Do you remember? The band-aid Halbe Zijlstra offered the cultural sector in the form of the Giving Act? Tax breaks would definitely lead to more sponsorship, so the impact of the austerity measures would not be nearly as dramatic as the sector itself cried out.
Topical again, now that Toneelgroep Amsterdam is reviving the play, my review from 2014. This week, the stage adaptation of The Fountainhead premiered. The book is terrible, the performance rattles, the actors win only narrowly. The content, however, creates even more confusion, which is why I won't stop you from going to see it. And Hans Kesting, of course. I put it this way.
In an immaculate virginal white uniform, Don Juan gives a slick press conference for his wedding to Elvira. We hear the famous words with which Bill Clinton denied the Lewinsky affair. Actor Ischa den Blanken's grin speaks volumes when he says: 'These allegations are false.' We know: he is lying.
Minister Filipetti has given the green light. Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten will be indeed the new artistic directors of CNN Ballet National de Marseille. A company with 30 dancers, 60 employees in total, in a building with 9 studios and a theatre. Who in the Netherlands still gets that done?
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.
"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:
"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.
Fouad Laroui does not do internet. The Moroccan-born author and professor does not even have a mobile phone. "I realise that this makes me part of a small elite," he declared during a debate at Writers Unlimited, "but I don't see the point of it." His tablemates did not share his opinion, which is quite remarkable. Just a few years ago, most of the international writing elite regarded social media as something with which they did not need to interfere.
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.
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
Culture debate 2013: Rutte and PVV shake hands. It was about Caro Emerald. About Zwarte Piet. And the classic: subsidy on opera tickets. And briefly about carnival. And it made all the news. Geenstijl. Radio 1,2,3 and 4. What else was the debate about? Um... no idea.
We kept a liveblog. Nice and old-fashioned, from the days when every month there was uproar somewhere about the government's handling of art. Now there is peace in the tent, as the PVV sardonically points out, because 'The Left' is now the bearer of policies devised by the PVV. The PVV predicts a black future for 'The Left' once the PVV comes to power.
The Dutch film world has a new club. Dutch filmmakers can join the Dutch Academy For Film (DAFF). With the aim, in short, of raising the profile of Dutch cinema. The DAFF was founded on 24 June this year following the example of similar academies in, for example, England, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. A press conference at the Netherlands Film Festival
Jet Bussemaker believes in Daan Roosegaarde. She confessed this on Sunday 1 September during the traditional Paradiso debate. She admired his courage to imagine the unthinkable and his drive to come up not with opinions but with proposals. Her message to the arts sector, again almost fully present in Paradiso, was clear: stop complaining, start doing something.
Jet Bussemaker, minister of culture since last autumn, is slowly but surely starting to repair the damage done by the previous cabinet, supported by the Dutch culture-hating party PVV.
5 million back for culture card, 2 million for museums, something more soon
De Verleiders, last season's big theatre hit, heads the jury selection of The Theatre Festival 2013. The by a group of actors and cabaret artists, including Pierre Bokma and
Nothing worse than having to play an unsuccessful play thirty, or a hundred times, just because the show has been sold to theatres so many times. That's why it would be nice if companies could decide not to do it. Because now they wouldn't be able to.
The Cry for Culture with which the Dutch cultural world launched its opposition to the scrapping of art subsidies in 2010 was, in retrospect, a publicity disaster. Perhaps not yet as unfortunate as
We received this via Facebook: "During the night of Friday 11 to Saturday 12 January at 1.30am, a group of about seven young men destroyed a large canvas hanging on the facade of Theatre Kikker on the Ganzenmarkt in Utrecht. The canvas, which
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....
There has been another interesting cultural twist to the 'Europe debate'. Someone has called out that it watermark of the new series of euro banknotes will include a picture of 'the rape of Europe' by the Greek supreme god Zeus. The anti-Europe and anti-Greeks in the various timelines need no more to frame the banking mafia's conspiracy against European citizens.
Halbe Zijlstra is proud of his policy, and keen to come and tell it in front of the entire cultural sector. So on Sunday 26 August, he appeared on stage during the annual 'Paradiso Debate' to reiterate how well things had gone with the 200 million cut in the arts sector. He praised the resilience of the affected art world, and would be happy to do the same again.
The major research and management consulting firm Berenschot has calculated that, on balance, the cuts to the arts turn out to be not too bad. Client of the study, De Volkskrant, then headlined that big. And indeed, it is kind of good news that the pile-up of cuts (the state 24% less, the provinces 20% less and the municipalities only 9 % less) is so low in net terms. We were surprised for a moment, but when we asked around, we found out
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