AmsterdamWeekly_Issue37_21September

Volume 3, Issue 37

WEEKOF 21 SEPTEMBER TO 27 SEPTEMBER 2006 Inside: Music, Film, Art and Events

FREE EVERY WEDNESDAY

De Zwijger:

opening up wide to a wired world page 6

Cross Media Week: many sources, heavy wallets page 8

FRANK KOK

Making plans for NL page 4 / Safety first at Robodock page 5 / Jaeggi columnises the city page 5 Serge Gainsbourg: dead, but still smokin’ page 11 / Welcome to Trashtown page 16

21-27 September 2006

Amsterdam Weekly

ATTACHMENTS Contents: On the cover Shut up and create. Photo

by Frank Kok

Features Thirty plans for NL. . . . . . . 4 Robodock safety . . . . . . . . 4 City columnist. . . . . . . . . . . 5 De Zwijger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Cross Media Week . . . . . . . 8

Going out Short List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Serge Gainsbourg . . . . . . . 11 Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Gay & Lesbian . . . . . . . . . . 14 Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Lekker Bezig . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Film. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Short Film Fest . . . . . . . . . 21 Donald Cammell. . . . . . . . 23 Film Times. . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Plus The Glutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Eefje Wentelteefje . . . . . . 27

Amsterdam Weekly is a free cultural paper distributed every Wednesday in Amsterdam. Paid subscriptions are available on request. For details, write to info@amsterdamweekly.nl. Contents of Amsterdam Weekly are copyright 2006 Amsterdam Weekly BV. All rights reserved.

Winner of 3 European Newspaper Awards Amsterdam Weekly BV De Ruyterkade 106, 1011 AB Amsterdam Tel: 020 522 5200 Fax: 020 620 1666 www.amsterdamweekly.nl General info: info@amsterdamweekly.nl Agenda listings: agenda@amsterdamweekly.nl Advertising: sales@amsterdamweekly.nl PUBLISHER Todd Savage EDITOR Steve Korver ASSISTANT EDITOR Kim Renfrew AGENDA EDITOR Steven McCarron FILM EDITOR Julie Phillips PROOFREADER Karina Hof EDITORIAL INTERN Sarah Gehrke ART DIRECTOR Bas Morsch PRODUCTION MANAGER Aquil Copier PRODUCTION DESIGNER Rogier Charles PRODUCTION INTERN Mattijs Arts SALES ASSOCIATES Haitske van Asten, Simon Poole, Justin Rink, Carolina Salazar OPERATIONS MANAGER Monique Gruter OPERATIONS ASSISTANT Desislava Pentcheva DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Patrick van der Klugt DISTRIBUTION INTERN Chris Tian FINANCIAL ADVISER Kurt Schmidt, Veresis Consulting PRINTER Het Volk Printing ISSN 1872-3268 THIS WEEK’S CONTRIBUTORS Anuschka Blommers, Dara Colwell, Floris Dogterom, Ruth Dreier, Hans Eijkelboom, Matt Groening, Monique Gruter, Arnoud Holleman, Luuk van Huët, Johan Idema, Adriaan Jaeggi, Frank Kok, Steve Korver, Anna Leeman, Jeroen de Leijer, Sharida Mohamedjoesoef, Nick Leslie, Kim Renfrew, Marinus de Ruiter, Sanstitre, Stephen Schneider, Niels Schumm, Linawati Sidarto, Yvo Sprey, Simon Wald-Lasowski and Mark Wedin.

PLYWOOD by Arnoud Holleman

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21-27 September 2006

AROUND TOWN Poverty is colour blind

Playing with fire

Caption..

Robodock safer than crossing road.

Class, not race, defines who lives on the wrong side of the divide.

By Mark Wedin

The Netherlands is an egalitarian society in which everyone has equal chances.

Right? Wrong, says sociologist Bowen Paulle. Suggest to him that race is a premier factor to consider when looking at the country’s poor, and he will get even more riled up.

‘The fact that the most vulnerable children in our society go to the worst schools is no secret,’ Paulle wrote in an essay in the book 30 plannen voor een beter Nederland [‘30 plans for a better Netherlands’], to be released this week.

Paulle has lived and worked in both the Bronx and Bijlmer, two neighbourhoods which, although separated by the Atlantic Ocean, have a lot in common when it comes to ‘educational dumping grounds’ for socially disadvantaged children. While schools in Bijlmer suffer much less from violence and gangs compared to their Bronx counterparts, Paulle’s research shows that ‘less than one-third of the teaching hours are actually effective (in both places).’

One of the biggest obstacles in battling this problem, Paulle says, is that decision-makers zero in on the wrong issue: race. ‘They look at skin colour, while the problem lies more in social class.’ In other words, children whose parents have similar incomes and educational levels most probably have more in common socially than children of the same ethnic background. Daniel Giltay Veth, author of another essay in the same book, couldn’t agree more. ‘Ethnicity is a less important factor in marginalised social groups,’ says the founder of Amsterdam-based Koersvast, which mediates between businesses and potential workers who have been jobless for long periods of time.

He is currently coordinating a project in De Baarsjes and Bos en Lommer, in which women—mostly of Turkish and Moroccan descent—are guided towards being less socially isolated. ‘What we’ve found is that, actually, “being a woman” is a more important factor than their ethnicity.’ That is, socially-isolated women, whether of Dutch or Moroccan or Antillean descent, ‘have more in common with each other than most people expect.’

Giltay Veth has watched with growing concern how the labour market is changing at high speed: ‘I see a rising gap between the demand in the current labour market and the quality of the labour force.’ On the one hand, the num-

YVO SPREY

By Linawati Sidarto

ber of job slots for people with little or no education continues to decrease. On the other, the demand for higher-skilled workers is on the rise, and often difficult to fill. ‘We will soon arrive in a situation where there is labour scarcity on one end, and rising unemployment on the other,’ he warns.

The decision-makers mainly concern themselves with the roughly one million people who are receiving unemployment benefits. ‘They often overlook the working poor,’ whose numbers fall not far below a million, according to Giltay Veth. ‘These people do work and are motivated, but are very vulnerable. They can’t afford car insurance, for example, and then get into an accident. These seemingly simple situations can often spiral into misery.’

Paulle said that one effective way to achieve more mixing of children from different social groups is the so-called ‘70-30 rule’: a school in which 70% of the students come from middle-class families and 30% from working-class households.

Results from the several districts in the US which tested out this method have been favourable, he said. ‘The disadvantaged children perform considerably better, while the achievement of the middle-class students did not go down.’

While such programmes didn’t always go smoothly, they were able to continue successfully. ‘There is clearly a significant percentage of middle-class parents in these sorts of communities who are will-

A plan that goes to the core of the poverty problem.

ing to take risks.’ Thus, Paulle argues, if that’s the case in the US, ‘it should be a realistic assumption that it would also be doable here.’

The Dutch secondary school system, unfortunately, only sharpens the gap between the upper and lower strata, Paulle laments. In the last elementary school level, at the age of about 11, all students must take the national CITO test which is then used to decide whether children would go to one of the four highschool tracks: gymnasium, VWO, Havo or VMBO (from top to bottom). Less than 5% of Dutch high school students go to gymnasia, while roughly 60% go to VMBO. Not surprisingly, most gymnasia kids have well-to-do, highly-educated parents, while many VMBO children come from poor, uneducated families.

‘This is an early and very brutal selection,’ Paulle scolds. ‘Can you imagine what effect it has on an eleven year old when they’re basically told that they’re stupid?’ He further points out that most VMBOs are completely separate from the other tracks, while it is much more common for HBOs and VWOs, for example, to be housed in the same compounds. ‘This is de facto apartheid.’

30 plannen voor een beter Nederland is published by Meulenhoff.

Sitting at a table are Robodock’s artistic director Maik ter Veer, safety manager Jeroen Henstra, and head of the volunteers Hilde Strijker. They, along with over 600 crewmen, artists and volunteers, work tirelessly to assemble a fire-breathing electronic art show that is more worthy of the word ‘kick-ass’ than most other forms of entertainment.

Naturally, you want to know: with all the violent elements employed in the programme—not just fire, but live electricity and solid tons of steel dangling precariously over large, drunken crowds—how high is the risk of imminent peril for the average visitor?

Safety guy Henstra says: ‘Everything is safe, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.’

Oh... that makes sense. (Read: boring). But surely, after almost a decade of explosively charged excitement, real lightning being shot from high-voltage coils, and some of the biggest fire shows on earth, there must be a couple of raucous tales you can share about unspeakable catastrophes. You know, explosions gone astray, piles of charred bodies steaming in the moonlight, mothers weeping at the docks while waiting for the remnants of their children to return... that sort of thing.

‘Well, maybe [during pre-production] one of the workers bumped his head,’ says Strijker.

Ter Veer thinks for a moment: ‘There have been a couple of burns, but not much more than second-degree blisters—and that was with the artists who were working with fire themselves.’

Damn.

But for the thrill’s sake, let’s just imagine a scenario where something goes awry.

How would your crew handle a sudden disaster—or even a minor accident?

‘If anything goes wrong, there’s a whole chain of command,’ explains Ter Veer. ‘The first person to see it will find someone with a Portaphone. Then, he goes on channel one—the safety channel—gives his name, location, and what’s going on. He only has to shout this once on channel one and instantly 60 people know.

First aid and security arrive on the scene.

They judge the situation, how bad it is, take the person backstage if necessary, call an ambulance, etc. If something ever gets really serious, I have a red button.

Push that and everything stops: fuel lines go out, power down, everything.’

He recalls the precautions taken last year, when artist Erik Hobijn had flamethrowers shooting several streams of fire high into the air. ‘We had six fire teams waiting nearby with fire extinguishers, wet blankets and sand. Production people were standing in the audience, and security was behind the crowd, making sure that

Amsterdam Weekly

involved with the event gets enough rest.

So, when NDSM booked Stubnitz to dock at Robodock’s backstage—where the entire crew sleeps—Ter Veer could not allow it.

‘You read in the papers that it’s Robodock’s fault, that we’re not cooperating. That’s bullshit. NDSM wasn’t communicating.

They shouldn’t book them in our backstage.

Everyone [on Robodock] is working very long hours. They need to have quiet hours to sleep. That’s a safety issue.’

In the end, though it may not make the most exciting story, attending Robodock is probably safer than crossing the street.

‘People come because they like to experience a little risk,’ says Ter Veer. ‘We’re happy to give it to them, but we like to think about what we’re doing. Most people don’t know that we’re so prepared.’ Then he smiles. ‘That said, let’s hope everything goes OK this year.’ www.robodock.org

Whatever the risk, Robodock will sort it with their hosepipe arms.

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there was a gap for the people to move back when the fire got hot.’ But no incidents occurred, and Robodock’s safety record remains intact.

Part of maintaining that record involves over-testing the stability of every structure. One of the current installations includes a flat disk of solid steel, weighing several tons, and attached laterally to a pole. To ensure that it will never fall, they had about 20 crewmen standing on top of it, jumping up and down. (Sounds like a serious work hazard, but they know what they’re doing.) They also—on purpose— drove a large truck into their handmade steel bar. Evidently, this was to prove that no amount of thirsty patrons could damage the bar while ordering drinks.

Before the show each year, environmental experts, police officials and fire inspectors arrive to check every element.

‘When the fire department came to watch,’ says Ter Veer, ‘they just sat down and smiled. In a way, they’re pyromaniacs too.

They do it for safety. We do it for art.’

Another aspect of safety that concerns Ter Veer is making sure that everyone

From next week: Ramadan Round-up with Sharida Mohamedjoesoef There are just a couple more nights to go before the holiest month in the Islamic calendar starts: Ramadan, the month in which the Koran was revealed. Between dawn and sunset you’re not allowed to eat, drink, smoke or have sex, and impure sights and sounds should be avoided as well. In essence, Ramadan is about physical and spiritual purity, about connecting to God 24/7—or at least, that is the idea. When the sun sets, though, it’s party time.

The fast is broken with tasty food, many mosques and Islamic centres open their doors to welcome believers and non-believers in the festivities. We’ll be there.

Ramadan Kareem!

5

On being a stadscolumnist When I came to live in Parool. (I was still Amsterdam, some 15 living in the same loft years ago, the plan on Plantage Middenwas clear. I was going laan, where on warm to live in one of the summer nights I could larger houses on the hear the lions in Artis grachten. A loft in the roar, while I plodded Plantagebuurt would away on my first novdo for now. Within el. The concert in the three years, I was Bimhuis was put on going to give a soldhold.) out concert in After De Dikke Amsterdam’s famed Man died, Martin Bril Bimhuis, either with took the spot as Amsmy own band or as a terdam’s city sideman with some columnist. The title is featured soloist (not by no means official, necessarily an Ameribut there’s always

By Adriaan Jaeggi can). And within five one. Many cities now years I was going to sell out Paradiso on a have a city poet, but Amsterdam must be weekly basis with my club nights, based one of the few cities in the world that has on the idea that there should be three its own stadscolumnist. The city columwomen for every man (good for the men nist always writes for Het Parool. and good for the girls, who like to dance Bril could spend hours staring at with each other anyway—or so I some putdeksel in the street, or at the thought).

Amsterdam girls passing by on their high The year after that I was going to be a bicycles, their faces businesslike, their columnist for Het Parool. I’d been readlong legs pedalling away, and write ending legendary Simon Carmiggelt for lessly about it. years, not in Het Parool—I grew up in Tja. Brabant, where most people think AmsAfter Bril, we had Freek de Jonge for terdam is a kind of bizarre Efteling for a while. Boy, was that a mistake. Freek de grown-ups, not a place you would choose Jonge thought himself more important to live in—but in his collections of than Amsterdam. Big, big mistake. columns. Een zachtte fluittoon, Honderd Since then, things have been unclear. dwaasheden, Een stoet van dwergen: We’ve had father and son Heertje, alteryou name ’em, I read ’em. nating every day, which meant one day Carmiggelt was my hero then. I still you had a columnist that was trying to be know some of his lines by heart: ‘The man funny, and the next day his father. looked at me gehinderd, alsof ik hem I suppose the last real city columnist lastig viel met lootjes op een rookworst.’ would be Heleen van Royen. She never A scene like that, in its subtle humour wrote about anything or anybody but herand intimacy, is vintage Carmiggelt: it’s self either, but apparently that doesn’t not meant to make you laugh out loud, matter when you’re a crazy woman. but to make you gniffel, sitting in the corHeleen seemed to be everywhere: at ner in a bruin café reading Het Parool, every party, book launch or café, often just before the afternoon drinking starts. when you least expected it. Rob ‘TheemBut Carmiggelt went out of fashion. sweg’ Oudkerk could tell you stories Hardly anyone buys his books anymore, about it. But alas, Heleen left Amsterdam despite the fact that his stories about the for Almere, later the Algarve. Apparently War (‘Honger’, for instance, about a womshe’s very happy writing her new bestan that has hidden some speculaas from seller. But the city columnist’s chair has her hungry relatives and goes to her room been empty since then. every evening after dinner to eat some of There are several candidates. One it) can tell you more about What It Was could argue Frenk der Nederlanden, who Like than all the volumes of Prof. Lou de writes a daily column in Het Parool, is the Jong. new man, but he seems more of a city With Carmiggelt dead, Amsterdam reporter. Maybe the paper’s giggling go-go needed a new columnist. First came Jan girls Alma & Fanny? Now, that would be Vrijman, whom I never read, and then deliciously ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

Ischa Meijer, the self-appointed Fat Man, I still wonder sometimes what it took his place as city columnist. I never would be like, just as sometimes on a hot liked Ischa. Too vain, too self-obsessed. A summer night I can still hear the lions columnist should give the impression of roar in Artis, if I listen carefully. But writing about himself, I thought, whilst times have changed. It’s not so much that writing about others all the time. All he I’ve lost my ideals, as that they’ve grown ever talked about was himself, even when so much larger. Now I want to be a syndiinterviewing other people. cated New York City columnist. And a By that time I’d written my first best-seller writer. And there’s a whole columns myself, in that wonderful periodnew Bimhuis to conquer. ical Propria Cures, loathed by some, Adriaan Jaeggi is at this weekend’s loved by others, and later in De Groene Prozaen Columnistenfestival.

Amsterdammer. Both very much Amsterwww.dichteraanhuis.nl dam magazines—but they weren’t Het YVO SPREY

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Not a silent place Pakhuis De Zwijger can’t hold its tongue. If the new tenants have anything to do with it, the former warehouse is going to be the new digital hotspot in town.

BY FLORIS DOGTEROM PHOTO BY FRANK KOK, PORTRAITS BY ANNA LEEMAN

P

recisely 350 years after the death of the father of the fatherland, William the Silent, a new warehouse was built in what was then the still-bustling Oostelijk Havengebied. The year: 1934. The name: De Zwijger [‘the silent one’]. Cargo ships from all over the world moored on Oostelijke Handelskade, full of perishables like cacao. De Zwijger was built as a refrigerated warehouse, with thick, brick walls and small windows. On one side you can still see the plates with the names of cities De Zwijger was doing business with: Batavia, Hamburg, New York.

The renewed De Zwijger will be officially opened on 26 September and, although construction workers are still running around, the first tenants have already moved in. The building will start a third life as an arts hotspot, the place where cultural production house Cultuurfabriek, old and new media organisation Waag Society, local broadcasters SALTO and art subsidisers Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst have all found a new shelter. The coordinating Stichting de Zwijger hopes that, being so close to one another, the different partners will bring about a synergy that will produce many new initiatives.

In the 1980s the building was squatted, and the beginning of the new century almost saw the end of the De Zwijger, when the Jan Schaeferbrug was built right through it. But in 2001, the building officially got the status of Rijksmonument [state monument]. ‘Rightly so,’ says Paul Morel, project manager on behalf of Stadsherstel, the corporation that now owns De Zwijger.

‘It is an icon of the functional architecture

of the time. It’s stylish and coherent. And although beauty is debatable, there is consensus about the aesthetics of the building, with its yellow bricks and the mushroomlike columns that support the structure.’

Incidentally, those columns are a prime example of the Dutch petit bourgeois mentality, kruideniersmentaliteit. The total footprint of the columns’ bases is obviously much smaller than that of the whole building’s girth. The owners insisted on this top-heavy construction, in order to pay considerably less rent for ground-space.

In the reception, there’s not much more to see than a dust-covered wooden counter, without the necessary equipment. Still, a mill with brochures and flyers has already been placed on top of it.

Morel advances to the first floor: ‘This here will be the exhibition room. Like in every public room, visitors will have a view on the bridge, as well as on the water of IJhaven. We want them to interact with the city.’ His point is illustrated when a car zips by, under our feet. Morel points at a window that separates the public part from the offices. ‘All the floors and surfaces in that part of the building are made of concrete, to lend it a kind of graphic simplicity. In this, the public part, everything is made of wood.’

Stadsherstel, Morel’s employer, is an organisation that buys and restores buildings with a historical and architectonic value. After, tenants are installed. ‘We buy mostly houses,’ says Morel, ‘but also industrial heritage, like De Zwijger. We’re not in it to make profit; the only thing that counts is the preservation of the buildings.’

