Things we do for members and partners.
Can a filmmaker born and raised in West Germany strike just the right tone in a film set in the former East Germany? I hadn't really thought about that before, but the Berliner Zeitung raised that question in response to Christian Petzold's Barbara, about a Berlin paediatrician who, after requesting to go to the West,...
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. No idealistic preaching, then, as in the countless columns and reactions to Halbes' cultural 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 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.
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 "fortunately 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...
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...
Opvallend toch, hoe de zinnen van een schrijver, eenmaal uitgelicht, na diens dood kunnen worden voorzien van galmende vertolkingen. Vooral Gustaaf Peek moet, wil hij echt recht doen aan Haasse, iets doen aan zijn nogal borstklopperig overkomende vroomheid, maar ook een doorgewinterd kunstenaar als Kees ’t Hart mag al citerend de toon matigen.
It is incredible what an energy the men of Manar can generate. These six - dressed in djellabas - percussionists play Dekka al Marrakchia: an insanely rousing form of traditional Moroccan drum 'n bass party music and religious Gnawa. After a solemn, almost ritualistic beginning - in which the band comes jogging onto the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in a goose-step, accompanied by the menacing sounds of two huge horns - the drums erupt and the dance floor is full of swinging visitors.
In het debat Burger King & Burgerschap geven Patrick van der Hijden, David van Reybrouck, Chris Keulemans and Samuel Vriezen hun visie op de staat van de burger. Publiek mag, maar hoeft niet, meedoen. Hieronder de column Staat van Verwenning, voorgedragen door Patrick van der Hijden – als aftrap voor het debat.
“Ons leven is in de achttiende eeuw uitgevonden.
De leden van de hogere klassen – de elite – hadden een eigen huis, vaak met tuin. Ze stuurden hun kinderen naar school en die begonnen daarna een vervolgopleiding. Ze hadden vrije tijd en kwamen over het algemeen op tijd op hun afspraken, door de horloges die ze droegen en de trekschuiten die op tijd vertrokken (ze klaagden bij vertraging). Burgers die buiten de stad woonden, forensden – met de koets, dat wel. Ze dronken koffie om wakker te blijven. Ze bezochten restaurants met menukaarten. Ze werden ingeënt tegen de pokken en hadden huisdieren. Een geweldige bron over dat leven vormt het dagboek van Otto van Eck, die daar op tienjarige leeftijd onder druk van zijn door de Verlichting bezielde ouders aan begon, in 1791. Daar ontleen ik bovenstaande voorbeelden aan.
Dit leven wordt aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw niet door een kleine minderheid geleefd, maar door een groot deel van de Nederlanders. Die moeten het wel zonder personeel doen. Dat is namelijk vervangen door technologie.
Er is iets bijzonders aan de hand met Afrika. De nieuwe generatie schrijvers uit Nigeria, Ghana en Zuid Afrika die rondloopt op Writers Unlimited staat anders in de wereld dan hun ouders. Of, sterker nog, het feit dat ze daar op een heel andere manier mee omgaan, met die voorouders, definieert hen als iets volkomen nieuws. Ze presenteren zich zelfbewuste, moderne wereldburgers.
In the late 1980s, John N. Gray (South Shields, 1948) adviser to Margaret Thatcher - Gray: "I was just a small mote of dust in her administration" - now he is a fierce critic of all things neoconservative. On Writers Unlimited, publicist Bas Heijne felt him out.
Dinaw Mengestu deelt zijn achternaam met de voornaam van één van Ethiopië gewezen dictators. “Vooralsnog ben ik schrijver, maar aspireer een carrière als dictator.” Dictators ontstaan niet in een vacuüm, stelt Mengestu. “Wij als burgers scheppen onze leiders.” In zijn voorgedragen verhaal geven de burgers al hun dromen uit handen. Ze schuiven al hun verantwoordelijkheid af richting de machthebbers. En…
Sweet and quite tasty, although some of the guests said they were less enamoured with the stew 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.
His voice is low, and when he talks, he does so calmly and thoughtfully. He regards his humour - very British - as a side effect that is more accidental than intended. This makes Helon Habila a perfect guest for the opening night of Writers Unlimited, The Hague's literature festival better known as 'Winternachten'. The Nigerian can tell stories, but...
He is now a publisher, and the man who was director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature until last year will be quite happy with that. As director of the Bezige Bij, one of the country's largest publishing houses, he will surely never again have to submissively toast the sarcastic State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra. At least the relief was audible in Pröpper's...
She now lives in Norway, after she had to leave her homeland Iran for her own opinion. She was detained for five days, and in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, that is an eternity. Now Asieh Amini is free in a foreign land, and Oxfam-Novib is presenting her with the PEN Award. A great opening for the Writers Unlimited Winternachten Festival, which, with this presentation,...
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, Implicitly 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...
Thai and Vietnamese puppetry. Acrobats, Chinese shadow play and Japanese costumes. A Chinese conductor for a Dutch orchestra, a Canadian directing team and, as the main work, a scant 50-minute opera by a Russian composer, based on a fairy tale by a Danish writer who took his inspiration from China. Loosely.
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...
Writers Unlimited The Dodo is coming back to life. On 19 January already. Then we plunge into the Hague writer's life. The four-day festival Writers Unlimited, formerly known as Winternachten, but thus changed its name because of the weather (not, but nice joke) will have a real dodo, but then again differently. We will LIVE BLOG. That means we'll be there....
We received a letter on legs from Wim de Groot a while ago. Now we often get letters in paws, but here something seemed to be going on. Trouble of course because sorting it out takes time and money and that wasn't there for a while. (Look out for the donor campaign we are about to launch) But still. What's wrong with it? Wim de...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.