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What do you get when you combine shadow play, Weimar cinema, gamelan and Javanese myths? A mix that demands a lot from the audience, but is a delight if you are willing to surrender to it. Indonesian director Garin Nugroho does not make easy films. Often they are visually stunning, like Opera Jawa, but the plot gets in the way a bit...
Schrijver en televisiepresentator Arjen Lubach is al jaren fan van de Noorse schrijver Johan Harstad, van wie net het megadikke Max, Micha & het Tet-offensief in het Nederlands is verschenen. Hij heeft hem zelfs in Noorwegen opgezocht. Lubach: ‘Ik was bang dat we zoveel op elkaar leken dat we elkaar niets te zeggen hadden.’ Dat viel reusachtig mee. Logisch dus dat hij…
And then there turns out to be a festival theme after all. Comes all by itself. Perhaps not thought of beforehand by the management of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU), but after three days of immersion crystal clear. Writing is about that about which we do not speak. During the last festival night, Saturday 13 May, I immersed myself for the occasion in a section that allows 'Utrecht' to...
Waar je op het IlFU vorig jaar luchtdicht zat weggestopt in de hermetische zaaltjes van het voormalig postkantoor op de Utrechtse Neude, is het weidse uitzicht van Tivoli/Vredenburg een verademing. Het lijkt wel of dat iedereen een beetje losklopt. Het resultaat is meer humor en betere gesprekken op het dak van de wereld. Het Bureau van Voskuil verjaart niet.…
Good timing by the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU) to put China at the centre of this year's edition. Just in time before the Chinese have connected the Betuwelijn to their own railway network on their own initiative, with their well-known decisiveness. High time to get to know the Chinese soul, it seems to me, and that does not succeed immediately....
Dutch, ladies and gentlemen, is just about the most difficult language in the world, and any committee that wants to improve it only makes it worse. As a professional language user, I have thought so for years, and it has now been happily confirmed by people who really know about it: translators. The first day of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU)...
Of course: Hugo Borst, Suzanne Vega, Herman Koch. Enough reason to travel to Utrecht between 11 and 13 May. But there is much more to experience at the International Literature Festival Utrecht. And it doesn't even always have to do with books. I will show you a few things I am definitely looking forward to in festival palace TivoliVredenburg. The...
Je kan niet anders dan grijnzen in het aanzicht van een schattig kwalletje bestaand uit een flesje en een sinaasappelnet. Een sprayflacon met een welgeplaatst dopje wordt een pinguin, of een gans. Zelfs in elkaar gerolde haren, geoogst uit een wasmachine, ontkomen niet aan Adriaansche’s universum: een vliegenfamilie, genaamd Musca capillus. Het doet iets met je manier van kijken. ‘Waar…
Netflix and HBO are now purveyors of our conversations with friends, family and colleagues. The ultimate icebreaker at a party with strangers is talking about series, about beloved characters. Is Jon Snow still alive? Where is Barb? Having seen the first two working performances of 'The Nation', I have a strong impression that in Eric de Vroedt I have a fellow lover...
'Stop it. The fewer awards people give each other, the better.' Ingmar Heytze, poet, is clear: 'Within every conceivable genre, there are already big enough prizes. If you ask me, they should restrict that Nobel Prize to science from now on.' So on the final evening of the International Literature Festival in Utrecht (ILFU) next Saturday, it will be all about those...
Friday 12 May kicks off the twelfth edition of Operadagen Rotterdam. Titled Lost & Found, the ten-day festival is dedicated to current refugee issues. I selected three operas by Calliope Tsoupaki, Annelies van Parys and Claron McFadden, strong women whose work deserves to be heard (and seen). The fear of the unknown is as old as the...
Bark Skins Annie Proulx We had to gather some courage to start Annie Proulx's Bark Skins. After all, the book is 800 pages long, so you have to make some time for it. But this novel is well worth that. As a reader, you are unceremoniously planted in the wild forest of North America, still called New France in the late seventeenth century....
In the Volkskrant of 8 May 2017, Sarah Sluimer lets loose. The opinion maker (for Volkskrant and De Correspondent, among others) used to be a theatre maker and now wonders aloud why she is a bit done with theatre. Because she actually writes that down. I quote: 'I breathed theatre. I ate performances and was convinced that what was there,...
The play La Democrazia in America (to be seen at the Holland Festival on 4, 5 and 6 June) is of course about democracy in America, but actually more about The Democracy in America. And the two should not be confused. For The Democracy in America is a 1,200-page book by French jurist De Tocqueville. This...
It is dark. Basses thump. An intoxicatingly sweet female perfume hangs in the air, a child cries. AquaSonic has just started, and already I want to leave. What possesses a musician to go head-to-head? Our Danish correspondent went to find out. AquaSonic is an ode to water, played by Between Music, a collective of five Danish musicians. They make...
Vincent Macaigne is uncomfortable. He looks around nervously every time the waitresses run past with trays full of clinking glasses and slam the doors. He has hardly slept, and the previous evening he had walloped the audience of the Swiss Theatre Vidy with his brutal, inimitable performance En Manque. Braced, he sat down for the interview. "Sorry, I...
For new music, the primal performance is often also immediately the last time a piece is played. The scores await the archive or dusty drawer; recordings are nowhere to be found. David Dramm searches for these gems of stilted notes. He presents them in the Holland Festival's Orphanage: three evenings of forgotten compositions from the rich...
He finds himself lazy and under-ambitious, and struggles with acceptance - of himself, of others, of the world. Because his grandparents had experienced the Holocaust, there was a taboo on being unhappy in his youth. Eight life questions to Jewish-American writer Jonathan Safran Foer. 'Between what I could do and actually do, there is a big gap.' 1....
Arjan Peters talks 12 May 19.30 during ILFU in Utrecht with Paulien Cornelisse, author of the office novel De verwarde guia, and Gerd Busse, who translated Voskuil's ultimate office novel Het Bureau into German. There, office workers are usually not portrayed too positively. High time to change that. Office worker and writer Suzanne Brink takes...
Sheila Sitalsing went to work as a journalist after studying economics. After the weekly Elsevier, she joined the Volkskrant, in which she now has a column three times a week on page 2. Sitalsing won the Heldring Prize for best Dutch columnist in 2013. She also appears with some regularity in the foam & ash section of the TV programme Buitenhof....
One of the most wonderfully successful programmes on Dutch radio is Radio Kunststof. Every weekday on Radio 1, between seven and eight o'clock, it attracts a bizarre number of listeners, especially for that time of day. And especially for an art programme. On TV then is DWDD, also called art programme on its public broadcasters, but with Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and millions of viewers. How...
Something is changing considerably in the world of literature. Libraries are closing or turning into flex spaces for poor freelancers. The sold circulation of an average successful novel remains in four figures. Young people no longer watch TV or listen to the radio, but make their own well-watched and generously paid films on YouTube. Or they sit the...
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is often accused of driving audiences out of the hall with his drive for innovation. After all, his twelve-tone system swept away the foundations of tonality, which had offered listeners a safe haven for centuries. Deprived of its foothold, it would have turned its back on contemporary music forever. Nonsense, because not only did Schoenberg write fantastic works, but also...
Having already won several awards for his short work, Daan Bakker now presents his wonderfully original first feature-length film Quality Time.
The SER report published on Friday 21 April rubs it in nicely: the cultural sector is on the verge of collapse. It is even worse than a year ago. This shows that the patience of a PvdA culture minister over the past four years has not helped. Indeed, Halbe Zijlstra's multiplier of misery is doing its job entirely as expected....
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