In many spots inside De Zwijger the

original columns are visible; they are illuminated in order to enhance the vertical structure of the building, explains Morel.

‘We haven’t put the columns out of sight.

We want the general public to know that this once was a warehouse.’ So what’s that graffiti doing there? ‘That stems from the time De Zwijger was a squat. It’s a part of [De Zwijger’s] history, that’s why we left it.

Not all of it though—it was a bit rude, in places.’ Up we go, to the fifth. Morel closes a door. ‘The building is in use. This is a fire resistant door; it should be shut.’ A construction worker protests, saying that he doesn’t have a badge to open the door.

Morel is implacable.

On the sixth floor, the view over the IJhaven and Java-eiland is wonderful. The Cultuurfabriek is moving in, occupying two, split levels. ‘The extra level is about the only thing that’s not original,’ says Morel. ‘And see those high, slanting windows in the roof? Northern light comes in through them. They have been deliberately constructed like that, for this way the controllers had the best light to test the goods.’

He walks to a side room and announces: ‘This was the gas chamber. It was used to exterminate bacteria in perishables.

Remember, it was 1934. Gas chambers didn’t have the gruesome reputation they were about to get a number of years later. The reverse is true: they were being advertised with as a modern invention.’

On the way back, construction workers have put a Post-it note over the electronic eye of the fire resistant door. ‘I can live with that,’ says Morel. www.dezwijger.nl

21-27 September 2006

Marleen Stikker, Director, Waag Society The Waag Society for Old and New Media, named after its location in De Waag on Nieuwmarkt, is a cultural research and innovation centre for communication technology. The Society develops applications for tackling social and cultural issues in the fields of care, arts and education. Director Marleen Stikker gives an example of the latter: ‘We look at what young people are interested in, by extending the traditional teaching methods with help of new media.

Our mobile city game Frequentie 1550, for example, makes use of GPS and UMTS technologies. Students walk around town with cell phones and receive video messages and assignments, for which they can gain points. In the meantime, they learn about the medieval history of Amsterdam.

To us, it’s not so much about the technology itself as it is about social innovation.’

For the Waag Society, the move to De Zwijger is an expansion, because the organisation will keep its present accommodation as well. The educational activities will be moved to De Zwijger, as will the Media Lab, the software development and design department. Media Gilde, another Waag initiative, will also operate from the Oostelijk Havengebied. ‘Students often have creative technological ideas, but don’t have the possibility to realise them,’ says Stikker. ‘With Media Gilde, we will offer creative youngsters a place to work out their ideas, like a new game or an installation. They can rent a reasonably priced space and will be coached intensively.’ Stikker expects the new tenants of the former warehouse to reinforce each other’s activities. ‘The Cultuurfabriek and the Waag Society are already closely related, and we have already worked together with SALTO. In the new building we have deployed the complete broadband infrastructure. Now SALTO can extend its radio and television programmes with digital services. All participating partners have this drive to innovate society by means of arts and culture. It will be an interesting mix.

But mind you, we won’t merge. All organisations will have their own orientation.’ www.waag.org Erik Couvee, Deputy Director, AFK Erik Couvee is receiving visitors in the room of the director, next to his. ‘Mine is a bit smaller. But look at the view!’ At that very moment a lonely jogger appears on the bridge that protrudes from under our feet, slowly moving towards Java-eiland.

Couvee is deputy director of the Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK), which invests over six million euros a year on art projects in the city. This year, AFK launched a campaign involving television ads and posters all over town, to draw attention to its very existence. ‘The AFK had a bit of an image problem,’ says Couvee. ‘We had a lot of money to give away, but we just sat there, waiting for people to apply. We want to show Amsterdammers who we are and what we do. After all, we are spending the taxpayers’ money.’

A new director was recruited, who brought some fresh air into the organisation. ‘We want to go out and present ourselves, in order to mediate between the government, the artists and the general public,’ says Couvee. ‘The move to De Zwijger is part of that strategy. Because we brought down the number of subsidy regulations to only two, people had to be fired. That also meant that we could do

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with a smaller office than the fancy grachtenpand we occupied. What’s more, we don’t need a reception room anymore.

Today, we go out there. In three stadsdelen so-called cultuurverkenners, or culture scouts, are active, serving as our eyes and ears outside these walls. It’s their task to get talented people in touch with the AFK.’ Couvee likes his new working environment: ‘At first sight, it looked like a closed building. But once inside, I discovered a great, light space. The building has a contemporary look and feel. That gave me a lot of courage. And as it turned out: I can work here with great concentration.’

Although AFK is different from the other tenants, in the sense that it doesn’t put on any productions or organise events, Couvee expects that the different organisations will benefit from each other. ‘But we’re not here to subsidise the rest. All applications are being judged independently.’

Rudolf Buurma

www.amsterdamsfondsvoordekunst.nl Egbert Fransen Rudolf Buurma, General Director, SALTO If you want to annoy Rudolf Buurma, just say to him that you have the impression that the only thing you can see on the local television channel A2 are Pentecostal Christians from Bijlmer. ‘That’s simply not true!’ says Buurma. ‘Our television and radio stations are as diverse as Amsterdam, with programmes based on religion, art, culture, sexual orientation, education and so on.’ He stresses the importance of public access: ‘That doesn’t only mean that people have access to information, but also that Amsterdammers with a message for the general public should be given access to the necessary means with which they can express that message.’

SALTO is the only local broadcasting corporation in Amsterdam (that’s the law), with five radio stations and three television stations, one of which is completely reserved for AT5. For as little as €30 an hour, broadcasting organisations can buy an hour of time on the television channels A1 and A2. The new radio studios in De Zwijger are for rent for a stunning €4.90 an hour. ‘It is our mission to provide Amsterdammers with relevant and interesting programmes,’ says Buurma. Organisations who want to broadcast will have to qualify; they must have a target group, although it doesn’t have to be large. Furthermore, they have to prove they’re a stable organisation. The uniqueness of their programme is also important, as is the quality.’

Buurma has high expectations of his new shelter: ‘It’s not only a beautiful building at a beautiful location, but we also have high-quality technological facilities at our disposal. The Waag Society has deployed a ten-gigabit broadband connection. We are now connected with SURFnet, which it’s the broadband network of the Dutch universities, the fastest in the world. For a broadcasting corporation that’s very important, because now we can afford to send huge amounts of data via the internet.’ Buurma states that the different partners in the building will benefit from one another. ‘The Cultuurfabriek organises all kinds of events, something we, in our turn, can broadcast.

It’s there for the taking.’ www.salto.nl

Marleen Stikker

‘The graffiti stems from the time De Zwijger was a squat. It’s a part of the warehouse’s history, that’s why we left it.

Not all of it though—it was a bit rude, in places.’

Erik Couvee

Egbert Fransen, Director, Cultuurfabriek ‘There are mega cultural differences between us. Have you seen the colour scheme at AFK? It’s completely different from the dynamics in the rest of the building. Furthermore, we are a limited company; I have to make living all the time. The other organisations are foundations. That brings about a whole different energy.’ That may sound ominous, but director Egbert Fransen of the Cultuurfabriek is in fact very optimistic about the prospects for cooperation between the new tenants of Pakhuis De Zwijger. ‘Politically correct it may be, but we are looking for unison. At first, we will build on projects that are already there. If the Waag Society has an idea, we can bring it to the hall.’

Fransen refers to the big hall in De Zwijger, where all kinds of events will take place, from discussions to musical performances and anything in between.

The Cultuurfabriek will exploit all the public spaces, including the bar on the ground floor. ‘It is our mission to get people together,’ he says. ‘We organise meetings through which we want to facilitate people to change things, be it in their neighbourhood, in the company where they work, wherever, it can be anything. But we don’t shy away from tackling global issues, either.’

Cultuurfabriek and Fransen himself have been involved in De Zwijger project right from the start. ‘I’ve been working on it for eight years. Five years ago, I asked Marleen Stikker of the Waag Society to join me. Together, we have lobbied very hard to get this thing together.

Believe me, there have been times that I thought it was never going to happen.

But we hung on to it like a pitbull on the branch of a tree.’

Fransen and Stikker started looking for other parties to join them. ‘What we didn’t want was creating yet another intellectual venue, like the Rode Hoed or De Balie. We want the ordinary Amsterdammer in the house. That’s why we invited SALTO. With 180 or so television and radio programme-makers you cover the total Amsterdamse landscape.’ www.cultuurfabriek.nl

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21-27 September 2006

R

Richard Florida.

You might not know his name, yet this man is driving a whole generation of city planners and policy-makers crazy with his theories on creatives. Florida’s message—that creative professionals such as architects, artists and designers are crucial for economic success—has become the mantra of many cities. Creators of culture should be cherished strongly, he says, as we need their creativity and output, not only for business—to stay ahead of competition—but also for lives: to be comfortable, entertaining and inspiring.

Amsterdam is one of the numerous cities betting heavily on creativity. And so it should be, because it has a good track record in attracting creatives and keeping them happy. The city’s small footprint, relaxed atmosphere and great arts and culture is exactly the stuff creative types go for when working in the numerous design, advertising, new media and arts companies.

But a nice house, a good office and high quality of life is still not enough to make them do their thing; they need to network and meet each other to spark further creativity. Amsterdam’s new Cross Media Week, called PICNIC ’06, is aiming just for that. Held this week for the first time, PICNIC ’06 wants everybody interested and involved in cross media to meet, talk, discuss, drink and party. The exciting three-day programme of lectures, workshops and presentations, art installations, events and nightly performances with music, VJs and fashion may well make PICNIC ’06 this year’s most anticipated new event.

Don’t be afraid that you’re the only one wondering what ‘cross media’ is and why we need a pleasure excursion when summer’s over. Fortunately, John Thackara, one of the speakers at the event, is willing to help out. Director of the designers’ network-cum-conference Doors of Perception, Thackara agrees that cross media is business jargon. Probably the easiest way to pinpoint it, he says, is to look at all the new, interactive services—games, education and networks both serious and entertaining—evolving on your mobile phone, computer and internet. Flickr, MySpace and iPod are the most popular examples, with different technologies and media interacting with each other. Surprisingly, Thackara has more difficulty with the phrase ‘Cross Media Week.’ ‘Did you get it?’ he asks. ‘I know it’s a networking event for professionals, but what is the Cross Media Week about?

Not that I will not have a good time, but I would like to know why we all are there. What’s the topic?’

If you look at the programme, you’ll have to admit that is a sharp question. Cross media might be hip and hot and generating lots of new business, but talking about it can end up a technical discussion of tools and toys. ‘We need to talk about what’s happening in the real world and why we need cross media in the first place,’ Thackara says. ‘PICNIC ’06 is an event for

The big cross media businesses make sure their money never slips through the network.

A pleasure excursion for the cross media industry.

BY JOHAN IDEMA ILLUSTRATION BY SANSTITRE

toolmakers, but we need to know what the tools are for.’

That said, PICNIC ’06 offers an impressive roster of more than 50 speakers from the national and international media and entertainment world. It includes media tycoon John de Mol, craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark, MTV Europe’s president Simon Guild and many other speakers from companies like Pixar Animation Studios, MySpace.com and the BBC. ‘You must have these people to be attractive [as an event],’ Thackara says, ‘but the challenge is to get them to say interesting things. Because otherwise, you’re just another conference.’

Marketing-wise, PICNIC ’06 is really trying hard to be different, or perhaps ‘groovier’ is a better word. By calling itself a picnic, it hopes to be perceived as happy, laid-back and informal. The beautiful green setting for PICNIC ’06, Westergasfabriek, of course helps.

If you are keen to go, the bad news is that PICNIC ’06 is an industry event. The conference is expensive for regular visitors— €900—although there is a free, albeit much less extensive, night programme. The media producers, content distributors, advertisers and investors who are attending will hardly flinch at the high fee.

But it somehow feels uncomfortable, since cross media is also about open-source, bottom-up innovation and knowledge sharing.

Thackara agrees: ‘It’s a high entry fee, which makes PICNIC ’06 top-down and industry-based, while an important challenge for the industry right now is to integrate cross media in daily life.’

That’s why Thackara—as someone who likes to network around a theme—wants to focus more on innovation that comes from the street. He proposes ‘real life’ as a central topic for the programme.

Although that does not narrow things down immediately, his point is strong and clear: make PICNIC ’06 more bottom-up and street-based.

Generous government support allows PICNIC ’06 to appear in a big bang. Together, the city and ministry for economic affairs have contributed roughly half of the 1.6 million-euro budget—a lot of money for the estimated 5,000 participants (although in fairness, other industry events, Thackara points out, have even larger budgets). The ambition is to have a yearly Cross Media Week, so PICNIC ’06 should present some convincing results afterwards to legitimise this support.

Then again, if Florida’s mantra is true, the city needs events like these. Besides the many long-established, prestigious arts festivals (Holland Festival and IDFA being just two of many), Amsterdam should cherish PICNIC ’06 as a new category of creative festival, together with the Amsterdam Dance Event and International Fashion Week. Considering the success of those last two, PICNIC ’06 could have a more exciting and extensive programme of cross media exhibitions and performances, using the city’s many museums and stages. It could be more visible and inclusive by being both an industry event and a public festival, admired by professionals and public alike.

It’s not just the industry insiders who are creative and can talk about it, so why not involve bottom-up players, as well? Make PICNIC more a potluck. But maybe that’s for next time; after all, this is just the premiere.

The media producers, content distributors, advertisers and investors who are attending will hardly flinch at the high fee. But it somehow feels uncomfortable, since cross media is also about open-source, bottom-up innovation and knowledge sharing.

Cross Media Week runs from 26 until 28 September. For more information see www.crossmediaweek.org.

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Amsterdam Weekly

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SHORT LIST

Geeske Bijker (Tape This), Saturday, Arti et Amicitiae

THURSDAY 21SEPTEMBER Film: Hommage aan Gainsbourg My god, that man was a polymath! Not just a pop star, Serge Gainsbourg acted in dozens of films, composed 50 soundtracks, and was found behind the lens for four of his own.

The Filmmuseum is showing three as part of the mini-festival in his honour—only Stan the Flasher is missing. Most famous is Je t’aime, moi non plus (here in English, no titles), a tale of an androgyne (Jane Birkin) who gets picked up by two gay lorry drivers, one of whom is Warhol superstar Joey Dallesandro. It’s slow-paced, strange and not very nice. There’s 1983’s Équateur (French, no subtitles), based on a Georges Simenon novel. And then there is 1986’s Charlotte Forever (also without subtitles), about a washed up alcoholic (guess who?) living vicariously through his daughter (Charlotte Gainsbourg), which leaves you wondering whether it’s art imitating life or the other way around. Biggest treat for connoisseurs, though, is the rare chance tomorrow to see some of the adverts he directed: for cars, soap, yoghurt, railways, everything. Perhaps greatest is the kitchen symphony he created using pots and pans for this nation’s favourite seasoning, Maggi. See also article on p. 11. (Kim Renfrew) Filmmuseum, Amsterdam €7.20-€7.80. Various times and dates. Until 27 September.

Multidisciplinary: Robodock Touting itself as a ‘huge bubbling laboratory of spectacular experiments’, the Robodock Festival—which has continued to expand since its first run in 1998—promises an exciting display of industrial multimedia magic. The festival, which refashions used scrap and industrial leftovers into interactive installations, focuses on a core theme—this year’s is alchemy, the process of transforming base metal into gold. Held at the NDSM-werf, Robodock offers a variety of fantastic acts—everything from VJs, kinetic structures and high voltage acts to pneumatic, mechanical theatre. Performers include the Russian mime troop Derevo, Dead Chickens and Pyromancer. See also article on p. 4 and www.robodock.nl. (Dara Colwell) NDSM-werf, various times. €20-€27.50. Until Saturday.

FRIDAY 22 SEPTEMBER Festival: Todaysart ‘Todaysart Festival: as boring as you are...’ With this tagline, Den Haag’s annual event for electronic music and contemporary culture tries to outsmart sceptics. One might

wonder if the 1990s ambient sounds of The Orb are still relevant today and if it’s important to schedule another run of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, since the lauded artist has actually finished other films in the last few years. Although some of Todaysart may have been experienced yesterday, there are still surprises. The first Dutch appearance of 77-year-old electronic music pioneer Jean Jacques Perrey, for example, or the contemporary dance performances by the NDTII company in de Grote Kerk, and Dylan Newcomb in Korzo Theater, which will run all day long. Todaysart reaches out to a broad audience, with a wide range of genres and cross-overs. See full festival programme at www.todaysart.nl. (Marinus de Ruiter) Various locations and times, Den Haag, €17 day, €26 pass. Also Saturday.

SATURDAY 23 SEPTEMBER Art: Mahomi Kunikata For those Japanophiles familiar with the Kai Kai Kiki collective, a talented enclave of post-modern artists devoted to manga and anime, Mahomi Kunikata’s solo exhibition March of the Absent Friends will be a welcome event. Kunikata, whose work has toured Los Angeles and New York in recent years, takes a colourful, if nightmarish approach to feminine sexuality—the focus of the manga genre—by producing drawings that convey masochism, fetishism, sexual violence and depression. Two such examples on display: a portrait of a wide-eyed little girl masturbating with crayons; another of a blonde child with a sword gouging her stomach. Like much contemporary Japanese art, the artist’s work is eccentric, highly personal, cute, raw and yet ultimately dysfunctional—a comment on a modern-day society that sexualises women. This is Kunikata’s first solo gallery show outside Japan. (Dara Colwell) Reflex New Art Gallery (Tues-Sat 11.00-18.00). Until 4 November.

Art: Tape This One would think stickier is always better—especially when it comes to tape. But when it came to painting two-tone cars back in the 1920s, 3M researcher Dick Drew noticed that when industrial marking tape was removed, it often peeled away part of the newpaint, which meant more retouching. After much experimentation, Drew came up with masking tape in 1925. And what worked on cars proved to work equally well on canvas.

Artists could now apply the obsessively geometric lines they used in their gardens to their paintings and folks like Mondriaan took the roll and ran with it. It also freed paintings from associations with their creators—especially their shaky hands—-and helped connect the viewer more directly with the work itself. No more middleman to take the

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attention away. This exhibition features a whole roll call of contemporary artists who take their tape very seriously: Jan van der Ploeg, René van den Bos, Daniel Göttin, Jasper van der Graaf, Ditty Ketting, Arjan Janssen and Geeske Bijker. Only one quibble: an accompanying exhibition on the role of gaffer tape in the arts would have made this perfect. (Steve Korver) Arti et Amicitiae (Tues-Sun 13.00-18.00). Until 22 October.

