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IDFA viewing tip Wednesday 25 November: deadly drug gangs

Today's IDFA viewing tip is directly opposite yesterday's. Yesterday was uplifting and heartwarming. Cartel Land, on the other hand, is hard, raw, unpleasant and brutal. It could hardly be otherwise, as Matthew Heineman's film is about the war on drugs in Mexico and Arizona, which is just north of it. At the risk of... 

IDFA viewing tip for Monday 23 November

Today's IDFA viewing tip is for a special film about a special man, Sun Mu. That's not his real name, it means 'without borders'. And that is very appropriate for this artist. For years, he was a successful propaganda artist for the regime in North Korea. Until he ventured the great crossing. He swam (literally!) to freedom and has been living since the... 

Welcome to the Jungle: a catastrophic clusterfuck at the Channel Tunnel

Maaike Engels (video artist and filmmaker) and Teun Voeten (war photographer and cultural anthropologist) made Welcome to the Jungle. A documentary about the utter chaos in the makeshift migrant camp near the canal tunnel in Calais, where some 6,000 people are now waiting in harsh misery for their chance to travel clandestinely to England. Welcome to the Jungle is a painful and bij... 

Refugee novels deserve a second life. Especially now

For months now, the news has been about little else but refugees and asylum seekers, and supporters and opponents of their reception have become increasingly polarised. A situation that is very reminiscent of the theme in Elvis Peeters' 2006 novel De ontelbaren (The Indivisible). The atmosphere in the countries where refugees - 'fortune seekers' according to some - seek refuge is becoming increasingly grim. Also in our... 

Berlin plays Tagfish, poetic documentary theatre about emptiness, and more emptiness

From today, the documentary performance Tagfish tours the Netherlands. The Belgian theatre collective Berlin has been making finely crafted theatre installations since 2004, playing on the border of documentary and fiction, television and theatre, current affairs and eternity. Tagfish is ostensibly about the perils surrounding the redevelopment of a piece of wasteland near Essen. Die Zeche Zollverein already had a monumental... 

Architecture Film Festival: Raw concrete on the big screen

From confrontational brutalism to the flowing lines of Frank Gehry and from timeless London to the Paris of Eric Rohmer. Some of the selections from the Architecture film festival that starts on 8 October in Rotterdam. We take a dive into the programme in advance. In its existence, the AFFR has managed to hold its own against other thematic... 

Autumn of reflection

Movies that Matter will not only see you at the festival in March. The film event, organised by Amnesty International, will also tour several film houses in the Netherlands this autumn. It kicks off in October with the screening of Hubert Sauper's documentary We come as friends. In his earlier film Darwin's nightmare, this award-winning Austrian showed... 

Powerladies in Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

In 1989, the Holland Festival placed composers from the Soviet Union at the centre. The music of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidoelina hit like a bomb. The ladies proved to be here to stay, although they move at two extremes of our perception of sound. Ustvolskaya pounds her message into our eardrums with monomaniacal drive, Gubaidoelina intoxicates us with mysterious rustling and whispering sounds. For me,... 

Which eurosceptic dares to go to Het Zuidelijk Toneel at @TFBoulevard?

  Whether a TED talk catches on is often largely down to the speaker. This global craze of pimped-up powerpoints could become a global craze because these 'talks' are delivered by heart in front of an audience. So they are theatrical things, these TED Talks, and that makes them interesting to watch even on a screen. Lucas De Man, director,... 

Greece Special (3): How is the film festival in Thessaloniki going?

  If all goes well, the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival will kick off on 6 November. Less well-known than Rotterdam, Berlin or Locarno, but the most important festival in southern Europe. And they have quirky and broad programming, where you can discover all kinds of new filmmakers. But is it going well? The first festival dated back to 1960 and was... 

The great Jihad or tearful dying: "Mom, are you ready?"

Last night Nazmiye Oral, together with a large group of Turkish colleagues, played the performance Niet Meer Zonder Jou for the third and, for now, last time. It is an intimate and overwhelming theatre production by Adelheid Roosen, Female Economy & Zina, co-produced by and performed during the Holland Festival at Broedplaats De Vlugt, far west in Amsterdam-Slotermeer. Tearing die Nazmiye Oral calls... 

The inner landscape #HF15: never the twain shall meet

The new operas by Arnoud Noordegraaf and Guo Wenjing, which the Holland Festival presented shortly after each other, both thematise the loss of traditional values due to the meteoric developments in modern China. Both also feature a Chinese soprano in the lead role and draw on classical Chinese opera and folk music. The inner landscape of Guo Wenjing, which will be performed Tuesday, 16 June,... 

Movies that Matter on tour: Burden of Peace

The Movies that Matter film festival offers a programme of engaged and socially critical films not only in March. With Movies That Matter On Tour, special films are screened throughout the year throughout the Netherlands. In May, it is the Dutch documentary Burden of Peace. Burden of Peace tells the impressive story of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first woman to... 

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