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'Wikileaks has never been caught at a single fault' - Iris ter Schiphorst writes Assange: Fragmente einer Unzeit

'There is an information war going on right now, which shows how important data is. The Assange case is the most poignant example of this.' Dutch-German composer Iris Ter Schiphorst wrote a piece about Julian Assange, the now controversially declared founder of Wikileaks. She is on a mission with this: 'Although Wikileaks has never been caught at a single fault, Assange has been accused of... 

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The masked truth in HBO's Watchmen

At a time when comic book movies, superheroes and alternative dystopian realities reign supreme, I feared the worst when HBO announced Damon Lindelof's Watchmen. Not having extensive knowledge of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book Watchmen myself, I found the 2009 film a disappointment. Lindelof is the man behind the infamous series Lost. Where with Lost, the viewer... 

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"'Well nice' is not good enough, that falls right off." Film critic Jan Pieter Ekker on possibly the last Directors' Forum at the Dutch Film Festival

The Dutch Film Festival is about to erupt. A spacious week with a broad overview of everything moving on Dutch screens, from public film to short student film. Last year was noisy: directors, editors and cameramen expressed gloom about the quality and guts of patriotic film. Visitor numbers don't seem to be overblown either, although... 

Read More ""'Well nice' is not good enough, that falls right off." Film critic Jan Pieter Ekker on possibly the last Directors' Forum at the Dutch Film Festival

'Art tax cuts and a cultural fund will be created as an incentive for homeowners to invest in works of art.' (How we think the throne speech should have read)

Members of the States General, This year about 72 years ago we had the first Holland Festival. After years of enslavement and tyranny, hope for a better future literally came from above, in the form of Maria Callas. Eyewitnesses who saw the lights in the Stadsschouwburg turn red that day would never forget that image. 72 years later, it seems... 

Read More "'Art tax cuts and a cultural fund will be created as an incentive for homeowners to invest in works of art.' (How we think the throne speech should have read)

Why, as a total layman, I did three days AUS LIGHT. And came out as a different person.

Music critics were unabatedly enthusiastic. And even opera lovers came, saw and were pleased. Of course, there was the chorus of monuments, led by a Flemish antiquity, who liked Maria Calllas better seventy years ago, but its members are only the necessary minority needed for something as unprecedented as AUS LICHT, the Magnum opus of the 72nd Holland Festival. Beforehand, it seemed... 

Read More "Why, as a total layman, I did three days AUS LIGHT. And came out as a different person.

Angélica Liddell's screams are particularly interesting in The Scarlet Letter

The much nudity and sex in Angelica Liddel's adaptation of Hawthorne's famous novel are a bit old-fashioned. The Spanish language is the real attraction. In his review of Angélica Liddell's play 'The Scarlet Letter' on this website, Wijbrand Schaap calls the scene with a naked black man "a painful low point". According to Schaap, the man is treated by Lidell as... 

Read More "Angélica Liddell's screams are particularly interesting in The Scarlet Letter

In the greatest spectacle, ultimately the smallest detail touches your heart (which is why The Head and The Load had to be the royal opening of the Holland Festival).

Some stories are too big to tell. Too big, but no less important or true for that. Like the story of the millions of Africans who died in World War I in the service of the warring factions there: Britain, France, Italy and Germany. No one knew that last story. At least, nobody I knew knew about it, and neither did I myself. It... 

Read More "In the greatest spectacle, ultimately the smallest detail touches your heart (which is why The Head and The Load had to be the royal opening of the Holland Festival).

Naked men and black bronzing under philosophical veneer. Is Angelica Liddell overshooting the mark with The Scarlet Letter? (Why the Holland Festival can expect a riot)

That you cannot shamelessly treat a black man as a rutting primal beast and a faceless object for your unlimited lust fantasy as a white woman? Seems logical to me, but for Angélica Liddell, world-renowned performance artist, it is typical of the new puritanism that threatens free art. She now brings The Scarlet Letter to the Netherlands, a theatrical performance that is rather... 

Read More "Naked men and black bronzing under philosophical veneer. Is Angelica Liddell overshooting the mark with The Scarlet Letter? (Why the Holland Festival can expect a riot)

Laundry is still hanging on the line and food is still on the tables in restaurants. The doomsday scenario of Chernobyl, now as an HBO TV series.

On 26 April 1986, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. To this day, it is one of the most catastrophic disasters caused by man. The effects of the nuclear disaster are felt even today. For many, Chernobyl represents a long-forgotten memory. Places with a macabre history have always drawn people and... 

Read More "Laundry is still hanging on the line and food is still on the tables in restaurants. The doomsday scenario of Chernobyl, now as an HBO TV series.

Faustin Linyekula and the tearfulness of the travelling artist

'Aid workers come to my city to leave again. I come there to stay.' You cannot get Faustin Linyekula any more concise. 'Aid workers do not create a bond with the people they want to help. Their work is gone as soon as they leave. I don't come to help, but because I want to be there. If that makes me a few... 

Read More "Faustin Linyekula and the tearfulness of the travelling artist

'I now understand how complex "guilt" actually is': Takis Würger wrote novel about Jewish betrayer (and put his email address in it).

'That I have perpetrators in my family gives me the responsibility to keep remembering. Many of my contemporaries say we should never forget and that it should never happen again, but do nothing else. Being a writer gives me the opportunity to do something. To write about it, make readers feel... 

Read More "'I now understand how complex "guilt" actually is': Takis Würger wrote novel about Jewish betrayer (and put his email address in it).

First aid for blaze. Rudolf Escher offers solace with Musique pour l'esprit en deuil

Monday 15 April 2019, this date is forever etched in our memory. I couldn't keep dry at the images of the all-consuming fire at Notre-Dame de Paris. Like millions of others, I sat glued to my screen for hours with bated breath: this cannot be true! When the structure, the rose windows and even the organ turned out to be saved, I jumped... 