World: Bijayini Satpathy Galatea, eat your heart out. For one of the principal sources of the East Indian dance form known as Odissi—which has origins dating back to the second century BCE, but which was rediscovered and revitalised some 60 years ago—is religious statuary. The twisting, turning, curvilinear forms of these devotional images inspired the creation of a new vocabulary of gesture in India, and Bijayini Satpathy is certainly one of its greatest exponents. The 33 year old, who has performed worldwide and is a leading Odissi teacher back in her home city of Orissa, brings gale-wind force and fluency to her work (she also studied martial arts). Satpathy will perform seven traditional Odissi pieces with the help of a quartet of musicians from India, and the roundedness and sensuousness of her movements—unlike anything else in Indian dance—should seduce anyone who doesn’t have a heart of stone. (Steve Schneider) KIT Tropentheater, 20.00, €18.

Dance: Bacon For anyone morbidly fascinated by the bestial images of 20th century’s daddy of figurative painting, Francis Bacon, Nanine Linning’s triptych Bacon is a must see. It’s gut-wrenching to watch dancers plainly de-humanised, hanging like blocks of meat, upside down from their ankles for 30 minutes. Spectacular, distorted video images of boxers fighting or people making love—it’s blurry—enhance the show. The set suggests you’re wrapped in a cube of electrical wires which extend into the audience, engulfing you with the choreographic scenery. ‘I like the distortion in Bacon’s works,’ says Linning, ‘especially how the subjects are framed, putting their expressions more into perspective. I want the audience to experience the same emotions they feel when they look at a Bacon painting.’ As befits a depraved and depressed mind, vulnerability and polarity rule in this ballet. Five dancers spit out the most primal of emotions: aggression, sexuality and fear. Sometimes in dance everything comes together to make a euphoric, ecstatic and unforgettable programme. This is one of them. (Monique Gruter) Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11-€20.

SUNDAY 24 SEPTEMBER Theatre: Lafferbooij Sixty minutes filled with rap music and a no-frills storyline: you’ll either want to dance along with the enticing rhymes or remain glued to your seat because of the gripping storyline. That’s Lafferbooij for ya. The play is about Fannana and her best friend Faye. What Faye does not know is that her friend is head-over-heels in love with Booij. Only when it’s too late does Fannana realise that she has ended up in the clutches of a so-called ‘loverboy’, a young man who seduces young girls and, through shrewd manipulation, eventually leads them into prostitution. So far, the play has been performed mostly in schools and youth centres, but this afternoon everyone gets a chance to see this remakable bit of drama. In Dutch. (Sharida Mohamedjoesoef) De Balie, 13.00, €10, €5 after 15.30.

Classical: Steve Reich @ 70 In case you missed the 70th-birthday tributes to Steve Reich in London, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Denver, Dublin, Helsinki—need I go on?—here’s a great catch-up. But I must go on, because Reich is finally achieving the fullness of his due as one of the titans of modern composition. His music, often associated with minimalism, is maximally more than that, and its energy, variety and resourcefulness have undeniably altered the course of music history. Tonight, three leading Dutch ensembles—the Volharding Orchestra, the Percussion Group Den Haag and the Nederlands Vocal Laboratory—will regale us with works that trace Reich’s never-ending development, from 1968’s Pendulum Music to 1986’s 6 Marimbas, to the Dutch premier of Dance Patterns, from 2002. Just bring an open mind and the telephone number of your travel agent—so, directly after this concert, you can book a flight to your next Reichfest.

(Steve Schneider) Muziekgebouw, 19.30, €20.

TUESDAY 26 SEPTEMBER Opera: Waiting for the Barbarians Waiting for the Barbarians is a book, an opera and now, it’s our collective state of mind.

Based on JM Coetzee’s 1980 novel about apartheid-riven South Africa, these performances may be historical in more ways than one. The composer is Philip Glass, for whom the book is both allegory and chilling prophecy. His collaborators are exemplary: screenwriter Christopher Hampton contributed the libretto; designer George Tyspin, responsible for Pierre Audi’s audacious Ring cycle, is visualising; Dennis Russell Davies, a prominent American conductor and one of Glass’ most important interpreters, is the maestro. If you like your entertainment lite, or prefer Madonna’s cross, don’t bother with Waiting for the Barbarians. On the other hand, if you long to hear truth tuned to power, then buy a ticket now. (Ruth Dreier) Het Muziektheater, 20.15, €20-€65.

Send details and images for listing consideration at least two weeks in advance to agenda@amsterdamweekly.nl.

Amsterdam Weekly

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SIMON WALD-LASOWSKI

21-27 September 2006

Fifteen years after his death, Serge Gainsbourg is going global, and there’s a fistful of activities in his memory.

LA CHANSON DE PERVERT

By Kim Renfrew ‘I was living in France when Gainsbourg died and suddenly the whole country was in mourning. Every time you turned on the radio there was Gainsbourg; every time you turned on the TV there was Gainsbourg. We had this old farmer as a neighbour, he was crying and the young people were too, and I thought: this is a real testament to the sad state of French pop that this guy who’s only done one song has got everyone in mourning.’

That was in 1991. Like the rest of the non-Francophone world, rock journalist Sylvie Simmons only knew Serge Gainsbourg as the ‘dirty old man who made Jane Birkin famous’ with that one song, ‘Je t’aime... moi non plus’. In fact, he wrote more than 500 songs, and this year, the 15th anniversary of his death, has seen a surge of interest in Serge, including the current hommage, which culminates on Saturday night at Paradiso.

Simmons will be there, reading from A Fistful of Gitanes, her biography which has played no small part in spreading Gainsbourg’s reputation around the rest of the globe since publication in 2001.

Alongside the writer, Jean-Claude Vannier, arranger and producer of Gainsbourg’s influential 28-minute masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson, will perform excerpts from the album, while Radio Oh-La-La’s DJ Nataska, aka Natasha Cloutier, will DJ with Amsterdam Beat Club.

Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginzburg in 1928, to Russian parents who

fled to Paris after the revolution. His childhood in occupied France scarred him, particularly since he was Jewish and had to wear the yellow star. As a young man, Gainsbourg wanted to be a painter, but made a living playing piano in nightclubs; eventually, the means of making ends meet became a career, and in 1958 he released ‘Poinçonneur des Lilas’, the suicidal lament of a bored metro conductor. Over the next three-and-half decades he would be astonishingly prolific.

All at once, Gainsbourg was chansonnier; jazz tinkler; Eurovision hit-maker; style icon; ladies’ man (seen on the arm of Greco, Bardot, Birkin, Deneuve); intellectual; director (his films are showing this week); novelist (there’ll be a reading from Evguénie Sokolov in Dutch on Saturday); actor. He was a provocateur, burning banknotes, reggaefying the national anthem and, in 1984, releasing ‘Lemon Incest’. The video, showing father and 13year-old daughter Charlotte lounging on a bed semi-clad, caused outrage. Yet he was also a cherished establishment figure whom, when he died, Mitterand compared to France’s greatest poets.

What took the rest of the world so long to catch up? For Montreal-born Cloutier, the answer is simple: ‘Because it’s not in English. The fact that British and American artists with a working understanding of French finally ‘got’ Gainsbourg helps the masses get him as well. Without Jane Birkin or daughter Charlotte acting as a bridge between Gainsbourg and the Anglo-Saxon world this may not even have happened.’ Sim-

mons, meanwhile, thinks it only came with a broader change in listening habits: ‘People who were doing dance music were sampling from Italian and French soundtracks and they picked up on Gainsbourg. Also, the world music scene was becoming big, so if people sang in French it didn’t matter anymore.’

It was in the mid-’90s that Gainsbourg’s reputation really started taking off outside France, when his playboy reputation and more kitsch elements were seized upon. It fitted well with the ironic times, but meant that his more difficult aspects were overlooked, and he was packaged as a kind of singing Hugh Hefner.

But rather than being a red-blooded male caricature, there’s something almost feminine about his image. After all, it was never really just ‘Gainsbourg’, but ‘Gainsbourg and...’, whether it be Bardot, Birkin or one of the many people he wrote for— and he was associated with them as much as they with him. What complicates his persona more, Simmons points out, is that: ‘He often used to tease, or maybe talk honestly about, a kind of latent homosexuality,’ a theme explored in Love on the Beat and Je t’aime, moi non plus the movie.

Complexity is the key to understanding—or not—Gainsbourg. He had a restless, magpie approach which Simmons thinks unique: ‘There’s a great courage to be a star and then say: “I don’t care, I’m going to move onto something else.”’ His subjects ranged from 18th-century literary forgers, Austrian composers, Symbolist poets to bank robbers. ‘Torrey Canyon’ at first appears to be a slice of shoo-be-doo Sixties pop, but its lyrics about a (real-life) environmental disaster reveal a startlingly prescient view of global trade and corporate responsibility. And it’s also a great slice of shoo-be-doo Sixties pop. As Cloutier says: ‘It’s by no means superficial. Since it’s about sex, incest, violence, women and other ‘taboo’ subjects, you can’t just listen to Gainsbourg’s music and “get” it. It takes time.’

Even ‘Je t’aime...’, his most famous song is a complex beast. It doesn’t bear up to comic or ‘ironic’ reinterpretations—

Go on: ask him what he said to Whitney Houston.

although there have been many—because its tongue is already planted firmly in cheek. And it is also properly sexy. Gainsbourg had every angle covered in advance. And the hand which wrote something that filthy could also turn out something as gorgeous as ‘La Chanson de Prévert’, as well as truly original love songs which replace hearts and flowers with outlaws and superheroes.

Stylistically, Gainsbourg leapt all over, too, conquering every genre he alighted on: jazz, afro, lounge, prog-rock; even reggae albums with Jamaica’s finest, Sly and Robbie. Simmons says Gainsbourg was able to make such masterful music because ‘he was good at selecting the right people to work with. He got great producers, he got great arrangers, and he let them get on with stuff. There wasn’t that ego where he controlled every single thing. He let them do what they did best.’

It resulted in thrilling music, which seemingly never ends. ‘When you get into Gainsbourg, you hear him and then go off in every direction to discover all the stuff he wrote for other people. It’s overwhelming,’ says Cloutier. Indeed. In addition to twentyodd studio albums, there is the work he composed for others, ranging from one-off songs to entire albums. A Fistful of Gitanes, published in 2001, lists 115 artists who have recorded Gainsbourg’s music— everyone from Donna Summer to the Bollock Brothers to Nana Mouskouri—and in the years since the book came out there’s been a steady stream of new releases, most notably this year’s Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. And again, Gainsbourg’s work will be taking off in new, unexplored directions on Saturday, when Cor Gout and AU do never-before performed Dutch translations of the master’s works.

That’s one more to add to the collection, then.

Serge Gainsbourg, een hommage is on 23 September at 20.00, Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8, 626 4521, €15.

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21-27 September 2006

Trang An Flowers Group, see Sunday

MUSIC Thursday 21 September Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 and Prokofiev’s Symphony No.5; conducted by renowned Finn Jukka-Pekka Saraste, with solo pianist Emanuel Ax. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €47.50

their love for Argentine tango taking centre stage. Special guest is bandoneonist/singer Quique Ponce. KIT Tropentheater, 20.30, €20 Rock: Red Hot Chili Bastards, Fake No More Venture back into the vaults of ’90’s rock with these two tribute acts. Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 20.30, €5 Jazz: 4 Walls + 2 Accommodating an intriguing musical world, the arrangements of this international improvisation quartet see great subtlety and free improvisations go hand in hand. In this project they’ll also be reinforced by trombonist Gail Brand and clarinetist Isabelle Duthoit. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14

Opera: Alzheimer Minimal music by the Mondriaan Kwartet (extended) and cinematic commentary dominates this unusual opera by Jurjen Hempel, theatrically dealing with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €29.50 Heavy: Tenth Planet Hard but melodic rock band from Toronto. Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 20.30, €5 Pop/Rock: Australian Showcase A celebration of Australian culture and music hosted by internet radio station NFF. The styles featured are diverse, with performers including Mihirangi (world loops and grooves), Ben Mitchell (indie folk), Lindsay Phillips (nu-folk), 72Blues (blues), Fire Underground (punkswing), The Sound Movement (indie), Konqistador (electro-industrial rock) and Late Nite Access (rock).

Winston Kingdom, 21.00, free Jazz: JWO’s Maghreb Jazz A musical blend of Western jazz fusion and traditional North African tunes.

Badcuyp, Bovenzaal, 21.00, €8 Jazz: Tom Harrell Quintet Improv with instant melody from renowned American trumpter Tom Harrell. His band this evening includes sax player Wayne Escoffery, pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Johnathan Blake. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14 Blues: The Moonhawks Blues rock. Bourbon Street, 22.00, free before 23.00

Paulusma Pop/Rock: Paulusma Still better known as the vocalist/guitarist of the now defunct Daryll-Ann, Paulusma struck out solo earlier this year with the album Here We Are. A lot of the key songwriting ingredients remain the same and are easily recognisable to fans of the old band, but there’s also more freedom for experimentation in his solo work. This tiny club show should be a treat. Winston Kingdom, 21.00, €7 Rock: Lucky Devils Psychobilly from France. Maloe Melo, 22.00, €5 World: Neco Novellas Afrojazz, traditional Mozambique melodies and rhythms, plus a dash of reggae and funk. Badcuyp, Bovenzaal, 22.00, €8 Jazz: Friday Night Live! Latin jazz featuring Gerardo Rosales and Izaline Calister. Toomler, 23.00, free Festival: Todaysart (See Short List) Various locations, Den Haag, various times, €17 day, €26 pass

Friday 22 September Opera: Capriccio Richard Strauss’ final opera raises the question: which is more important—words or music? Torn between a poet and a musician, Countess Madeleine must decide who may have her hand in marriage. But in the ensuing debates and artistic jousting, she learns that it is impossible to dichotomise the men’s skills, and attempting to do so results in having neither man. Libretto by Clemens Krauss and Strauss. Het Muziektheater, 20.00, €20€85

Saturday 23 September

Classical: Giardino Musicale: Engelandvaarders Performing rarely performed works by De Fesch, Magito and Hellendaal, the Baroque ensemble showcase Dutch composers who found success in Britain.

English Reformed Church, 20.15, €12

Pop: Serge Gainsbourg, Een Hommage A tribute to the French Polymath, featuring Sylvie Simmons, JeanClaude Vannier, The Lovers, Cor Gout, Jacqueline Taïeb and much more. See article on p. 11 and Short List. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.00, €15 + membership

Opera: Alzheimer (See Thursday) Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €29.50

Classical: Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest Featuring the Dutch premiere of Tüür’s Double Concerto for clarinet, violin and orchestra, Noësis, plus excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet; conducted by Claus Peter Flor. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €30

Tango: Bailando en Soledad...Tango! The GermanArgentinian star couple Nicole Lau and Luis Pereyra take the audience on a unique journey in dance, with

Festival: Todaysart (See Short List) Various locations, Den Haag, various times, €17 day, €26 pass World: Bijayini Satpathy (See Short List) KIT Tropentheater, 20.00, €18 Heavy: Satyricon Norwegian thrash in the style of classic Slayer. Support from Keep of Kalessin and Insomnium. Melkweg, 20.00, €15 + membership

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Amsterdam Weekly

Singer-songwriter: Bic Runga A superstar in her native New Zealand, Runga and her beautiful voice have yet to make the same impact overseas (despite being included on the soundtrack to cheap teen flick American Pie a few years ago; she’d probably rather not be remembered for that lapse anyway). With the last 10 years of her releases displaying increasing maturity and long-lasting quality, Europe is playing catch-up. And there’s no better place to get acquainted than her debut Amsterdam show. Melkweg, 20.30, €20 + membership

new season of piano recitals at Concertgebouw with a crowd-pleasing collection of works by Beethoven, Schönberg, Mozart and Schumann. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €24/€29

Classical: Rachel Podger & Gary Cooper Mozart sonatas as they were originally intended to be heard, performed on fortepiano and Baroque violin by the renowned British duo, who’re recording and releasing the works in a series of four CDs. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €25

Monday 25 September

Rock: Subbacultcha! The Ik Jan Cremers are a little bit mad, not to mention each member is named Ik Jan Cremer. This indie guitar rock band’s tunes flip viciously between danceable grooves and thrashy chaos. Meanwhile, melodic rockers Bingo Trappers are back in action, playing live tonight to launch new album Free Drink of Water. De Nieuwe Anita, 20.30, €5 Jazz: Amina Figarova Septet This septet, operating as a small big band, is the perfect formation for the compositions of Azerbaijani pianist Figarova’s wide range of moods, from contemplative and melancholic to energetic and joyful. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14

Sunday 24 September Workshop: Het Muzikantenlab An afternoon full of workshops for musicians to learn about songwriting, photography, financial management, bookings, internet promotion and other beneficial tools. ZIMIHC theater, Utrecht, 12.00, €8 Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (See Thursday) Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 14.15, €47.50 Jazz: Jazzcuzzi Improv session led by Reinier Heere.

Musicians and vocalists welcome, each session can venture from bebop to funk, blues to salsa. Badcuyp, Eetcafé, 14.30, free World: Trang An Flowers Group Consisting of seven young women from Hanoi, the ensemble bring with them beautiful sounds from different regions of Vietnam, played on a variety of traditional instruments. KIT Tropentheater, 15.00, €18 Gospel: Elvis Gospel Kerkdienst A religious service with a difference, this afternoon’s congregation will gather to sing the gospel repertoire of Elvis. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 15.30, free Hiphop: Hiphop vs Poetry A new project pairing up hiphop with literature: presentations, performances, battles and DJs. Special guest is Nederhop star Raymzter. De Kade, Zaandam, 17.00, €4 Rock: 11th Savage Garage Trash Fest! Dirty rock ’n’ roll and garage rock in an action packed bill featuring The Ghetto Ways, River City Tanlines, Quintron & Miss Pussycat, Bloodshot Bill, Das Aldi Combo and 6ft Hick.

Patronaat, Haarlem, 18.00, €10 Rock: Worst Sausages Expect an electrifrying performance by the Amsterdam Worst Band, featuring Worst Koning Fredie Beckmans on the vibrasaw and special home-made sausages. Star Bikes, 18.00, free

Hiphop/Jazz: Lounge of Lyrics A live fusion of jazz & soul with Sherry Dyanne and band, plus backing from DJ Moki. Bitterzoet, 21.00, €5 Pop: Marain Soft acoustic pop fronted by the sweetvoiced Marijn Wijnands. KHL Koffiehuis, 21.30, €5

Classical: Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest (See Saturday) Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €30 Opera: Dutch Opera Singers Fragments from the world’s most popular operas, performed every Monday night by Lieve Geuens, Mylou Mazali, Rob van Surksum, Edwin van Gelder, Hein Hoogendoorn and Yolanda van Tongeren. Vondelkerk, 20.30, €18.50 Rock: Le Club Suburbia Featuring New York lo-fi artrock duo Japanther and Brooklyn-based The Good Good. OCCII, 20.30, €5 Heavy: State Of Mind A Dutch hardcore treat led by the brutal NY-style grooves of State Of Mind. Supporting are High Treason, Smash The Statues and Australian hardcore crew Within Walls. Bitterzoet, 20.30, €5 Hiphop/Jazz: Kindred Spirits Ensemble: For John Coltrane Marking what would have been the 80th birthday of John Coltrane, the Kindred Spirits Ensemble presents an odyssey in the spirit of the jazz maestro’s philosophy. Released in the roaring ’60s, his album A Love Supreme was the beginning of a musical movement that showed the genre’s potential as a way to generate positive changes. Tonight’s cast includes an orchestra, choir, MC and DJ together ploughing through classic and new material, while paying perfect homage to the sounds and memories of Coltrane. Seated concert. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.45, €12.50 + membership Jazz: Monique Klemann Easy listening and jazzy grooves as the vocalist presents her new album On Patrol. Sugar Factory, 21.00, €9 Experimental: DNK Amsterdam Live electro-acoustic improvisation. This evening’s guest is sound artist Justin Bennet. OT301, 21.30, €5

Tuesday 26 September Opera: Waiting for the Barbarians (See Short List) Het Muziektheater, 20.15, €20-€65 Classical: De Kamer van Dmitri Sjostakovitsj The Dutch premiere of Shostakovich’s mini-opera Antiformalistic Rayok, performed by soprano Tamara Obreskova, bass vocalist Ruben Gerson and pianist Kimball Huigens; directed by Howard Dodemont.

Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €17.50 Soul: Carleen Anderson Soulful jazz fusion from the long-performing vocal star, who’s previously scored hits with The Young Disciples and Brand New Heavies.

Melkweg, 21.00, €15 + membership Jazz: Jazz Café Live jazz and improv. Zaal 100, 22.00, €3

Wednesday 27 September Classical: Lunch Concert A sneak preview of tonight’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performance with Daniele Gatti at the helm.

Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 12.30, free Hiphop: The Hop Be part of hiphop recording history.

Right before your eyes and ears a new CD comes to life. On hand tonight are hiphop legend Ghost Face Killah (Wu-Tang Clan) writing a new rhyme, local producer Kubus chopping a beat and a graphic designer creating an original album sleeve. Escape, 18.00, €15

SteveReich Contemporary: Steve Reich @ 70 (See Short List) Muziekgebouw, 19.30, €20 Opera: Capriccio (See Friday) Het Muziektheater, 20.00, €20-€85 Classical: Jonathan Biss The young American master pianist and protégé of Mitsuko Uchida kicks off a

Rock: Porcupine Tree The kind of band you’ll rarely hear on the radio or see on TV, thoush selling out shows around the world without any fuss, this British quartet specialise in good, old-fashioned prog rock.

With a lengthy back-catalogue behind them, their followers are fanatical, but there’s certainly nothing to fear. For the curious, In Absentia is a good starting point. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 19.30, €25 + membership Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Performances of dark and fateful symphonies, including Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Berg’s Drei Orchesterstücke and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.6, Pathétique; conducted by Italian master Daniele Gatti. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €47.50

Pop/Rock: Ghost Trucker Subtle avant-pop, folk and lo-fi indie from the new band of Caesar singer/guitarist Roald van Oosten, tonight presenting new CD The Grand Mystique. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.30, €6.50 + membership World: Acoustic Africa Marking the release of the latest Putumayo CD Acoustic Africa, three of the album’s stars have hit the road in Europe: Habib Koité (Mali), Dobet Gnahoré (Ivory Coast) and Vusi Mahlasela (South Africa). With their bright, plucked acoustic guitars, subtle rhythms and uplifting African folk melodies, it makes for a magnificent celebration of the vibrant African acoustic scene. Patronaat, Haarlem, 21.00, €20 Jazz: B-OOST: Voer & Luminocinetique Opening the B-OOST festival, this spectacular production sees Dutch collective VOER (Vera Oene and the Rest) crash onto the stage with some help from the French artistic collective Luminocinetique. Expect a crossover of steaming grooves, original pop songs, exotic beats, expressive jazz solos, organic electronics and dazzling projected visuals. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14 Jazz: Brown vs Brown, Squartet Explosive progressive rock with influences of punk and free-jazz as the Amsterdam-based Brown vs Brown band, featuring sax player Dirk Bruinsma, meet with Roman trio Squartet for the second time in their history. OT301, 21.00, €4 Electronica: Freestylers Breaks, hiphop, electro, ragga and big-beat techno from these rowdy Brits.

Melkweg, 21.00, €15 + membership

Lo-Lite (Jack’s Garage Sale) Rock: Jack’s Garage Sale Featuring live sets from Green Hornet, the organ-driven trashy garage rockers from Groningen, and Lo-Lite, a two-piece blasting out a dangerously loud mix of raw stompin’ blues and garage punk. Winston Kingdom, 21.00, €5 Reggae: Jam Session Led by Ghettowish. Musicians and vocalists welcome. Volta, 21.00, free Pop/Rock: Club 3voor12 Live radio and TV session featuring Antwerp post punks White Circle Crime Club and Amsterdam surf lovers The Phantom Four. Register for tickets at www.3voor12.nl. Desmet Studios, 22.00, free

CLUBS Thursday 21 September Heatwave 06 A benefit dance party raising funds to give disabled people a holiday abroad this year. DJs include Riches (Akhnaton), Jan Boom (Panama) and 4Strings. Melkweg, 22.00-late, €10 Poptrash Three decades’ worth of rock, electro and hiphop with The Punchout DJs. Melkweg, 23.00, €4 Vreemd The electro is weird. The performances are weirder. Tonight’s line-up includes DJs Richard Parker and Zender, with performances by Fingerverf & Co and Kelly Hirina. Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €6.99 Electro-Noodlanding! Electro bursts controlled by the German label DOXA Records. Paradiso, 23.30-04.00, €9 Robotrock With DJs Atomica and Andy Royd. Winston Kingdom, 23.59-03.00, €5

Friday 22 September In Petto Dance music rules tonight, but it’s far from a straightforward club night. Loonaloop are an Australian five-piece live dance act. Recently they’ve rocked Dance Valley and Lowlands so they know how to work the crowds. There’s also an electro-acoustic performance from Danish singer Alice Rose, while those Kraak & Smaak lads wrap the remaining party round their fingers with their energy-charged tunes.

Sugar Factory, 22.00-05.00, €12 Bacardi B-Live Two rooms of dance and electro, featuring Don Diablo collaborating with Gregor Salto, Chew Fu Phat, Shlomo, Spike, Lethal Bizzle, Kubus and The Young Punx. Melkweg, 22.00-late, €15 + membership

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Amsterdam Weekly

21-27 September 2006

Battlemasters 2006 Hosted by The Freshest Kids, with hiphop tunes from Lil’Vic, Danny de Funk, Abstract & MC Melodee. Bitterzoet, 23.00-04.00

Dirty South Dance Party Hiphop and R&B with DJs Rapid Ric and Chill. Melkweg, 22.00-late, €10 + membership

Black Box Electro, disco and acid house grooves, with John Taylor, Martijn, DJ Lava, VJ Pixelpimp, Bijker and Toon. Studio 80, 23.00-late, €7

WickedJazzsounds Jazz, hiphop, broken beats, nujazz, funk and Afro sounds, as classic vinyl collides with live musicians. Driving the decks this week are Phil Horneman and Leroy Rey, while live guests include singer Bernice, bassist Alex Oele and sax player Jeff Hollie. Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €8.50

Monday 25 September Cheeky Monday Old skool drum ’n’ bass and jungle.

Winston Kingdom, 22.00-03.00, €6

Tuesday 26 September Switch On A club mash-up with live music, vinyl and electro. Featuring Pimpersticker, EveNi and DJ Firefly FX. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.00-01.30, €6

Wednesday 27 September John Taylor (Black Box) Paradisoul A Michael Jackson special with DVD DJ Supreme Cuisine, DJ Manga and friends. In the Kleine Zaal Dopeness Galore present new album The Timeless Interpretations, with a live set from Josee Koning, the leading lady of Brazilian fusion outfit Batida. Paradiso, 23.59-05.00, €10

Saturday 23 September Bassline With DJ Abstract, SP & DJ Cream, MC Murth & Fit, VJ Nitando, plus a showcase by Nina (De Lastigste). Paradiso, 00.30-05.00, €12 Electromotions Old-skool and groovy Amsterdamstyle elektro, presented by the Loudspeaker Collective.

With DJs Freestone, Hepcat, Something Enders, Arrow and Sandrien. Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 21.00, €5 Break & Enter Drum ’n’ bass with Adi-J, Silvahfonk, Fre4knc, Regz and Marc:L. Volta, 22.00, €5 Cool With DJs Tettero, Sven, Jani & Erik Euwe and Marcella. Hotel Arena, 22.00-04.00, €12.50 De Shit Minimal electro and dance. Think: Royksopp, Soulwax and Orbital. De Kring, 22.00-04.00, €5 Planet Delsin With DJs Stacey Pullen (Detroit), Peel Seamus, Raymon Hollander and Tim Nieburg. 11, 22.00-04.00, €12 Epicentre With DistortedBoy, B2B, Dion and CCCP. Studio 80, 22.00-late, €7.50 Heroes of Techno Featuring The Advent (live), Joris Voorn, Steve Rachmad and Lauhaus. P60, Amstelveen, 22.00-late, €18 Blacktro Funk, punk and high-powered electro mashing with AUX88 (live), Seymour Bits (live) and Robi 3.

Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €15 Passion Dance and house with WE-BE-1 and DJ Jordy. Odeon, 23.00-05.00, €10

Salsa Dance Café A lustful night of salsa and dancing, with music spun by DJs Los Marchosos. Badcuyp, Eetcafé, 22.00-01.00, €3 Pop! An intoxicating mix of cocktails and pop music.

Simple as that. Sugar Factory, 23.00-04.00, free, €8 after 00.00

GAY& LESBIAN Friday 22 September Vrouwenavond Things may be a little quieter this evening with the competition from Flirtation across town. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing: at least you’ll be able to move your arms from your side. DJ Suna spins from 10 p.m. onwards. Predominantly lesbian, but gay men welcome as guests. Café Sappho, 21.00, free Flirtation Goes Las Vegas Panama is invaded by 1,250 whip-crackin’ cowgirls tonight. Well, yeehaw.

Shit-kickin’ entertainment is provided by DJs Wannabeastar and Miss B-have in the main room, while When Harry Met Sally play appropriately Nevadan tunes in the small room. Star of the evening is dyke’s delight Ellen ten Damme. See you in Vegas, indeed!

Strictly women only. Panama, 23.00-04.00, €15

Saturday 23 September End of Summer party The nights may be drawing in and autumn’s shadow lengthens apace, but there is one summer that is forever: Donna Summer, of course. DJ Robbert is the one mixing her up. PRIK, 22.00-03.00, free Unk Fashion jockeys Lupe and Lava thrash it out electro style at this groovy venue above a pool hall, way out west in De Baarsjes. Club 8, 23.00-04.00, €8

Sunday 24 September Wannabeastar & Miss B-Have (Club Filth) Club Filth A big name line-up hits the water for this very hairy party: Wannabeastar & Miss B-Have, Joost van Bellen, Tom Trago, Kubus & Bang Bang (UK), Mr Wix, Rejected, and a live set from Sebastien Leger.

Stubnitz, 23.00-late, €17.50 Crossfader Hiphop and dancehall favourites. Melkweg, 23.59, €10 + membership Dance Arena Alternative dance, pop and rock. Melkweg, 23.59, €7 + membership

Sunday 24 September

Garbo Newish women-only afternoon session that takes over boys’ bastion Exit for one Sunday a month.

The sounds are mainstream contemporary ’70s and ’80s, which the clean of lung should enjoy moving to on the no-smoking dancefloor. Exit, 15.00-22.00, €4.50 Female Sensual Latino Relaxed women’s night with snacks, lounging and suitably Latin sounds. Café Sappho, 17.00, free XXX Leather Triple xtra dirty, triple xtra large, triple xtra leathery: take your pick at this monthly get together for—pardon my French—cuirs. There are changing facilities, mucky pups will enjoy the porn and dark room, and it’s all good practice for next month’s Leather Pride weekend. Men only, naturally. Spijker, 19.00-late, free

Jiggy North Nights A late-night rollerdisco in the skate park. NDSM-werf, 22.00-03.00, €5

Tuesday 26 September

Palm Springs International Ballroom Retro boogie lounge, but it’s Ladies Night, so no men allowed till after midnight. Winston Kingdom, 22.00-03.00, €5

Movie Snack Night Tonight’s film is down and dirty Mexican road movie Y Tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón. PRIK, 19.00, free

21-27 September 2006

Amsterdam Weekly control. In Dutch. Theater Bellevue, 20.30, €15 Comedy: easyLaughs Comedy improv in English.

Two different shows every Friday night. Crea Muziekzaal, 20.30, 22.30, €10, €5 (late night)

Saturday 23 September Theatre: Coriolanus (See Thursday) Het Rozentheater, 20.00, €12.50 Dance: Bacon (See Short List) Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11-€20 Cabaret: Helden (See Thursday) De Kleine Komedie, 20.15, €13.50-€17.50

ANTOINETTE MOOY

Theatre: Het geloof en het genot A poetic monologue about religion and indulgence melding into one character the two great Arabian poets Al-Hallaj and Ibn Hazam. In Dutch. Podium Mozaïek, 20.30, €10

Bacon, see Saturday

STAGE Thursday 21 September Theatre: Coriolanus Shakespeare’s tragedy about a Roman soldier trying to win the people’s favour in order to become consul; produced by theatre company Aluin. In Dutch. Het Rozentheater, 20.00, €12.50 Cabaret: Helden Anarchic music/theatre/cabaret/ slapstick/chaos show from Flemish collective De Nieuwe Snaar. In Dutch. De Kleine Komedie, 20.15, €13.50-€17.50 Theatre: Uittegratie! The theatre debut of fashion designer Aziz Bekkaoui. A reaction to hypocrisy and prejudice in today’s society, shown through a mixture of styles and genres. In Dutch. Podium Mozaïek, 20.30, €16

Theatre: Leve ik! Theatre company Parels voor de Zwijnen’s play about growing up in today’s commerce-orientated world, inspired by Horvath’s Kasimir and Karoline. In Dutch. Frascati, 20.30, €12

Friday 22 September Theatre: Coriolanus (See Thursday) Het Rozentheater, 20.00, €12.50 Cabaret: Helden (See Thursday) De Kleine Komedie, 20.15, €13.50-€17.50 Dance: Please Don’t Touch the Parrot Inspired by The Atlantic Man by Marguerite Duras, dance company United C present a multimedia-inspired flow of information and visuals, performed by seven young dancers (two male and five female) chosen from academies throughout the Benelux. Melkweg, 20.30, €8 Theatre: Leve ik! (See Thursday) Frascati, 20.30, €12 Theatre: Abigail’s Party Adaptation of Mike Leigh’s cult play about a group of neighbours getting out of

Dance: Please Don’t Touch the Parrot (See Friday) Melkweg, 20.30, €8 Theatre: Leve ik! (See Thursday) Frascati, 20.30, €12 Theatre: Abigail’s Party (See Friday) Theater Bellevue, 20.30, €15

Sunday 24 September Theatre: Lafferbooij (See Short List) De Balie, 13.00, €10, €5 after 15.30 Music/Dance: Bharati A huge Bollywood-style production by the Indian music and dance sensation. An aural and visual extravaganza, the performance is driven by a 100-person cast. Heineken Music Hall, 20.00, €34-€59 Theatre: Alexander A new play by Willem Jan Otten about Alexander the Great. Touching on themes of power, desire, greed and fear, this performance by Het Toneel Speelt has already been awarded the Topstukken medal, rated as one of the top-four performances to catch this season. In Dutch. Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11.50-€18.50 Music/Dance: Masako Noguchi Two dance sets from the Japanese-based performer. For the first, she’s backed by the computerised sounds of Colin McLean, and in the second, she’s joined by fellow dancers Katie Duck, Alexandra Manasse and Makiko Ito. OT301, 20.30, €5

15 Theatre: Abigail’s Party (See Friday) Theater Bellevue, 20.30, €15

Monday 25 September Performance: Shaolin Monks: Lotus & Swords Traditional Chinese rhythms, artistic choreography and ball-booting kung fu moves. Theater Fabriek Amsterdam, 20.00, €22.50-€28.50 Music/Theatre: ABBA Mania A spangly ABBA tribute performance. Theater Fabriek Amsterdam, 20.00, €29-€35 Comedy: Me, MySpace and iPod Boom Chicago presents their new show about the complications of modern wired-up life, addressing the incredible power we all have at our fingertips: to waste time more efficiently. In English. Boom Chicago, 20.15, €19.50 Theatre: Alexander (See Sunday) Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11.50-€18.50

Tuesday 26 September Theatre: Alexander (See Sunday) Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11.50-€22.50 Dance: Afrovibes: Encounters Opening the performance side of the Afrovibes Festival is this dance work

by South African choreographer/dancer Gladys Agulhas. Always keen to demonstrate that people with disabilities can be at the forefront of dance, the choreography aims to show how much more dancers can do because of their physical disabilities, not despite them. Frascati, 20.30, €15

Wednesday 27 September Comedy: Me, MySpace and iPod (See Monday) Boom Chicago, 20.15, €19.50 Theatre: Alexander (See Sunday) Stadsschouwburg, 20.15, €11.50-€22.50 Dance: Afrovibes: Encounters (See Tuesday) Frascati, 20.30, €15 Dance: Soul Project Project examining how far a dance performance can resemble the intensity of soul music, with separate solos each the length of a song.

De Brakke Grond, 20.30, €12

Amsterdam Weekly

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21-27 September 2006 Schippers, Edward Kienholz, Arman, Fischly & Weiss, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, Erik van Lieshout and Marc Bijl. Stedelijk Museum CS (Fri-Wed 10.0018.00), until 22 October

ART

Fashion DNA With Italian architect Italo Rota behind the church’s contemporary make-over, the multimedia-friendly exhibits explore the history and power of fashion, and all that allows us to develop an identity and project it to the world. Nieuwe Kerk (Fri-Wed 10.00-18.00, Thur 10.00-22.00), until 22 October

Opening White Bright and Delighting Home Part of an ongoing live-in exhibition chez art and design Mart, Laurence Aëgerter presents karaoke stills. Mart House (Thur-Sat 13.00-18.00), opens Thursday, until 7 October

Portrait Photographs from Isfahan, 1920-1950 An exceptional selection of portrait photography from the city of Isfahan. Taken between 1920 and 1950, these images provide a remarkable insight into life in Iran when the traditional culture was developing into a modern society—a transformation largely reversed after 1979, with the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Foam (Sun-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.0021.00), until 29 October

Halfway to Eden Celebrating their move to a new location away from the city centre, the oversized opening exhibition features contemporary works by Tim Benjamin, Arno Coenen, Iris Roskam, Idiots, Marjolijn Mandersloot, Jos van der Sommen, Hugo Kaagman, Petra van der Steen, Tadaaki Narita, Janine Schimkat, Pauline Wiertz, Ottmar Hörl and Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz. artKitchen (Wed-Fri 12.00-17.00, Sat 13.00-18.00), opens Friday, until 12 October

Mahomi Kunikata (See Short List) Reflex New Art Gallery (Tues-Sat 11.00-18.00), opens Saturday, until 4 November Spectacular City: Photographing the Future Extraordinary photographs exploring the beauty and strangeness of our urban reality. The large-scale images exhibited are often manipulated, constructed or reconstructed to reveal a different view of urban surroundings—iconic buildings as well as deserted street corners. Featuring works by Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Edward Zwakman and many others. Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00), Rotterdam, opens Saturday, until 7 January 2007 Tape This (See Short List) Arti et Amicitiae (Tues-Sun 13.00-18.00), opens Saturday, until 22 October THEAUSTRIANABSTRACTS Multidisciplinary works and new media by promising young Austrian artists.

