari! He has been selected as one of the Shooting Stars, the ten best young European actors to be showcased at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival.
This annual showcase of new talent could, with some luck
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