Read More "First aid for blaze. Rudolf Escher offers solace with Musique pour l'esprit en deuil

Another day of life: a film experience that continues to irritate under the skin long after leaving the movie house.

It remains miraculous how much emotion intelligent animation can generate. In Another day of life (in cinemas from 14 March), the Angolan coverage by legendary Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński is captured in grandly drawn images. Combined with live footage and well-chosen archival material, it delivers an 85-minute hellscape that can be appreciated on several levels. Kapuściński... 

Read More "Another day of life: a film experience that continues to irritate under the skin long after leaving the movie house.

'For a long time, history has mainly been presented from a male perspective.'

Her debut novel became an instant bestseller in Spain. The Last Gift of Paulina Hoffmann by Carmen Romero Dorr is a novel based partly on her own family history about Paulina, who emigrates from Germany to Spain as a young girl because of World War II. 'About her past, her experiences during the war, my grandmother never wanted to talk.' A beautiful family epic, that is The Last... 

Read More "'For a long time, history has mainly been presented from a male perspective.'

'A murder of a whore that involved all the high-ups.' Tomas Ross on the never-explained murder of Blonde Dolly from The Hague

How did the Hague prostitute Blonde Dolly make her millions? And why was her killer never caught, when it was abundantly clear who must have strangled her? That smells like a conspiracy, and conspiracies are like grist to writer Tomas Ross' mill. In Blonde Dolly, he tackles one of the oldest and most mysterious cold cases in the Netherlands. Until it... 

Read More "'A murder of a whore that involved all the high-ups.' Tomas Ross on the never-explained murder of Blonde Dolly from The Hague

Swearing and ranting tapping a tender poem. Biographer Elsbeth Etty shows Willem Wilmink in all his complexity

As good and fluent as writing poems and songs was for him, everyday life fell on him with difficulty. Writer Willem Wilmink grew into a folk hero of Twente, but remained a child at heart, according to the biography by literary critic Elsbeth Etty. 'Someone who, according to his best friend Herman Finkers, couldn't even hold a pair of scissors.' 

Read More "Swearing and ranting tapping a tender poem. Biographer Elsbeth Etty shows Willem Wilmink in all his complexity

Long-winded Juditha Triumphans at DNO

Oratorios are notoriously undramatic, because they only tell a story for one second and do not zoom in on human emotions. Juditha Triumphans is no exception and the narrative itself has little to it. To rid her town of its assailants, Judith gets their general drunk and then cuts off his head. This could make for a compelling story, were it... 

Read More "Long-winded Juditha Triumphans at DNO

The Netherlands has a cruel history. This is how Theatre Group Alum makes it palpable in '1619, make it short'.

Never knew I would feel a tear welling up for the fate of a 17th century Council Pensionary. Yet that happened on Friday 21 December, at the premiere of '1619, make it short...'. With this final volume, author Erik Snel puts a crown on his trilogy on the Eighty Years' War. Was volume 1 (1600, battle of Nieuwpoort) mainly a cheerful accumulation of... 

Read More "The Netherlands has a cruel history. This is how Theatre Group Alum makes it palpable in '1619, make it short'.

Why it's good that De Nederlandse Reisopera is coming to you with Die Tote Stadt.

In 1920, Erich Wolfgang Korngold experienced triumphs with his psychological opera Die tote Stadt. The work was performed in more than eighty cities at the time, with unanimous critical acclaim. The opera then disappeared from the stage for a long time but is nowadays performed again sparsely. So it is good that the Nederlandse Reisopera is bringing this almost forgotten piece back to the stage.... 

Read More "Why it's good that De Nederlandse Reisopera is coming to you with Die Tote Stadt.

AFFR: A true Rotterdam film festival with a mission

'Architecture has always been seen as an afterthought. I see it as a necessary thing, not an extra. You now see, for instance, that technocrats have taken over power. They come up with a technical solution for everything. They can make buildings that are well insulated, that use geothermal heat: that is now the job of the builders. But all these technocrats forget that it's... 

Read More "AFFR: A true Rotterdam film festival with a mission

'Most people prefer to live alone.' Philippe Claudel on his poignant novel 'The Archipelago of the Dog'

Three black men wash up on a small island. This threatens to throw a spanner in the works of the residents and their economic plans. So everyone prefers to pretend that nothing has happened. Archipelago of the Dog, Philippe Claudel's new novel, is a haunting book with lightness peeking through at times. The French bestselling author worries: 'Once, nuclear weapons constituted... 

Read More "'Most people prefer to live alone.' Philippe Claudel on his poignant novel 'The Archipelago of the Dog'

Why rain doesn't bother audiences at outdoor cinema Seeing Moon and Stars

It could be the ideal balmy summer evening: watching a movie under an idyllic starry sky. On the autumnal evening of Friday 6 September, however, open-air cinema Zienemaan en Sterren turns out to be more of an exercise in endurance. It is raining, the temperature is dropping, but the Groningen audience remains undisturbed: kop d'r veur and umbrella open. "Every city had an open-air cinema except Groningen. That... 

Read More "Why rain doesn't bother audiences at outdoor cinema Seeing Moon and Stars

'My will is the only thing I can control.' How Benedict Wells' difficult childhood led him to become a bestselling author

Robert Beck, the protagonist of Benedict Wells' debut novel Becks last summer, hopes, as a near-forty-year-old, to make his dream come true after all: a career in music. Wells (34) knows what it is to go all out to pursue your dream. He turned a difficult childhood into literature, and he became damn successful at it. Over the past... 

Read More "'My will is the only thing I can control.' How Benedict Wells' difficult childhood led him to become a bestselling author

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