Curated by Norbert Pfaffenbichler. Arti et Amicitiae (Tues-Sun 13.00-18.00), opens Saturday, until 15 October Lucy Stein, Anat Stainberg & Norberto Llopsis Segarra Paintings and drawings by Lucy Stein, whose work consists of character sketches of women and femininity, sometimes infused with blatant self-mockery, and others with an all-pervading sense of darkness. It also marks the commencement of a weekly soap opera-style performance (every Sunday afternoon in October, climaxing on Museumn8) by duo Anat Stainberg and Norberto Llopsis Segarra.

Although the two presentations are separate, they have one thing in common: a fascination with the material. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (TuesSun 11.00-17.00), opens Sunday, until 5 November IDENTITY Seeking to break down the bricks of ‘identity’ to decipher what it really means in this modern world, the old church is transformed by the multidisciplinary works of 35 national and international artists.

Each presenting a unique point of view, the pieces examine how identity can be represented and affected by culture, religion and other factors. Oude Kerk (MonSat 11.00-17.00, Sun 13.00-17.00), opens Monday, until 22 October Afrovibes: Zanele Muholi Only 1/2 the Picture is a presentation of photographic works from the awardwinning South African artist. Galerie 32-34 (Tues-Sat, 11.00-17.00), opens Tuesday, until 5 October

Museums Saskia Olde Wolbers A solo exhibition entitled The Falling Eye. The focal point of which is her latest film, Trailer. Stedelijk Museum CS (Fri-Wed 10.00-18.00), closing Sunday Brainfood Nardo Brudet’s Photo Academy Award-winning series of 34 Polaroids, which lays open to everyone the emotions, ideas, desires and fears that dominate his perspective on life and society. The result is a stark self-portrait series. Foam (Sun-Wed 10.0017.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), closing Wednesday Pieter Boersma Foto’s Architecture photography from in and around Amsterdam. ARCAM (Tues-Sat 13.00-17.00), closing Wednesday Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm Fashion and portrait photographs from the Amsterdam Weekly regulars. Groninger Museum (Tues-Fri 10.00-17.00), Groningen, until 1 October

Lucy Stein, see Opening Regula Syz Recent paintings from the Swiss-born artist, whose works are filled with paradoxes: fluffy images like animals, people and flowers juxtaposed with deep worries. Jan van der Togt Museum (ThurSun 13.00-17.00), Amstelveen, until 1 October Rembrandt: The Storyteller Part one of an exhibition allowing the Rijksmuseum to proudly display its collection of 60 drawings by Rembrandt. This opening programme presents him as a drawer of mainly biblical scenes.

Rijksmuseum (Daily 09.00-18.00), until 11 October Alexandra Leykauf & Lisa Oppenheim A series of pictures exploring the relationships between land-

scape, representation and reproduction. The theme running through both artists’ work is the visualisation of the pictorial mechanism, with much of the works showcased being reproductions and edits of previous photographs—either from archival or historic footage—re-contextualised to embrace new feeling and thought. Foam (Sun-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), until 15 October Breaking the Rules Unorthodox sculptures infused with a provocative nature, featuring a newly acquired piece by Thomas Hirschhorn and several scupltures by Jean Tinguely. Other artists on show include: Wim T

LEKKER BEZIG live a life of their own,’ At night, Nico Lootsma NICO LOOTSMA he says. ‘They became has a decent job at the Chronicler of Trashtown a magazine in postOstadetheater. By day, card format, with he roams about in the accompanying texts. I streets of Trashtown, made fifteen copies of the capital of Trashmathe number nought nia. In Trashtown issue. Seven people Magazine, he reports subscribed. To this on the fortunes of the day, I don’t accept city and its citizens. more subscriptions Lootsma himself lives than those seven. I in an apartment in De don’t want to spend too Pijp, where he much time on it.’ The explains how Trashmagazine is also for town came about. sale at Boekie Woekie ‘I’m an educated on Berenstraat. painter. In the 1980s I About the content, studied at the AKI art Lootsma says that it’s academy in Enschede. a ‘solo magazine’. ‘I I lived in nearby Henpublish pictures of my gelo, where me and There are a lot of empty Trashtowns, drawings some friends started a Spa bottles involved. and a kind of streammagazine. We basicalof-consciousness texts.’ ly published anything These texts, partly serious and partly people would send us, be it poems or drawironic, deal with consumerism and the ings or whatever, xeroxed it a hundred way humankind treats its environment. times and Bob was our uncle. Still, we had Lootsma shows his latest magazine: ‘This as much as seventy-five subscriptions.’ one is all about water. Nowadays you see In the late 1990s, Lootsma started so many people drinking water from plasmaking stuff from things he found on the tic bottles. Why? Tap water in this country streets, and called them ‘vulnerable objects’. is fine. When they’re done, they throw [the ‘I’d hang ’em on the wall, unglued. Parts bottles] on the street. The other day I visitwould fall off, but I didn’t care much. I ed Iceland. I came across a little river rather liked it—I wanted to stir people’s there, with pure, crystal-clear water. It imagination. Later, I started glueing the was drinkable, but still I saw loads of peoobjects and placed them horizontally. More ple with plastic water bottles.’ and more, they started to look like Isn’t Lootsma afraid that people will cityscapes, scale-models of found objects.’ label Trashtowns as kid’s stuff? ‘I would be He shows some pictures of his Trashif I made them without any meaning towns. There are a lot of empty Spa bottles behind it. Sure, it’s not art with a capital involved.

A. But to me, it’s liberating.’

In the next development, Lootsma started to make drawings from his scalewww.xs4all.nl/~boewoe By Floris Dogterom models. ‘And then the drawings started to ANNA LEEMAN

Inside Iran An overview of the work of Iranian painter Khosrow Hassanzadeh, whose paintings focus on political and social developments in his home country, and demonstrate a critical approach towards both Iranian state propaganda and Western prejudices about the Muslim world. Tropenmuseum (Mon-Fri 11.00-17.00, Sat, Sun 13.00-17.00), opens Friday, until 7 January 2007

Bouwjaar ‘86 Marking 20 years of ARCAM, the architecture centre revisits its opening year of 1986, bringing it back to life through videos, photos, models, newspaper articles and city impressions. Aside from world dramas like Chernobyl and the Challenger explosion, 1986 marked completion of the Stopera, primary school the Evenaar, the housing on Zwanenburgwal and the railway stations Sloterdijk, De Vlugtlaan and Lelylaan. ARCAM (Tues-Sat 13.0017.00), until 4 November Airworld From airport terminals to stewardess uniforms, eating utensils to branding and logo placement, the exhibition examines the development of almost every conceivable aircraft-related design, from the early days of passenger flights to the present.

Stedelijk Museum CS (Fri-Wed 10.00-18.00), until 5 November Melik Ohanian: Something in Time The first solo exhibition in the Netherlands of the French-Armenian artist, featuring a comprehensive survey of his films. A world-renowned video artist, Ohanian (1969) intends not to document situations, but rather, create abstractions searching for the human qualities within such situations. De Appel (Tues-Sun 11.00-18.00), until 5 November Hellen van Meene Following up her photographic portrait series of teenagers—most of whom she already knew from her own surroundings—Van Meene spent four years travelling to Japan, England, Germany, Latvia and Russia to find new models for her portraits. Huis Marseille (Tues-Sun 11.00-18.00), until 26 November The Earth from Above Outdoor exhibition featuring the famous aerial photography of Yann ArthusBertrand, whose images last stopped off in Amsterdam in 2003. Since, the collection has been renewed with the addition of 90 new photos. Stopera (Daily), until 3 December Voici Magritte Grand exhibition showing paintings, drawings, gouaches and collages of Belgian supersurrealist Magritte, including some of his most important works. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 11.00-17.00), Rotterdam, until 3 December The Kate Show Artists from different disciplines show works inspired by supermodel, style icon and muse Kate Moss. The focus is on the relationship between public and private life and how a public person is allocated an image or personality by the media. Foam (Sun-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), until 14 December The Vincent 2006 Showcasing works of the five nominees for The Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art in Europe. The winner will be announced on 17 November. Stedelijk Museum CS (Fri-Wed 10.00-18.00), until 14 January 2007 Werkplaats Jan van Scorel Three newly restored paintings from Dutch master Jan van Scorel’s studio.

The restauration process will be explained and the results of the technical research will be presented to the public. Centraal Museum (Tues-Sun 11.00-17.00), Utrecht, until 14 January 2007

Galleries The Honest Eye: A Moment in Time Exhibition exploring how photography can freeze our view, to hold still one frame in the continuous flow of our lives, both with analogue film and digital film. It excludes all forms of post-production, thereby restraining the technical decisions to choice of film and size of the lens. ABC Treehouse (Thur-Sun 13.0018.00), closing Sunday Victor Ekpuk Drawings and serigraphs by the Nigerian artist, inspired by ancient African graphical forms and writing. Galerie 23 (Wed-Sun 13.00-17.00), closing Sunday

Amsterdam Weekly

21-27 September 2006 Surf :) A feel-good video project by Amsterdammers Erik Urlings and Paul Baartmans, featuring two separate film montages—one shot on the Dutch coast, the other on a Caribbean island. Galerie Meneer de Wit (Fri-Sun 14.00-18.00), closing Sunday

cal, though more often than not, eye-catching and challenging, artists include Frederik Roijé, Kiki van Eijk, Snode Vormgevers, Joost van Bleiswijk and Wat Design. Studio Apart (Mon-Wed, Fri 10.00-18.00, Thur 10.00-21.00, Sat 12.00-17.00), until 12 October

The Return Of The Tailor Sculptures by Eitan BenMoshe. Working with strangers who he randomly offered sculptures to, new works of art were created under the influence of these people; meeting them in their homes, interviewing them and photographing their private spaces. Public Space with a Roof (ThurSun 15.00-17.00), closing Sunday

De Kleur van Iran Paintings, photos and explosions of colours as native artists provide views and perspectives of Iranian life from the inside. Participants include Shadi Ghadirian, Parima Shahin Moghaddam, Vahid Nasirian and Farhad Foroutnian. De Levante (Wed-Sun 13.00-17.30), until 13 October

Serge Gainsbourg Gitane in one hand, alcohol in the other: that’s how Gainsbourg was photographed nine times out of 10. The rest of the time those hands were round one of his many protégées—Birkin, Bardot, Deneuve—or burning 500 franc notes on TV. But this exhibition by Magnum photographers Guy Le Querrec and Nicolas Tikhomiroff, plus Frank Habicht, show the man behind the artiste très extraordinaire. See article on p. 11. Maison Descartes (Mon-Thur 10.00-18.00, Fri 10.00-17.00), until 29 September Lisa Holden Large-scale photographs repeatedly layered and digitally manipulated. The results include Pre-Raphaelite paintings fused with the artist’s own images. METIS_NL (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 30 September

Eindexamens Fotografie 2006 Selection of works presented by graduating students. Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie (Thur-Sat 13.00-17.00), until 14 October Liberté Pour Tous Photographic and video selections from Den Haag artist Risk Hazekamp, whose work regularly tackles the relationship between personal identity and gender. Artspace Witzenhausen (Thur-Sat 12.00-18.00), until 14 October Dreamtalk Contemporary neuromythological stories in the form of video works by Keren Cytter. Ellen de Bruijne Projects/Dolores (Tues-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 14 October Erik Wesselo: 56 Beaver Street A solo exhibition of lo-fi polaroid prints. Living in New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Wesselo provide a real sense of atmosphere from the period. Annet Gelink Gallery (Tues-Fri 11.00-18.00, Sat 13.00-18.00), until 14 October Streetlab: The Streets of Europe On behalf of Streetlab, photographers Martijn van de Griendt and Willem Poelstra travelled through Europe this summer with the aim of capturing today’s street culture. The exhibition shows 20 pictures taken on the streets of Amsterdam, Warsaw, Barcelona and Istanbul. Pakhuis de Zwijger Mon-Sat 08.00-23.00, until 14 October

Cross the Border Cross the Border Landscape and urban photography

by Japanese-born artist Hiroshi Ono, whose images from around the world attempt to show us the connections between our own cultural lives and others.

Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery (Wed-Sat 13.30-18.30), until 30 September Humble Origin A joint venture by [De ïs Ka], De Appel and Het Goethe Instituut, this large gallery space is overflowing with some of the best exhibits in Amsterdam at the moment. Rotterdam artist Jan Adriaans presents the photographic installation From Humble Origin, there are screenings of Melik Ohanian’s Seven seconds Before, German artist Isi Kunath presents M Magdalena is Kissing a Cowboy, and much, much more. DeïsKa (Tues-Sun 11.00-18.00), until 30 September Paul van Dongen Life-size etchings and watercolours, featuring architectural items like church interiors, and natural elements like withered branches and petrified skulls. De Praktijk (Tues-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 1 October

Contemporary Barbarism Ellert Haitjema presents photos from Iran, Eastern Turkey, Morocco and Syria.

De Balie (Fri-Sun 12.00-18.00), until 15 October Mixed Works The medley includes: Misschien zal het vannacht gaan regenen featuring new drawings by Jacobien de Rooij, Simon Says, a film by Maya Cohen, Colalitzia, a film by Elad Larom and Via Dolorosa, a film by Nir and Nadav Nadler. W139 (Tues-Sun 13.0019.00), until 15 October The Silver Bridge An ambitious installation of eight projections by Irish artist Jaki Irvine, filmed in Dublin and loosely inspired by 19th-century Gothic novel, Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Lefanu. SMART Project Space, until 18 October The Kids Are Alright Works on paper and photography by artists including Marijn Akkermans, Desiree Dolron, Malerie Marder, John Lurie, Anoek Steketee, Eve Sussman, Masao Yamamoto, Dick Tuinder, Nik Christensen and Ronald Hooft. Galerie Gabriel Rolt (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), until 21 October

The Life of Women Photo portraits of women by Gon Buurman. Melkweg Galerie (Wed-Sun 13.00-20.00), until 1 October Achter Glas A multidisciplinary window display that can be viewed 24 hours per day. Artists include Irene van Geest, Heidi Happy, Eva Kroes and Brian Mckenna, while exhibits will feature elements of dance, music performance, spoken word, video art and photography. De Kijkkasten (Daily), until 4 October Michiel van der Zanden New paintings by the young Dutch artist, which take unusual inspiration from classic computer game situations, such as the 3D layout of shoot-ups like Doom. AYAC’S (Fri, Sat 13.00-17.30), until 7 October Hello Earth Solo exhibition by Paul de Reus featuring drawings and sculptures. Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten-d’Eendt (Thur-Sat 11.00-18.00, first Sun of month 14.00-18.00), until 7 October Digital Bodies A multimedia exhibition that shows the transition from the digital to the physical. Reuten Galerie (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 7 October Choose Choice An examination of democracy with a focus on the Belgian electorate. Five artists will participate, challenging the status quo via photography, experimental video, multimedia, journalism and sound technology. De Brakke Grond (Mon 10.0018.00, Tues-Fri 10.00-20.30, Sat 13.00-20.30, Sun 13.00-17.00), until 8 October The Unified Field Solo exhibition by Dordrecht multimedia artist Peter Bogers, exploring the relationship with himself and his viewers through performance art and technology. Montevideo/Time Based Arts (TuesSat 13.00-18.00), until 10 October Much Dutch Part of Inside Design Amsterdam 2006, some of the best young designers in the country have been invited to display their work. Occasionally practi-

GP06: Stad-Speel-Ruimte GP06: Stad-Speel-Ruimte On show is the sixth edition of Group Portraits, an interdisciplinary project which teams together designers, artists and architects and invites them to research and develop their own vision on urban environment and public space. This time the theme is ‘Play in the City’. 66 East (Fri-Sun, 14.00-18.00), until 22 October Scroll: 40 years of visual narrative Activist/artist/ librarian Tjebbe van Tijen presents a selection of his life’s work: layered picture scrolls telling wide-ranging stories. Mediamatic, until 22 October New York in the 1930s-50s The first-ever European exhibition of the work of Walfred Moisio. For nearly three decades, the photographer dedicated his life to observing the ever-changing streets of New York, candidly capturing the emotions of its people and time in startling black and white images. Gallery Vassie (WedSat 12.00-18.00), until 4 November Ik Geloof in de Bijlmer A multicultural exhibition that’s not so much about religion, but the real believers and practitioners that bring religion to life. The focus is on photos and videos made by these people, but every Wednesday, there’s also cooking lessons hosted by the World Islamic Mission, demonstrating how to prepare tasty snacks and foods while also following the strict Islamic dietary laws that Muslims should observe.

Imagine Identity and Culture (Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 11.0017.00, Thur 11.00-21.00), until 18 November

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Amsterdam Weekly

18

Tour: IJvloot An informative boat trip on the IJ for all who want to learn more about history and development of its north and south banks. Boats leave every half-hour from Muziekgebouw. Muziekgebouw, 11.0017.00, free

Bernard’s Interiors Herenstraat 29, 622 5700

Montevideo/Time Based Arts Keizersgracht 264, 623 7101

Bijbels Museum Herengracht 366-368, 624 2436

More Rozengracht 133, 528 7459

Bimhuis Piet Heinkade 3, 788 2150 Bitterzoet Spuistraat 2, 521 3001

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Museumpark 18-20, Rotterdam, 010 441 9400

Boom Chicago Leidseplein 12, 530 7300

Muziekgebouw Piet Heinkade 1, 788 2010

Multidisciplinary: Robodock See Short List and article on p. 4. NDSM-werf, 15.00-06.00, €27.50

Bourbon Street Leidsekruisstraat 6-8, 623 3440

Het Muziektheater Amstel 3, 625 5455

De Brakke Grond Nes 45, 626 6866

NDSM-werf TT Neveritaweg 15, 330 5480

Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina Veemkade 576, 419 3368

Nederlands Architectuurinstituut Museumpark 25, Rotterdam, 010 440 1200

Sunday 24 September Literature: Verhaalhalen See Saturday. Various locations and times, €33.50 Tour: IJvloot (See Saturday) Muziekgebouw, 11.0017.00, free

EVENTS Thursday 21 September Discussion: Dag van de Dialoog 2006 Got an urge to speak out? Well, Dag van de Dialoog is an opportunity to meet up with fellow citizens at stands set up in shops, banks, neighbourhood centres, mosques and police stations for discussions on the nature of ‘identity’. For complete programme and the list of participating venues see www.amsterdamdialoog.nl.

