Small-scale film festival Film by the Sea specialises in book adaptations. It celebrates its 20th edition with an award for Sophia Loren and a Bergman retrospective. Artistic director feels it is now time for rejuvenation and is handing over the baton.
Dutch theatre is remembering less and less. This was evident last Friday during two meetings at ITA, the building that once housed the Stadsschouwburg. During Nieuwe Grond, part of the Dutch Theatre Festival, the topic was heritage. One meeting will possibly be remembered by the six attendees: the two guests plus presenter, and their three audience members. The other...
Sometimes there is a gap in the strolling crowd in Groningen's Noorderplantsoen. Often this is due to a local resident with muscle-dog, who continues to make his daily round despite the crowds. It is one of those funny things that give Noorderzon its very own character, as the most Groningen-like of all summer festivals in our country. There is...
Less supply of subsidised art is good for the country. Antoinette Laan, culture spokeswoman for the governing VVD party, has thought so for at least eight years. Back in 2011, then still as alderman in Rotterdam, she stated that she did not understand why art institutions were open on weekdays. After all: everyone was at work then and so couldn't come and have a look anyway. Listen here...
The Flemish waffle baker at the Willy Wonka Wafl Factory in the Burton Cafe has seen all the Tim Burton films, he says from between a sleek hipster beard. 'Especially since you had to prepare the menu,' I say. The menu at the - temporary - Burton Cafe in exhibition space C-min includes: Charlie Chocolate Wafl, Scissorhands Wafl, Oompa Loopa Wafl, Beetlejuice...
'Not a bad word about Lego or Knexx. But identity is the most exciting building kit.' So opens the preface to Theatre Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch. What you see is what you guess is the motto this time. It refers to the gap between how other people see you and how you yourself feel. Identity in its broadest form: from gender...
Usually when I speak to someone who calls themselves a playwright, they say they are 'only' a supplier of a 'half-product'. I never get that answer from a young actor, and certainly never from a director. It is they who make theatre out of the half-products supplied by writers. Actors and directors prefer to be addressed as 'theatre-makers'. Nothing wrong with that....
Speaking of bubbles. In the middle of Den Bosch, on the parade square, there are three mega-play blocks you can enter. They are mini theatres, brainchildren of designer Theun Mosk. In one of them, you come across a very large plastic bubble in which young, mostly naked, people move. The audience stands on either side of the bubble feeling uncomfortable. Partly because the naked young people...
About 18 years ago, while on holiday in the Auvergne region, my wife and I picked up a paraglider that had ended up rather unhappily in a meadow full of indignant cows. We were happy to do something. The paraglider looked grateful, although he was a little worried about the car in which we were going to take him back to...
With Toost, the Netherlands has gained a food truck festival that does not visit the capital cities but rather the smaller towns. This sometimes causes local friction, but almost always gratitude. And for a consumer who feels not stripped down but taken care of for a change. Halfway through our conversation, Toost Foodtruck Festival organiser Kris de Pee (30) is tapped on the shoulder by the...
If the weather holds up a bit, the upcoming edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard will be the most tropical in history. The smart ones among us, who opted for a staycation in West Balkonia this year, can indulge their cultural heart in Den Bosch. Not for nothing regularly called 'The Avignon of the Netherlands'. Theatre festival Boulevard is unpacking 2018 with a truly overwhelming...
The hip-hop festival Woo Hah! nearly burst at the seams at its fourth edition last year. For its fifth edition, it diverted to the Beekse Bergen in Hilvarenbeek. We walked around there for a day. 'Make that circle bigger, make it bigger! Grooooter!' Speaking is Dutch chart topper Ronnie Flex. If you don't know him from his gigantic hits, then...
Human rights organisations from around the world and thousands of filmmakers and artists express support for Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years by Russia. This Ukrainian filmmaker has been on hunger strike since 14 May. His life is in serious danger, according to the European Film Academy.
"In the Netherlands, we are actually on holiday," say Daphne (40) and Ilja (26), laughing. They are travel experts, with Japan as their core destination. "I visit a few festivals every summer, but whether I'm really a festival-goer? Not so much, I think." Seven years ago, Daphne was last to Lakedance, now she is "getting up to age" and got to go for...
Dutch Director of Photography Robby Müller could paint with light. Averse to rules, he made an important contribution to international cinema. 3 July, he died at the age of 78 in his hometown of Amsterdam.
When I thought of fashion, I pictured an elite group at the catwalk: catty models and hostile designers. After my visit to the Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem, all those images have been completely adjusted. In the month of June, everyone in fashionable Arnhem seems to be working together. Fashion designers walk fraternally with each other in a fashion parade, sharing studios, catwalks and celebrating...
Last week, while walking the dog, my neighbour Stefanie asked, "What is that anyway, this Holland Festival?", and I almost caught myself wearily going to explain that it was the most important performing arts festival the Netherlands and its environs and that everyone with a bit of education should know it. But I held back. And wondered: how...
That's at least one mistake you can make: booking for a Christoph Marthaler performance and then expecting something new to happen. Yet I did it, on my last visit to this year's Holland Festival. Someone had said that the Swiss playwright, who has been creating performances in which lost souls are...
'Love is poison' Mortimer sings to the king in the first scene of Lessons in Love and Violence. The military adviser denounces his relationship with Gaveston, whom he showered with favours while his subjects went hungry. 'Don't bore me with the price of bread' ripostes the king. Rather than worry, he treats his lover to poetry and music...
French-Austrian theatre maker Gisèle Vienne is showing her latest work Crowd at the Holland Festival. Vienne takes the rave party as a starting point for subtle observations on what moves people during a night out. Besides the ecstatic pleasure of dance and trance, the performance also stages all kinds of nocturnal self-loss, awkwardness, loneliness and aggression. Acid The wonderful mix of acid, trance and...
Then suddenly there is a very different audience in Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan het IJ. Gamers. Or rather developers. And hardcore new-music aficionados. 'I only come for Maze,' said my neighbour petulantly. He came for the music ensemble. Not for the games, that is, not for the computer graphics. And maybe not even for Claron McFadden. That famous, hyper-pliable opera singer who appeared in...
That George Benjamin is this year's Holland Festival court composer makes perfect sense. And I say that as a non-expert. After all: the way contemporary classical music is often written and talked about scares laymen like me. Would I ever have enough knowledge to appreciate those gourmet sounds? On Saturday night, I made my first live acquaintance...
After the smashing finale of Ishtar by Dima Orsho, the audience stands up as one and erupts in an ovational applause. I am almost stunned by the loud cheers and shouts that overwhelm the members of Hewar and the Gurdjief Ensemble. Bewildered, I look around me: surely there would be another song? But no, there...
Pizza Napolitana is not going to taste the same again. After all, mozzarella can be anything. We owe this enrichment of our lives to De Warme Winkel, the anarchic theatre company hired by the Nederlands Kamerkoor to enhance their Holland Festival programme. We knew it. And you can go and check that out for yourself, because after that...
Occasionally it chafes at Playful Arts, an intimate festival that brings play and art together. It's all about interaction, doing it yourself, experiencing it. Some visitors have to cross a threshold. But then something does happen. Those dancers must be in really good shape," I hear someone behind me mutter reverently. On the other side of the street, a man points to...
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