Anyone who can remember the fall of the wall has grown up with the threat of nuclear attack. And with that comes the idiotic government advice to get under the table in case of a nuclear explosion, preferably with a colander on your head. And to keep plenty of canned food and water on hand.
Wunderbaum. Among lovers of fresh and young theatre, this collective of creators stirred something up at the beginning of this century. They were born and bred under Johan Simons, where they formed the youth team of his legendary theatre group Hollandia. And because back then, every young maker really had to do something with the world, JongHollandia, later Wunderbaum, wanted the same. But because they lived in the post-ideological era and saw every day how the ideals of their teachers, parents and mentors came to nothing, it mainly became a club of doubters. And they were very good at that.
So you can get too close to a work of art. I don't even know if it really applies to paintings, that toxic fumes can rise from them, as some claim, but it certainly applies to theatre art. During the opening of the Holland Festival 2016, I was sitting in the front row of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Normally already not the best place for those who want to keep a bit of an overview of what is happening on stage. For the occasion of 'Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten', the stage had also been raised by half a metre, which meant I spent about four-fifths of the time watching actors' heads bounce over a light rail.
The show Sketches/Notebook (2013), which has its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on 6 June, is virtuosic, radical and extremely gentle. Choreographer Meg Stuart loves small scale, even when she occupies the biggest stages with partners like the Volksbühne (Berlin), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) or the Münchner Kammerspiele. Details win out over big lines and often play a leading role in pieces that scrutinise human behaviour incredulously.
Sketches/Notebook stands out
Imagine has been transforming for several years. When this festival was still going through the world under the name Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, its main focus was on genre cinema. The Fantatstic genre is an insidious term used as a catch-all for science fiction, fantasy and horror. In these postmodern times, fantatstic is harder to delineate. The festival therefore changed its name back in 2009,...
Last Sunday, 24 April, clarinetist George Pieterson died at his home in Amsterdam, aged 74. 'George was an iconic player with a big musical heart,' says his former student Frank van den Brink. 'He invariably went full steam ahead and whichever recording you listen to, his playing is always remarkable. You didn't necessarily have to put up with his...
José Eduardo Agualusa, Elena Ferrante, Han Kang, Orhan Pamuk, Robert Seethaler and Yan Lianke have a chance to win the Man Booker International Prize 2016. The shortlist of six authors and titles was announced today. And, coincidence or not, we already interviewed one of the major contenders. Read that interview with José Eduardo Agualusa here, take in what he says about...
On 4 March 2016, her debut CD Varmints, a mixture of new-classical, electronica and avant-pop, was released and Scottish-Canadian Anna Meredith (b. 1978) was showered with praise. 'One of the most innovative minds in modern British music,' wrote one critic. 'Vibrant and kaleidoscopic,' wrote another. 'Exceptional soundscapes of synthesisers, beats and other things' reposted a third. A fourth felt...
How far can you go in using Shakespeare's name for a theatre production? Or rather, when does an adaptation of a classic stop being an adaptation, and when should you just come out and say that you have written your own play? And then, if you've reported in your four-year plan that in 2016 you will be doing a Shakespeare...
Aaltje van Buuren enjoys her busy life. She is the wife of successful star conductor Jaap van Zweden. She dedicates her charm and energy worldwide to non-profit organisations that improve the daily lives of autistic children. Music and art are forces that run like a thread through everything she touches. The family can be seen every week...
The stupidest question I come across all too often is THE question: what is the tangible result of your projects for audiences? Or more broadly drawn: what can art & culture measurably add to lives? Add that question together with the current clamour for 'utility in art' and I get accutely red pimples from these non-answerable questions. And I...
What does the future of opera look like? The National Opera tries to answer this in the Opera Forward Festival: new visions new voices, organised for the first time this year to mark its 50th anniversary. The ten-day festival kicks off 15 March with the world premiere of Only the Sound Remains by Kaija Saariaho. About...
Things have been rumbling in the film world for some time: Why is the silver screen so, er, white? And where are all the women anyway? #OscarsSoWhite but also #OscarIsADude! Many people in the industry have already expressed their displeasure at this. At the previous Oscar ceremony, actresses aimed their arrows at equal pay, or rather, the lack of it. This year, many an African-American actor and...
'The most important thing is to bring music to the audience,' says Daniele Gatti on Thursday 25 February during the presentation of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's new season. 'Amsterdam meets Gatti' we read on large posters behind him. That does not appear to be a word too many: the brand-new principal conductor will be involved in all series, travels on the tour RCO meets Europe,...
The raw in Something Raw can mean all sorts of things. The first thought might be something rough, as in the effect of sandpaper on skin or the havoc left by an elephant in the china shop. But rough is a derivative meaning. Raw first of all means unprocessed and fresh. There is a certain hope in the combination of rough and raw: artists who like...
Festival director Bero Beyer found it difficult to choose eight films to nominate for the Hivos Tiger Award. After all, what makes a film special? According to Beyer, Elisabeth Subrin's film drama A Woman, a Part evokes a sense of nostalgia and is also outspoken, bold and above all human. The #IFFR check by Culture Press is that A Woman, a...
Who does a film belong to? That's the theme at this year's IFFR Critics' Choice programme. From YouTube compilations to a Russian Mad Men. Is the studio the owner, the filmmaker or the viewer? With video essays as the new form of film criticism.
The last bit is always the most exciting. After a nice conversation with festival presenter Francis Broekhuizen, chief guest Susan Neiman suddenly joined us. It was nearing twelve, quite a bit of wine had actually already been poured into presenter and guest, but still. Suddenly you find yourself talking to a great philosopher and writer about David Bowie. This was the last session at Winternachten....
Time for our success list. In 2015, we attracted 60,000 more visitors than in 2014. That's something to be proud of. A website that focuses on the stories that existing media find the small, and then figures like that. That we attracted those 300,000 visitors is one, that they spent an average of 2 and a half minutes per story,...
Today it was announced that the Gijsbrecht tradition, revived since five years, will end again due to lack of subsidy. A shame, of course, although we don't have to mourn the end of this Amsterdam custom, which has existed since 1638. After all, the play is totally unplayable, historically completely off the mark and all in all a rather pretentious representation of the history of...
The man's gaze turned upwards. He looks puzzled. Why is he hanging here now? Here, in Amsterdam? He comes from Spain, doesn't he? Then he hung in St Petersburg for years. This room, as deep red and imposing in size as the ''Spanish Hall'' in the Hermitage, by the way, looks an awful lot like the room where it hung for so long. Incidentally.
There is usually no 'master plan' behind the best and worst things in life. Of course, 25-year-old Adele's 'come-back' has been carefully orchestrated, from the tentative release, to the title of the first song, the wave of spontaneous covers around the world and the announcement not to go on spotify (for now). In fact, the orchestration is so obvious that...
Can there be beauty in an atomic bomb? Or in the explosion of a nuclear reactor? I don't think so, but I'm going to find out tonight. In Atomic Living, filmmaker/writer/presenter/producer Mark Cousins explores what that's really like, living in the atomic age. Because in addition to the horrors, we also have X-rays and other extremely useful medical applications. Once again, he uses...
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...
29th Cinekid children's film festival opens with new television drama for youngsters. In the Medialab, children can make their own VR glasses and do virtual bungy jumping.
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