Various locations, 08.00-19.00, free Multidisciplinary: Robodock See Short List and article on p. 4. NDSM-werf, 19.00-02.00, €20 Literature: Alexandre Jardin The author discusses his new book Het verhaal van de Jardins. In French.

Maison Descartes, 20.00, €6 Pyramid of Light On the stroke of 8 p.m., four highpowered lasers will shoot up from the banks of the Oosterdok. No, it’s not a war of the worlds, but a symbol for the International Day of Peace. NEMO, 20.00, free

Friday 22 September Multidisciplinary: Robodock See Short List and article on p. 4. NDSM-werf, 17.00-03.00, €22.50 Multidisciplinary: Liefde in de Stad A highlight to the month-long Liefde in de Stad programme, tonight’s gathering is a bundle of positivity. There’s a lecture by Bert Mulder, performance by Shana Moulton, lyrics and visuals by Begoña, music supplied by DJs Atomica and Andy Royd, and a big slab of love from Valerie van Leersum and Thomas Reineke. Much is in Dutch, but there’s enough love to engage speakers of any language. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.30, €7.50

Saturday 23 September Literature: Verhaalhalen Festival of columnists, with readings from names like Joost Zwagerman and Adriaan Jaeggi, in lowkey locations. See www.dichteraanhuis.nl and article on p. 5. Various locations and times, €33.50

Café Sappho Vijzelstraat 103, 423 1509 Centraal Museum Nicolaaskerkhof, Utrecht, 030 236 2362 Club 8 Admiraal de Ruyterweg 56B, 685 1703

NEMO Oosterdok 2 De Nieuwe Anita Frederik Hendrikstraat 111

Concertgebouw Concertgebouwplein 2-6, 671 8345

Nieuwe Kerk entrance on the Dam, 638 6909

Consortium Veemkade 570, 06 2611 8950

OCCII Amstelveenseweg 134, 671 7778

Crea Muziekzaal Turfdraagsterpad 17, 525 1400

Odeon Singel 460, 624 9711

DeïsKa Vijzelgracht 50, 320 3433

OT301 Overtoom 301, 779 4913

Desmet Studios Plantage Middenlaan 4A, 521 7100

Oude Kerk Oudekerksplein 23, 625 8284

Ellen de Bruijne Projects/Dolores Rozengracht 207A, 530 4994

P60 Stadsplein 100A, Amstelveen, 023 345 3445 Pakhuis de Zwijger Piet Heinkade 179-181

English Reformed Church Begijnhof 48, 624 9665

Panama Oostelijke Handelskade 4, 311 8680

Exit Reguliersdwarsstraat 42, 625 8788

Paradiso Weteringschans 6-8, 626 4521

Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400

Pathé De Munt Vijzelstraat 15, 0900 1458

Discussion: Sound Forum A spoken-word music magazine featuring lectures, discussions and presentations about contemporary music. Badcuyp, Bovenzaal, 20.00, free

Foam Keizersgracht 609, 551 6546

Patronaat Zijlsingel 2, Haarlem, 023 517 5858

Frascati Nes 63, 626 6866

Podium Mozaïek Bos en Lommerweg 191, 580 0380

Galerie 23 Nieuwe Herengracht 23, 623 9215

De Praktijk Lauriergracht 96, 422 1727

Galerie 32-34 Keurenplein 32-34, 020 619 5782

PRIK Spuistraat 109, 06 4544 2321

Design/Shopping: Woonbeurs Amsterdam Admittedly more than a tad on the commercial side, this fair features everything about interiors and homes.

Whether you want to take your living space into the digital age or strip it back to Zen-like minimalism, all the tips are here. But it’ll take plenty of additional effort to set yourself—or your residence—apart from the crowd afterwards. RAI, Tues-Fri 10.00-22.00, Sat, Sun 10.00-18.00, €15

Galerie de Rietlanden Rietlandpark 193, 419 4705

Public Space with a Roof Overtoom 301, 06 1117 4239

Galerie de Witte Voet Kerkstraat 135, 625 8412

RAI Europaplein 22, 549 1212

Ferdinand van Dieten-d’Eendt Spuistraat 270, 626 5777

Reflex New Art Gallery Weteringschans 79A, 423 5423

Galerie Gabriel Rolt Elandsgracht 34

Rembrandthuis Jodenbreestraat 4, 520 0400

Galerie Meneer de Wit Witte de Withstraat 10, 785 1663

Reuten Galerie Fokke Simonszstraat 49

Galerie Nola Hatterman Zeeburgerdijk 19A, 693 5057

Rijksmuseum Jan Luykenstraat 1, 674 7000

Tuesday 26 September Robodock, see Thursday

21-27 September 2006

Multimedia: Machinima Workshop In this dense four-day workshop, participants learn 3D animation skills, film-making for the real-time 3D environments of computer games and game design to become DIY machinimakers. Mediamatic, 09.30, €357

Wednesday 27 September Multimedia: Picnic 06: Cross Media: CEO Breakfast Breakfast with the ‘Thought Leaders’. Register at www.clubofamsterdam.com/ticketcorner.html. In English.

See article on p. 8. Westergasfabriek, 08.30, €90 Multimedia: Picnic 06: Avoiding the Digital Memory Loss Seminar which explores the state of the art in media preservation, net-art curation and web archiving. Register at www.picnic06.org. In English. See article on p. 8. Westergasfabriek, 13.00, free Design/Shopping: Woonbeurs Amsterdam (See Tuesday) RAI, Tues-Fri 10.00-22.00, Sat, Sun 10.0018.00, €15

Gallery Vassie 1e Tuindwarsstraat 16, 489 4042 GEM Stadhouderslaan 43, Den Haag, 070 338 1133 Groninger Museum Museumeiland 1, Groningen, 050 366 6555 Heineken Music Hall ArenA Boulevard 590, 0900 300 1250 Hotel Arena ‘s-Gravesandestraat 51, 850 2400 Huis Marseille Keizersgracht 401, 531 8989 Imagine Identity and Culture Bijlmerplein 1006-1008, 489 4866

Het Rozentheater Rozengracht 117, 620 7953 SMART Project Space Arie Biemondstraat 107-113, 427 5953 Spijker Kerkstraat 44, 620 5919 Stadsschouwburg Leidseplein 26, 624 2311 Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam Rozenstraat 59, 422 0471 Stedelijk Museum CS Oosterdokskade 5, 573 2911 Stopera Waterlooplein 22, 551 8117

Jan van der Togt Museum Dorpsstraat 50, Amstelveen, 641 5754

Stubnitz Odinakade, NDSM-werf

Joods Historisch Museum Jonas Daniel Meijerplein 2-4, 531 0310

Studio Apart Prinsengracht 715, 422 2748

De Kade Zuiddijk 9-11, Zaandam KHL Koffiehuis Oostelijke Handelskade 44, 779 1575

Studio 80 Rembrandtplein 70, 521 8333 Sugar Factory Lijnbaansgracht 238, 627 0008 Theater Bellevue Leidsekade 90, 530 5301

De Kijkkasten Sint Nicolaasstraat

Theater Fabriek Amsterdam Czaar Peterstraat 213, 522 5260

KIT Tropentheater Mauritskade 63, 568 8711

Toomler Breitnerstraat 2, 670 7400

De Kleine Komedie Amstel 56-58, 624 0534

Tropenmuseum Linnaeusstraat 2, 568 8200

De Kring Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 7-9, 623 6985

Under the Grand Chapiteau Next to ArenA, 621 1288

013 Veemarktstraat 44, Tilburg, 013 460 9500

Kunsthal Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341, Rotterdam, 010 440 0301

Van Gogh Museum Paulus Potterstraat 7, 570 5200

11 Oosterdokskade 3-5, 625 5999

De Levante Hobbemastraat 28, 671 5485

66 East Sumatrastraat 66, 06 4475 4773

Maison Descartes Salle André Citroën, Prinsengracht 644A, 531 9500

ADDRESSES ABC Treehouse Voetboogstraat 11, 423 0967

Verzetsmuseum Plantage Kerklaan 61, 620 2535 Volta Houtmankade 334-336, 628 6429 Vondelkerk Vondelstraat 120

Maloe Melo Lijnbaansgracht 163, 420 4592

W139 Oosterdokskade 5, sixth floor, 622 9434 Westergasfabriek Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 586 0710

Annet Gelink Gallery Laurierstraat 187-189, 330 2066

Mango’s Beach Bar Boulevard Barnaart 15, Zandvoort, 023 571 2788

De Appel Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10, 625 5651

Mart House Prinsengracht 529, 627 5187

World Trade Center Strawinskylaan 1, 575 9111

ARCAM Prins Hendrikkade 600, 620 4878

Mediamatic Post CS, Oosterdokskade 5, 638 9901

Arti et Amicitiae Rokin 112, 624 5134

Melkweg Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 531 8181

Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery Weteringschans 37, 06 1437 0995

artKitchen Joris van den Berghweg 101, 622 3422

Melkweg Galerie Marnixstraat 409, 531 8181

Zaal 100 De Wittenstraat 100, 688 0127

Artspace Witzenhausen Hazenstraat 60, 644 9898

METIS_NL Lijnbaansgracht 316, 638 9863

ZIMIHC theater Bouwstraat 55, Utrecht

Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie Bethaniënstraat 9, 622 4899

AYAC’S Keizersgracht 166, 638 5240 Badcuyp 1e Sweelinckstraat 10, 675 9669 De Balie Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10, 553 5151

Winston Kingdom Warmoesstraat 129, 623 1380

21-27 September 2006

Amsterdam Weekly

Honour of the Dragon

FILM

Edited by Julie Phillips.This week’s films reviewed

by Sam Coleman (SC),Sven Gerrets (SG),Andrea Gronvall (AG), John Hartnett (JH), Luuk van Huët (LvH), JR Jones (JJ), Dave Kehr (DK), Peter Margasak (PM), Steven McCarron (SM), Reece Pendleton (RP), Julie Phillips (JP), Jonathan Rosenbaum (JR), Bregtje Schudel (BS) and Ben Silburn (BSi). All films are screened in English with Dutch subtitles unless otherwise noted.

Amsterdam Weekly recommends.

New this week Honour of the Dragon Thai martial-arts star Tony Jaa and director Prachya Pinkaew follow up their entertaining, fight-heavy Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003) with this virtually identical actioner. A young villager (Jaa) is dispatched to rescue his family’s elephant from a ruthless mob boss who, for obscure reasons, has smuggled it to Australia. Like its predecessor, this is a low-budget affair short on plot and long on action, which is swell whenever Jaa’s involved in some hair-raising fight sequence. But the steady accumulation of unnecessary diversions (like an embarrassing mud-bath striptease) and a general lack of charm make this pretty tough to sit through. In dubbed English with Dutch subtitles. (RP) 109 min.

Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt My Super Ex-Girlfriend The tagline for this tolerable comedy, directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) from a script by Don Payne (The Simpsons), could be ‘Hell hath no fury like a superwoman scorned’. Uma Thurman plays a neurotic female version of Clark Kent who has trouble holding her superhero powers in check. A lot of superwimp gags executed by Luke Wilson grow out of this premise, as do some tacky ’50s-style special effects. The movie’s too slapdash to keep its characters consistent, but this has its moments. With Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, Eddie Izzard, and Wanda Sykes. (JR) 95 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Va, vis et deviens During the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, a desperate mother comes up with a plan to rescue her nine-year-old son: he must claim that he is Jewish and join the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. He is adopted by a liberal French-Jewish family and given the name Schlomo. As he comes of age and falls in love, he must also adjust to Western culture, confront racism, and live with the fear that his lies may be revealed. An ambitious film about identity (the title means ‘go, live and become’) from Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu. In Amharic/ Hebrew/ French with Dutch subtitles. 140 min. Pathé Tuschinski, Cinecenter

World Trade Center World Trade Center Oliver Stone’s effective if hokey 9/11 docudrama focuses on the two Port Authority policemen (played by Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña) who were rescued from the rubble of the Twin Towers, their families as they wait for news, and a former marine (Michael Shannon) who winds up on one of the rescue teams. An exercise in flag-waving, it evokes nostalgia for WWII epics and the camaraderie of Stone’s Platoon, stroking Americans’ egos about their innate generosity but overlooking, except for a brief end title, all the citizens of 86 other countries who died in the attacks. Able newcomer Andrea Berloff wrote the script. (JR) 125 min. The Movies, Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt, Pathé Tuschinski

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My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Special screenings 25 Watts/Whisky The promising young Uruguayan film-maker Juan Pablo Rebella committed suicide in July. To keep his memory alive, De Balie is screening two of his dark comedies. In 25 Watts (2001), three Montevideo teenagers wander their neighbourhood, trying to get through another day of sleep, drink and strange encounters. In Whisky (2004), Jacobo, the Jewish owner of a small sock factory, enlists Marta, his floor manager, to pose as his wife so he can oneup his visiting brother. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. De Balie Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud The debut from Louis Malle, this stylish noir crime film stars Jeanne Moreau and boasts an improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis. In French with Dutch subtitles. 90 min.

Rialto Behind the Sun/Madame Satã A double bill of movies co-written by up-and-coming Brazilian filmmaker Sérgio Machado. In Behind the Sun (Abril Despedaçado), a young man is ordered by his family to avenge his brother’s death. The murder abruptly divides his life into the 20 years already lived and the two days he has left before his own demise. Madame Satã is a fictional portrait of the Brazilian pop culture hero João Francisco dos Santos, who was among other things a capoeira artist, bandit, whorehouse cook, father and drag queen.

In Portuguese with Dutch subtitles. Rialto Charlotte Forever Yet another riff on the pervy father-daughter dynamic he started in 1984 with the song ‘Lemon Incest’, this 1986 feature by Serge Gainsbourg stars the director himself as Stan, a washed-up alcoholic screenwriter struggling with his daughter (played by real-life daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg), who blames him for the death of her mother. Like most of the films

by Gainsbourg père, it’s not really essential, though it delivers exactly the kind of nonchalant, terribly French kinkiness you’d expect. Gainsbourg addicts and fans of Charlotte keen to experience some of her early acting work will leave happiest.

In French. Filmmuseum La Double vie de Véronique An exquisite enigma by Krzysztof Kieslowski following the parallel lives of two 20-year-old women, one in Poland and one in France, both played by the beautiful Irene Jacob. The Polish Veronika is a talented singer with a heart condition; the French Veronique quits her voice lessons and gets involved with a puppeteer who writes children’s books. Masterfully directed, this rather dreamlike 1991 French-Polish production explores a dual nature that seems to grow uncannily out of the co-production situation itself—almost as if Kieslowski were dreaming of a resurrected artistic identity for himself as Polish state-financing went the route of Polish communism. In French/Polish with Dutch subtitles. (JR) 98 min. Melkweg Cinema The Dreamers In 1968 Paris, students discovered political activism. Spurred on by the US anti-Vietnam movement, they put down their copies of Kerouac’s Sur la route and picked up paving stones.

Meanwhile, a young film director’s star was on the rise: Last Tango in Paris marked Bernardo Bertolucci as a serious artist with something to say. More than three decades on The Dreamers, adapted by Gilbert Adair from his own novel, tells the story of a young American studying in Paris in the ’60s who stumbles into the private world of twins Theo and Isabelle. Through mutual introversion and copious drinking and shagging, the three form a tight bond, while outside their door the world is busy changing.

The story’s setting beautifully highlights the contrast between the world of action and the dream state. In English/French with Dutch subtitles. (BSi) 130 min. Filmmuseum

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman is never afraid to be surreal. When director Michel Gondry came to him

with an idea for a film about erasing your ex from your memory, he mixed fantasies, dreams and other by-products of the human brain to make a dark and funny science-fiction love story. Jim Carrey plays the timid Joel, who finds out his former girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had all knowledge of him erased from her head. In pain, he decides to do the same, but when the procedure is set in motion and his memories start to fade he begins to have doubts. He tries hard to cling to the memories and develops a new consciousness within his subconscious mind. (SG) 108 min. OT301 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Seven sketches of varying quality (1972), ‘based on’ questions from the one-time best-seller

by Dr David Reuben. Woody Allen has always been a short-distance runner, better with individual sequences than overall structure, which might make you think that the blackout format here would play to his strengths. Unfortunately, it merely exaggerates them, as the film gets stalled for minutes at a time on misconceived ideas and too-heavy applications of style; it takes a while for the genuinely funny parts to recover from the total misfires. (DK) The Movies

Gloria John Cassavetes clearly set out to make a commercial film, but, intransigent personality that he was, he turned in a slice of pure avant-garde: this 1980 release makes use of a fascinating discrepancy between dramatic tone and visual style.

It’s written as a soggy, conventional melodrama, about an ex-gun moll (Gena Rowlands) who tries to protect an orphaned Puerto Rican boy from the mob, but it’s directed in Cassavetes’s usual style of deflated naturalism. While the script pitches a series of wildly improbable events, the direction remains disruptively attuned to the dark, arrhythmic poetry of anticlimax. Heightened emotion and nagging banal reality fight each other for screen space, doing final battle in a daringly ambiguous ending.

(DK) 110 min. Kriterion The Kids Are Alright Drummer Keith Moon, the clown prince of The Who, died shortly before this 1979 documentary was released, and though his surviving bandmates are still going through the motions, The Kids Are Alright is the group’s proper epitaph. Teenage fan and film-making novice Jeff Stein slapped together concert footage, TV appearances, and ancient promo films, connecting them with farcical interview sequences and a rousing live performance shot on a British soundstage. Like The Who in their prime, the result is loud, chaotic, and funny; Stein captures the band’s fury but also its warped sense of humour, which ran all through its early singles but mostly lay dormant throughout its later grandiose rock operas. (JJ) 108 min. Melkweg Cinema

Kung Fu Hustle Putting the word ‘slap’ back into

slapstick, this gleefully deranged kung fu caper by Hong Kong’s rising star Stephen Chow aims more for belly laughs than for the gut. Assisted by oodles of CGI and some senior martial artists, Chow packs the film with references to everything from Gangs of New York to Road Runner cartoons, in the same vein as his underrated Shaolin Soccer did. Although Kung Fu Hustle is unlike anything you’ve ever seen, it’s bound to leave you gasping for breath after its barrage of punches and punch lines. That said, it’s one hell of a ride. (LvH) Filmmuseum Machinima Bits What’s machinima? The word is a blend of ‘machine’, ‘cinema’ and ‘animation’, and the thing is the production of (short) films within a game engine. Games such as The Movies or The Sims (or any game, if you hack it right) yield manipulable, saveable images. Put them in a storyline and voila: home-made movies. This weekend Kriterion presents Machinima Bits, an entire programme of machinima. View selected films on the big screen,

make your own in the café, or attend a talk by a panel of experts. In the evening, you can see a performance by Swedish Commodore64-genius GOTO80 and party to a DJ set of game music. Expect a longer festival at Kriterion in 2007. Kriterion Manhattan Short Film Festival See article on p. 21.

Kriterion

Naked Lunch This David Cronenberg masterpiece (1991) breaks every rule in adapting a literary classic—maybe On Naked Lunch would be a more accurate title—but justifies every transgression with its artistry and audacity. Adapted not only from William S Burroughs’s free-form novel but also from several other Burroughs works, this film pares away all the social satire and everything that might qualify as celebration of gay sex, yielding a complex and highly subjective portrait of Burroughs himself (expertly played by Peter Weller) as a tortured sensibility in flight from his own femininity, proceeding zombie-like through an echo chamber of projections (insects, drugs, typewriters) and disavowals.

According to the densely compacted metaphors that compose this dreamlike movie, writing equals drugs equals sex, and the pseudonymous William Lee, as politically incorrect as Burroughs himself, repeatedly disavows his involvement in all three.

(JR) 115 min. Cavia Rabbit-Proof Fence An Australian ‘western’ with epic sweep directed by Phillip Noyce and dealing with the ‘stolen generation’ of aboriginal children who were torn from their families by misguided state functionaries. It’s based on a true story about three girls taken from their mother in 1931 and sent to a state-run facility a thousand miles away; they escape and set off for home on foot, dodging the law en route. The story is so black and white that one feels like hissing the villain (Kenneth Branagh) and cheering the heroines, but the simplicity of the telling seems warranted. David Gulpilil, the aboriginal star of Walkabout, is memorable here, too. (JR) 94 min.

KIT Tropentheater, Kleine Zaal

Spider David Cronenberg isn’t credited often

enough for his literacy, which anchors him as a filmmaker much as method acting can anchor some performers: he seems to immerse himself so deeply in the warped visions of certain writers that he re-creates their work whereas most literary filmmakers would simply imitate it. This tour de force, which Patrick McGrath adapted from his own novel under Cronenberg’s supervision, draws us into the consciousness of a schizophrenic (Ralph Fiennes) who’s been incarcerated for most of his life and whose boyhood traumas merge seamlessly with his current existence in an East London halfway house; apparently Cronenberg’s model is not only McGrath but Samuel Beckett in his early novels.

The film asks us to piece together what really happened in the past, though Cronenberg’s mastery of the material. Fiennes gives one of his finest performances; Miranda Richardson, playing at least three characters in the protagonist’s twisted vision, is no less impressive; and Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave, and John Neville do excellent backup work.

Lean and densely packed, this minimalist chamber thriller is at once hallucinatory and terrifyingly real.

(JR) 98 min. Cavia Wild Side Proving that naming a film after a Lou Reed song doesn’t automatically lead to a result that’s moody, grim and slightly cranky, this genderbending drama explores the intricate relationships forged by the transsexual prostitute Stephanie. The male prostitute Jamel and the Russian illegal immigrant Michail follow her to the French countryside when she travels back to her birthplace to care for her sick mother. Wild Side is a sensitive yet unsentimental portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks that neither glamourises or patronises its subjects. In French with Dutch subtitles. (LvH) 94 min. Melkweg Cinema

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Amsterdam Weekly

C.R.A.Z.Y

Still playing 13 (Tzameti) Don’t stick your nose into someone else’s business may be the moral of his noirish black and white thriller by director Géla Babluani. In this accomplished and tense film debut, an impoverished immigrant (George Babluani) stumbles upon a route to riches when he hears his employer discussing a get-rich-quick scheme and acts to intercept. Only he doesn’t know the full story, instead following a series of step-by-step instructions that sees him travelling across country with strangers closely on his tail. The set-up is lengthy, but carefully calculated, making its macabre twists all the more enjoyable. In French with Dutch subtitles. 93 min.

Kriterion, Rialto Adrift Supposedly based on actual events and real stupidity. 95 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

Brick

Brick Film noir finds a new home—chez a SoCal high school—in Rian Johnson’s debut feature.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the kid from 3rd Rock From the

21-27 September 2006

China Blue

Sun) plays Brendan, a sharp loner who fully understands how the school’s societies tick, but opts to sit on the outskirts watching. That’s until he receives a call for help from his missing ex-girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin), and in order to pursue her, must become part of the school’s seedy drug-selling underworld, controlled by his nemesis The Pin (Lukas Haas). The script is tight and the linguistics often unnaturally confusing, but that’s the real charm. The combined effect keeps you guessing right till the end. (SM) 110 min. The Movies, Pathé De Munt Buddha’s Lost Children A feature-length documentary film about a Thai Buddhist monk who—armed only with his faith and boxing skills—wages an inspirational battle to help orphaned children, fight drug abuse and preserve a vanishing way of life. Followed over the course of a year by Dutch director Mark Ver-kerk, Abt Phra Khru Bah transforms the lives of the children he encounters through a mixture of compassion and tough love. In Thai with Dutch subtitles. 96 min. Kriterion, Pathé Tuschinski, De Uitkijk C.R.A.Z.Y. A story of two love affairs: a father’s love for his five sons, and one son’s love for his father—a love so strong it compels him to live a lie and hide from his true self. In Jean-Marc Vallée’s gay fairy tale set in Quebec (where last year the movie was a huge success) that son is Zac Beaulieu, who knows he’s different from his brothers, but is desperate to fit in.

The film follows him through his first 20 years, ultimately leading him to accept his true nature and,

more importantly, find his father’s genuine love. In French with Dutch subtitles. 127 min. Cinecenter, Pathé Tuschinski

Capote This respectful biopic follows the six years

in which author and celebrity socialite Truman Capote did his research for his masterpiece, In Cold Blood.

Academy Award-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t shrink from the challenge and flaunts both Capote’s strengths and his weaknesses. His Capote is flawed to perfection. (BS) 99 min. Cinema Amstelveen, The Movies The Cave of the Yellow Dog In this follow-up to Byambasuren Davaa’s spellbinding international hit The Story of the Weeping Camel, the Mongolian film-maker sticks to the kind of down-to-earth docudrama she does best. Once again dealing with the nomadic aspects of Mongolian life through a real family, she documents their everyday existence in a quiet, monotonous world. The film is brought to life by the family’s six-year-old daughter when she finds a dog. In Mongolian with Dutch subtitles. (SM) 95 min. Rialto China Blue Documentary by Micha X Peled, which explores the textile industry of China and the 130 million children working in factories to produce clothing.

In Cantonese/English/Mandarin with Dutch subtitles.

87 min. Het Ketelhuis, De Uitkijk Cinderella Man Ron Howard, an exemplar of honourable mediocrity, reunites with actor Russell Crowe and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman of A Beauti-

Five-Word Movie Review

LONGEST RUNNING FILM IN HISTORY? The Story of the Weeping Camel Rialto

ful Mind for this epic treatment of a seven-year stretch in the career of New Jersey boxer James J Braddock. The story culminates in Braddock’s near miraculous defeat of Max Baer (Craig Bierko), which made Braddock world heavyweight champion. But despite the effective fight sequences, this is more about what it means to have your electricity shut off, enhanced by detailed recreations of working-class misery during the Depression. Paul Giamatti is a particular standout as Braddock’s manager. (JR) 144 min. Pathé Tuschinski Crossing the Bridge:The Sound of Istanbul This lively 2005 documentary by German-Turkish director Fatih Akin (Gegen die Wand) follows bassist Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten through the crumbling streets of Istanbul to present a dynamic and

Amsterdam Weekly

21-27 September 2006

Sample the Manhattan Short Film Festival in the comfort of your favourite Mokum cinema seat.

LIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, ACTION!

By Luuk van Huët If I were to say to you that the ol’ US of A was bringing democracy to our backward region, it wouldn’t be a terrible surprise if you ran for the hills, broke down and cried or hid under a rock. But lo and behold, I bring you good tidings when I say that the Yankee Doodles aren’t exporting Daisy Cutters or roadblockmanning, trigger-happy GIs to our fair land, but instead, the acclaimed Manhattan Short Film Festival. Starting this year, the audience participation-heavy festival has gone global. It will land at Kriterion,

wide-ranging portrait of the ancient city’s musical riches. The intimate performance footage ranges from more traditional sounds to Turkish iterations of global styles like rock, hiphop and electronica, delivering commentary on the nation’s conflicted status as a bridge between Europe and Asia that’s even more poignant than the passionate and informative interviews. Among the featured artists are rock pioneer Erkin Koray, the powerful Kurdish singer Aynur, polyglot DJ Mercan Dede, and arabesk legend Orhan Gencebay. In English/German/Turkish with Dutch subtitles. (PM) 92 min. Melkweg Cinema Fateless Respected Hungarian cinematographer Lajos Koltai (Being Julia) makes his directing debut with this long, heavy and not particularly edifying Holocaust drama, adapted by Imre Kertész from his own novel. The opening scenes, set in a middle-class Jewish home in Budapest, are beautifully shot; the closing ones, which show the young protagonist (Marcell Nagy) trying to adjust after coming home from Auschwitz, are the most emotionally complex. Separating them is an hour and a half of shapeless blue-grey misery in the camps, which eventually devolves into a series of blackouts. The hero’s intriguing claim near the end—that he was able to find happiness in the camps—might have distinguished this from other Holocaust films, but Koltai never shows us any evidence. In Hungarian with Dutch subtitles.

(JJ) 140 min. De Uitkijk

the student-run cinema, on 22 September, giving all cinephiles worth their sodium a primo chance to voice their opinion and possibly boost a new film-maker’s career.

As Nikki Damen, Kriterion’s main woman, states about the festival’s roots: ‘My first reaction was: “Finally! Something positive that’s coming out of the United States!”’

Not only has it gone global, the MSFF has turned egalitarian. It used to have a jury comprised of movie-making big shots, but this year the voting has been put into the hands of average Joes and Janes hailing from the US, Canada and

Fearless Unsurprisingly a huge hit in Asia with Jet Li in the starring role, Fearless is his portrayal of martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia, who became the most famous fighter in all of China at the turn of the 20th century. A victim of incredible personal tragedy, he fought his way out of darkness and into history, defining the true spirit of martial arts and inspiring his nation. On its surface, however, the plotted rise from victim to a legend is no more elaborate than that of The Karate Kid, and indeed, this ain’t another Hero. For all its attempted emotional highs and lows, it remains a vehicle for perfectly articulated and imaginative fight scenes, paving the way for Li to bid a final farewell to the martial arts genre. In Japanese, English, Mandarin with Dutch subtitles.

Pathé De Munt

Figner:The End of a Silent Century Figner: The End of a Silent Century Edgar Figner’s world is where fact and fantasy collide. This docudrama tells the story of the train journey he embarks on when forced from the family home where he’s always

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Europe, with a whopping 189 venues participating. Locations ranging from Greenland to the Yukon will host the same festival as more cosmopolitan places such as our own town and of course, the Big Apple.

One interesting tidbit of information is that Kriterion never applied to host the festival. Instead, film fans submitted ideas for venues via the festival’s website, and festival director Nicholas Mason contacted the venue after numerous suggestions.

Three entries that come highly recommended by our informant Damen: ‘I especially liked The German flick Security, which delves into the fast-paced life of a mall cop; Off-Side, an Israeli film in which the worlds of soccer and warfare are mixed; and the English animation Who I Am and What I Want.’

According to Damen, you should head down to Kriterion for even these three films alone. Of course, you’ll also get to see another nine nuggets of framed goodness for the measly entrance fee of €6, which will also give you access to one of Kriterion’s juicy DJ-driven afterparties.

One small boy’s regrets in communist-era Poland in Cigarette Box.

lived. Along the way, five co-passengers, taking the form of relatives and characters from his films, bring a Russian century to life through old film fragments.

Directed by Nathalie Alonso Casale. In Russian with Dutch subtitles. 90 min. Filmmuseum

Zwartjes here as a driven, headstrong artist, never losing his sense of humour in his view of the world. In Dutch. 76 min. Filmmuseum

Grbavica In a country ripped apart and left brimming with single mothers, Esma is living with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Grbavica, a district in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Desperate to go on a school trip with her friends, the young girl begs her mother to acquire a certificate proving her father died a shaheed—a holy war martyr—entitling her to a discount. But when Esma avoids this process, struggling to pay the full fee herself, it becomes clear to Sara that the story of her father isn’t as black and white as she had always believed. Already tipped for Oscar success thanks to its intense story and performances, Jasmila Zbanic’s full-length directorial debut is an emotionally raw insight into post-war Balkan life. In Bosnian with Dutch subtitles. 90 min. Cinecenter, Rialto De Grote Tovenaar A documentary about Frans Zwartjes: a musician, painter, lecturer, violin-maker, sculptor, and most notably, the father of Dutch experimental film. During the late ’60s, Zwartjes’ psychological and sexually laden black-and-white films caused an uproar, while his unconventional methods of production and teaching were highly influential for many film-makers of the new generation.

One such student was Ruud Monster, who portrays

This is the first time the festival has ventured outside of New York, but if the excursion proves successful, Damen is enthusiastic about their future together.

‘In the US, the festival runs for an entire week, while we’re showing only the finalists. If the festival is a hit, we might be able to expand it to several days.’

The Manhattan Short Film Festival is definitely on the move, as Damen attests: ‘The festival will expand to South America next year, and inspired film-makers from across the globe should sign up at www.msfilmfest.com if they want to participate.’

The fact that Damen will personally count the votes on Friday to send them across the Atlantic signifies the level of trust the festival has in its participants.

Something tells me we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for a recount.

Manhattan Short Film Festival is at 20.00 on 22 September at Kriterion.

Into Great Silence A first look into the lives of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse—the mother house of the legendary Carthusian Order in the French Alps—this documentary by Philip Groening serves to remind that there’s more to silence than just silence.

There are no interviews, no commentary and no music, other than the monks’ song, yet this is an eyeand ear-opening piece. Groening spent six months alone in the monastery, filming daily rhythms and rituals as the monks went about their slow-paced business. In French/Latin with Dutch subtitles. 164 min. Het Ketelhuis, Rialto Lady in the Water Paul Giamatti plays a stuttering everyman, an apartment building janitor who’s itching for redemption and finds it in the shape of a new age allegory by M Night Shyamalan. More specifically, he finds a fairy-tale nymph named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) living under the building’s swimming pool and menaced by occult beasties until the tenants join forces against them. It’s hard to think of a deadlier shotgun marriage than Jacques Tourneur’s poetry of absence and Spielbergian uplift, but Shyamalan has patented the combo, adding pretentious camera movements that are peculiarly his own—even the jokes are pretty solemn. But count on Christopher Doyle’s lush cinematography and a lively cast to take

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Amsterdam Weekly up the slack. (JR) 110 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Little Man Their previous collaboration, White Chicks (2005), looks almost restrained compared to this effort by the Wayans brothers, a raucously vulgar comedy that may set a new record for groin jokes. A two-footsix-inch ex-con (Marlon Wayans) steals a fabled diamond but has to ditch it in the handbag of a career woman (Kerry Washington) whose husband (Shawn Wayans) is eager for a family. Posing as an abandoned toddler to get close to the couple, the thief plays the innocent while unleashing his outsized adult appetites. The slapstick is funnier for the nifty CGI, and the script gets in some sly digs at racist cops and multitasking soccer moms. (AG) 80 min. Pathé ArenA The Lost City Andy Garcia’s first feature as director, an abortive anti-Marxist epic about the Cuban revolution, follows the fortunes of a wealthy Havana family, with Garcia as one of the sons, a nightclub owner. The script is credited to the late, great Cuban expatriate novelist G Cabrera Infante, but the only traces of his wit are in a closing title and the treatment of Che Guevara (Jsu Garcia) and gangster Meyer Lansky (Dustin Hoffman); Infante also appears as a character of sorts, though casting Bill Murray as such a multicultural figure goes beyond grotesquerie to incoherence. Garcia seems to be aping the Godfather movies and Warren Beatty’s Reds, but the movie’s gracefulness is limited to its handling of the music (some of which Garcia wrote). (JR) 143 min. The Movies

Marie-Antoinette Marie-Antoinette Sofia Coppola’s ‘anti-period’ biopic eschews authenticity in favour of the emotional and visceral experience on the last and tragically misunderstood queen of France. Eye-popping visuals and an anachronistic soundtrack further underline that here we have a woman not of this time, though the connection we do make with Kirsten Dunst’s Marie-Antoinette at the beginning of the movie gets lost when the lustre of Versailles begins to work its spell, and the heroine’s intrigue pales in comparison.

(BS) 125 min. The Movies

Me and You and Everyone We Know Fresh, like-

able, and stylishly low-key, this wistful and sexy romantic comedy marks the feature-directing debut of conceptual artist Miranda July. There are a lot of strong performances by relative unknowns, but what really holds things together is a certain sustained pitch of feeling about loneliness. July plays a shy video artist, supporting herself as a cab driver for the elderly, who becomes interested in a recently separated shoe clerk (John Hawkes) with two sons. The movie’s flirtatious roundelay also includes the clerk’s coworker, an art curator and a couple of teenage girls. (JR) 90 min.

Het Ketelhuis, Kriterion Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey Film-maker Sam Dunn identifies himself as an anthropologist and a heavy metal fan at the outset of this Canadian documentary, and its form follows naturally: organised like a thesis, it traces metal’s roots and surveys numerous subgenres, yet every chapter seems to show the goofy, long-haired director flashing the devil horns.

Metal culture is a giant topic, and Dunn has made an ambitious stab at exploring the music’s social, religious and sexual implications. Considered but then dropped are many rich topics: the homoeroticism of ’80s hair bands, Tipper Gore’s campaign against satanic lyrics, metal-stoked church burnings in Norway. But would you respect a movie about metal that wasn’t excessive? (JJ) 94 min. Kriterion Miami Vice Michael Mann’s big-screen adaptation of the ’80s TV series created with Anthony Yerkovich offers a routine plot in which vice cops Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx pose as drug dealers. Mann creates some arresting compositions, but he’s become so addicted to close-ups, especially erotic ones involving Gong Li (hot) and Farrell (not), that he tends to neglect their visual contexts. Apart from a few sleek shots involving boats or helicopters, the action eventually devolves into a standard war movie shootout.

(JR) 135 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest This sequel to The Curse of the Black Pearl reunites the first movie’s director (Gore Verbinski) with screenwriters (Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio) and much of its cast (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Pryce)—and they’re desperate to knock our socks off. But the excess gets wearing: Depp’s fruity impersonation of Keith Richards (or William F Buckley) as pirate Jack Sparrow; too many bottomless chasms on an island with too many jungle savages (after the

21-27 September 2006 fashion of Peter Jackson’s King Kong); Bill Nighy playing too squishy a villain with a beard of too many crawling octopus tentacles; too much violence, pop nihilism and sick humour. (JR) 140 min. Cinema Amstelveen, Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt, Pathé Tuschinski Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice is back on the big screen once again (the seventh time, including TV versions). Many will enjoy it solely for the cinema spectacle. Keira Knightley, already familiar to buffs from Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean, finds her launch to stardom with this film.

Many will undoubtedly prefer the 1995 Colin Firth Darcy in his wet shirt to the 2005 Matthew MacFadyen with his less-than-attractive hairpiece. (JH) 125 min.

Pathé ArenA

Rize Documentary about radical hiphop dance in LA’s South Central by David LaChapelle. (JJ) 84 min.

Melkweg Cinema

The Road to Guantanamo Directors Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross have released a movie that details the most serious case of wrong time/wrong place you’ve ever heard of as four UK Pakistanis are caught in the crossfire of the War on Terror in Afghanistan. This gripping political docudrama will leave you outraged at governments and inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit. (SC) 95 min. Kriterion See No Evil Juvenile offenders cleaning up a trashed art deco hotel are stalked by a bald psycho (wrestler Glen Jacobs) in this routine slasher. Part of a co-ed work-release programme, the kids are lodged at the hotel and immediately pair off for sex, which proves the juvenile justice system isn’t as bad as some people say. The gilt-and-grime setting is eerily atmospheric, and screenwriter Dan Madigan has a nicely sick sense of humour (one kid doing time for animal activism is hung upside down to be eaten by hungry dogs). (JJ) 84 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt The Sentinel Based on Gerald Petievich’s novel, this so-so thriller stars Michael Douglas as a veteran Secret Service agent who once took a bullet for Reagan but is now being framed for plotting to kill the current president, whose wife (Kim Basinger) is the agent’s secret lover. Douglas is credible enough in a Harrison Ford-type role, though Kiefer Sutherland has stronger scenes as his nemesis, a dogged investigator. Eva Longoria, as a rookie agent torn between loyalties to both men, is on hand pretty much as eye candy. Director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) has a flair for action, which compensates for the flattening effect of Gabriel Beristain’s cinematography. (AG) 105 min.

Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt

Step Up Step Up This teen chick flick is so perfectly calculated it wouldn’t be a surprise if every ‘i’ in the screenplay were dotted with a little heart. The setting is one of those performing-arts high schools where the kids do nothing all day but prepare for stardom; the heroine (Jenna Dewan) is a poor little rich girl destined to be a professional ballet dancer; the hero (Channing Tatum) is a streetwise bad boy who teaches her some hiphop moves and forces her to get real. Any guy who sits through this date movie deserves to get to third base at least. (JJ) 103 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt The Story of the Weeping Camel An ethnographic drama focusing on a family of Mongolian herders in the Gobi Desert who face a crisis when one of their camels refuses to nurse its albino newborn. In Mongolian with Dutch subtitles. (JJ) 90 min. Rialto Tapas Five interlocking stories set in a Barcelona neighbourhood. By first-time directors José Corbacho and Juan Cruz. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. 94 min. Cinecenter

United 93 United 93 To the credit of British writer-director Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday), this taut, partly speculative account of the 9/11 flight that crashed in a Pennsylvania field has practically none of the exploitative melodrama one would expect from a major studio release. Greengrass takes pains to keep events believable and relatively unrhetorical,

Amsterdam Weekly

21-27 September 2006

Melkweg retrospective reveals a deeply demented master who mirrored his struggles on screen and off.

DEATH-OBSESSED DONALD X 4

By Mark Wedin The strangest thing about Donald Cammell’s 1996 suicide was not the fact that a bullet to the head didn’t kill him immediately. (He fired through his forehead instead of the roof of his mouth, which left him alive for another 45 minutes.)

Nor was it that he asked his wife for a pillow so that the carpet wouldn’t get, as he put it, ‘fucked up’ from the blood. No, no.

The strangest aspect of the entire incident was that he requested a mirror so that he could watch himself slowly dying.

For film-maker Cammell, death was an obsession—along with sex, violence,

rejecting entertainment for the sake of sober reflection, though one has to ask how edifying this is, apart from its reduction of the standard myths. (JR) 111 min. Cinema Amstelveen, Kriterion, Pathé Tuschinski

Volver Almodóvar is growing up. After provoking

the public with explicit sex and his subversive sense of humour, the Spanish director now shows us there’s more to life than (just) sex, drugs and travesty. This is a heartfelt story about the long-overdue reunion of a daughter (Penélope Cruz) and the ghost of her mother (Carmen Maura). Fans of Almodóvar’s earlier work might be disappointed that carnal pleasures have been replaced by genuine emotions, but viewers should realise that humanism was just what his films

insanity and metaphysics, to name a few. His many eccentricities shaped both his life and his films which, like his untimely end, were anything but business as usual.

Born in Edinburgh in 1934, Cammell grew up in a bohemian atmosphere and later supported himself as a portrait painter. He moved to New York City to focus on painting nudes, an occupation which helped satisfy his well-known sexual appetite. (It is often said that women found him irresistible, and he found no deterrent in exploiting that regularly.) But he needed to satisfy his creative side, and portrait painting just wasn’t doing it for

needed. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. (BS) 120 min. Cinecenter, The Movies, Pathé ArenA, Pathé Tuschinski The Wayward Cloud Tsai Ming-Liang’s film recycles its cinematic predecessors, but this time round, it offers more lavish musical numbers as well as two key additions: watermelons and hardcore sex, sometimes used in conjunction. In Mandarin with Dutch subtitles.

(JR) 112 min. Rialto The Wicker Man In this remake by director Neil LaBute the battle of the faiths has been replaced by the just-as-bloody—and even more ancient—clash between the sexes. Sheriff Edward Malus travels to the island Summerisle in search of a missing girl, but he’ll

him—even if the women were.

So, in the swinging ’60s, he moved to Paris to write screenplays, fell into the right circles, and ended up befriending, of all people, The Rolling Stones. This provided the ‘in’ for Cammell to direct his first feature, Performance, with Mick Jagger playing a lead role.

Here, Cammell created what is essentially the first sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll movie—with lots of all three elements, and a healthy dose of violence to boot.

But what was perhaps more shocking—in those days—was Cammell’s editing technique, which included flash cuts, recurrent patterns and image echoes. It would be another 30 years before these would become the norm in music videos.

Performance stars James Fox as Chas, a cold-blooded gangster on the run who ends up hiding out in the home of a reclusive rock star (guess who). The two of them engage in all sorts of drug use, bisexual behaviour and metaphysical confusion. As the film progresses, the two characters seem to merge into one physical person.

The movie became a cult legend, but Cammell was only able to complete three

get much more than he bargained for. LaBute has managed to infuse the original story with an overdose of atmosphere. Unfortunately, he forgot to include the dreadful sense of foreboding which was so immanent in its predecessor. (BS) 97 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt The Wind That Shakes the Barley A surprise winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2006, this Ken Loach drama dredges up as much controversy as you would expect from the combination of Loach and the Irish Republican Army. Even labelled as pro-IRA in some corners, it’s a simple history lesson, exploring the Republican movement’s war against occupying British forces in 1920s Ireland and the brutality of the British troops (the Black and Tans), while focusing on the personal strug-

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The studio had a hunger for more lesbian scenes.

more feature-length films. Demon Seed (1977), his most conventional and least successful project, is about a supercomputer that terrorises and impregnates its creator’s wife. White of the Eye (1987) is a study of a serial killer that again employs Cammell’s imaginative editing techniques.

Lastly there is Wild Side (1995), starring Christopher Walken (in a great performance), Anne Heche and Joan Chen. The studio—insecure about the film’s artiness—wrenched it away from Cammell and reworked it completely against his wishes; mostly they wanted more lesbian scenes between Heche and Chen. Shortly after watching his last masterpiece get exploited, Cammell shot himself. Three years later, friend and editor Frank Mazzola reedited the film according to Cammell’s wishes.

The Donald Cammell retrospective runs from 21 until 26 September at Melkweg Cinema.

gles of two brothers who put their personal lives to the side in order to join the IRA. 124 min. The Movies

Zwartboek In the closing days of World War II, a Jew-

ish cabaret artiste, Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten), watches as her hiding place is bombed and her family betrayed to the Nazis. She joins a resistance group (which meets in a morgue) but learns that no one can be trusted. For plotting, thrills and cynicism, this is Paul Verhoeven’s best work since Total Recall. It’s not subtle; those waiting for Verhoeven to make another Turks Fruit might as well give up now. But as a sexy adventure story with an excruciatingly bleak moral vision, it’s everything we could have hoped. In Dutch / English / German / Hebrew. 139 min. Het Ketelhuis, Pathé ArenA, Pathé City, Pathé De Munt, Pathé Tuschinski

24

Amsterdam Weekly

FILM TIMES Thursday 21 September until Wednesday 27 September.Times are provided by cinemas and are subject to last-minute changes.

De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, 553 5151 25 Watts/Whisky Fri, Sat 20.15/22.15 Cavia Van Hallstraat 52-I, 681 1419 Naked Lunch Thur 20.30 Spider Fri 20.30 Cinecenter Lijnbaansgracht 236, 623 6615 C.R.A.Z.Y. daily 16.00, 21.45, Sun also 11.15 Grbavica daily 16.15, 19.15 Tapas daily 19.30, 22.00, Sun also 11.00, 14.00 Va,Vis et Deviens daily 16.00, 19.00, 21.45, Sun also 11.15 Volver daily 16.00, 19.00, 22.00, Sun also 11.15 Cinema Amstelveen Plein 1960 2, Amstelveen, 547 5175 Capote Tues, Wed 20.30 Garfield 2 (NL) Wed 15.30 K3 en het IJsprinsesje Sat 13.30, Sun 12.00 Nieuwsgierig Aapje Wed 13.30 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Thur 15.00, Sat 20.30, Sun 16.15 United 93 Thur, Fri 20.30 Zoop in India Sat 15.30, Sun 14.00 Filmhuis Griffioen Uilenstede 106, Amstelveen, 444 5100 Cars Thur, Tues 19.00, 21.00, Fri 19.00, 21.30 Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400 Charlotte Forever Thur, Sun 19.30 The Dreamers Fri, Sat, Mon, Tues 21.55 De Eenzame stem van de mens Fri 17.30, Sun, Tues, Wed 21.15, Mon also 21.40 Enfant endormi, L' Mon 19.30 Equateur Thur, Sun 21.55 Figner:The End of a Silent Century Thur 21.30, Fri, Sat, Tues, Wed 19.30, Sun 16.00, 17.45, Sat, Mon, Wed also 17.30 De Grote Tovenaar daily 19.45 Je t'aime moi non plus Wed 21.55 Kung-Fu Hustle Fri 20.45 (open-air) Mongolian Ping Pong Thur-Sat, Mon, Tues 17.45 Novecento Part 1: Fri 21.15, Sun 16.15, Part 2: Sat 21.15, Wed 16.30 De Schippers van de Kameleon 2 Sun, Wed 14.00 Sjakie en de Chocoladefabriek (1971) Sun, Wed 13.45 Filmmuseum Cinerama Marnixstraat 400, 623 7814, Je t'aime moi non plus Fri 20.30 Het Ketelhuis Westergasfabriek, Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 684 0090 China Blue daily 17.15 Into Great Silence daily 17.30, 20.30, Sat, Sun also 14.00 Me and You and Everyone We Know daily 22.00 Nieuwsgierig Aapje Sat, Sun 15.15 Over the Hedge: Beesten bij de Buren Sat, Sun 13.30 Zwartboek daily 19.00, 21.45, Sat, Sun also 13.00, 16.00 KIT Tropentheater, Kleine Zaal Linnaeusstraat 2, 568 8500 Rabbit-Proof Fence Tues, Wed 20.30 Kriterion Roetersstraat 170, 623 1708 13 (Tzameti) Thur, Sat-Wed 20.00, Sat, Sun, Wed also 16.00, Fri, Sat also 0.30 Buddha's Lost Children daily 18.15, 20.15, Sat, Sun, Wed also 15.45 Gloria Sat, Sun 13.15, Mon 22.15 Machinima Bits Sat 22.00 Manhattan Short Film Festival Fri 20.00 Me and You and Everyone We Know Thur-Sat 18.00 Metal: A Headbanger's Journey Thur, Fri, Sun, Tues, Wed 22.15, Fri, Sat also 0.15 The Road to Guantanamo Sat, Sun 13.45 Sneak Preview Tues 22.00 United 93 Thur-Mon, Wed 22.00, Sun-Wed also 17.45

21-27 September 2006 Garfield 2 (NL) Sat, Sun 10.55, 12.55, 14.55 Honour of the Dragon daily 17.00, 19.25, 21.50, Thur, Fri, Mon-Wed also 12.05, 14.35 K3 en het IJsprinsesje Sat, Sun, Wed 12.20, Sat, Sun also 10.25 Lady in the Water daily 18.50, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 13.45, 16.00 Lage Raho Munnabha daily 16.15, 21.20 Little Man daily 19.20 Miami Vice daily 17.20, 20.10, 21.10, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.00, 14.45 De Mierenmepper Wed 13.30, 15.35 Monster House (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 12.15, 14.15, Sat, Sun also 10.00 My Super Ex-Girlfriend daily 12.15, 14.30, 16.45, 19.00, Thur-Mon, Wed also 21.15, Sat, Sun also 10.00 Nieuwsgierig Aapje Sat, Sun, Wed 12.10, 14.05, Sat, Sun also 10.10 Over the Hedge: Beesten bij de Buren Sat, Sun, Wed 13.20, 15.20, Sat, Sun also 11.10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest daily 14.25, 17.40, 20.50, Sat, Sun also 11.20 Pride and Prejudice Tues 13.30 See No Evil daily 19.50, 21.55, Thur-Tues also 16.35, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.10, 14.30 The Sentinel daily 14.00, 16.25, 19.00, 21.25 Sneak Preview Tues 21.15 Step Up daily 12.40, 15.00, 17.20, 19.40, 22.00, Sat, Sun also 10.15 Superman Returns (IMAX) daily 13.40, 17.10, 20.55, Sun also 10.20 Volver daily 16.00, 21.05 The Wicker Man daily 19.10, 21.40, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 13.10, 15.50 The Wild (NL) Sat 10.00 World Trade Center daily 13.15, 16.05, 18.50, 21.45, Sat, Sun also 10.30 Zoop in India Sat, Sun, Wed 13.25, Sat, Sun also 10.40 Zwartboek daily 12.25, 15.30, 18.30, 21.30 Pathé City Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-19, 623 4570 Cars (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 15.45, Sat, Sun also 12.15 Garfield 2 (NL) Sat, Sun, 13.15, 15.15 K3 en het IJsprinsesje Sat, Sun 14.00, Wed 16.10 Miami Vice daily 19.10 De Mierenmepper Wed 15.15 Monster House (NL) Sat, Sun 16.10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest daily 20.00, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 15.45 The Sentinel daily 18.50, Thur-Mon, Wed 21.20, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 15.15 Sneak Preview Tues 21.30 The Wicker Man daily 22.00, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 16.10 World Trade Center daily 16.00, 19.00, 21.40, Sat, Sun also 13.00 Zwartboek Thur, Fri, Mon-Wed 15.00, 18.00, 21.00, Sat, Sun also 12.30, 15.30, 18.30, 21.30 Pathé De Munt Vijzelstraat 15, 0900 1458 Adrift daily 14.35, 19.35, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.15 Black Book daily 13.00, 16.30, 20.00, Sat also 23.05 Brick daily 16.20, Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed also 21.40, Sat also 22.20 Fearless daily 13.40, 19.10, Sat, Sun also 11.00 Garfield 2 (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 12.25, 14.45, Sat, Sun also 10.20 Honour of the Dragon daily 18.50, 21.30, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 13.20, 16.10 K3 en het IJsprinsesje Sat, Sun, Wed 12.15, Sat, Sun also 10.15 Lady in the Water daily 13.15, 15.50, 18.35, Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed also 21.15, Sat, Sun also 10.45, Sat also 21.05, 23.35 Miami Vice daily 15.30, 21.20 De Mierenmepper Wed 12.00, 14.20, 16.45 Monster House (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 12.55, 15.15, Sat, Sun also 10.40 My Super Ex-Girlfriend Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.20, 14.40, 17.10, 19.30, 21.50, Sat 11.20, 13.40, 16.10, 18.30, 20.45, 23.05 Over the Hedge: Beesten bij de Buren Sat, Sun, Wed 12.50, Sat, Sun also 10.35 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest daily 12.45, 16.00, Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 20.30, Sat also 19.30, 22.40 See No Evil daily 18.00, 20.45, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.30, 15.15, Sat also 23.00 The Sentinel Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 19.10, 21.45, Thur, Fri, Sun-Tues also 13.10, 16.20, Sat 12.10, 14.50, 17.40, 20.15, 22.50 Step Up daily 14.10, 16.40, 18.30, 19.20, 22.00, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.50, Sat, Sun also 11.30 The Wicker Man daily 17.05, 21.55 The Wild (NL) Sat 10.00 World Trade Center Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.10, 15.10, 18.10, 21.10, Sat 11.30, 14.30, 17.30, 20.30, 23.30 Zwartboek 21

Melkweg Cinema Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 624 1777

Pathé Tuschinski Reguliersbreestraat 34, 0900 1458

Crossing the Bridge:The Sound of Istanbul Thur 21.45 Demon Seed / The Argument Thur 20.00 Donald Cammell:The Ultimate Performance Wed 20.00 La Double vie de Véronique Wed 20.00 The Kids Are Alright Mon 20.00 Performance Sat 20.00 Rize Mon 22.00 White of the Eye Tues 20.00 Wild Side Fri 20.00

Buddha's Lost Children Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 18.45, Fri-Sun, Tues, Wed also 13.00 C.R.A.Z.Y. Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 15.45, 21.15 Cinderella Man Thur, Tues 13.30 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 21.00, Fri-Mon, Wed also 14.00, Fri-Sun, Wed also 17.30 United 93 Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 21.45, Fri-Sun, Tues, Wed also 15.15 Va,Vis et Deviens Fri-Wed 12.15, Fri-Sun, Tues, Wed also 18.15 Volver daily 12.40, 15.40, 18.40, 21.40 World Trade Center daily 21.30, Fri-Wed also 12.30, 15.30, 18.30 Zwartboek daily 17.00, 20.30, Fri-Wed also 13.30

The Movies Haarlemmerdijk 159-165, 638 6016 Brick daily 21.30, Fri, Sat also 0.00 Capote Fri, Sat 0.20 Cars (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 14.30 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Thur, Fri, Sat 16.45, Sun-Tues 19.15, Fri, Sat also 0.15 The Lost City daily 21.45, Sun-Wed also 16.45, Sun also 12.15 Marie-Antoinette Thur-Sat, Wed 19.15 Monster House (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 14.15 Over the Hedge: Beesten bij de Buren Sat, Sun, Wed 15.00 Volver daily 17.15, 19.45, 22.15, Sat, Sun, Wed also 14.45, Sun also 12.30, Fri, Sat also 0.30 The Wind That Shakes the Barley daily 16.30, 19.00, Sun also 11.45 World Trade Center daily 17.00, 19.30, 22.00 OT301 Overtoom 301, 779 4913

Rialto Ceintuurbaan 338, 676 8700 13 (Tzameti) Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 19.45, 21.45, Fri, Sun, Wed also 15.30, Sun also 13.15 Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud Sun 11.00 Behind the Sun/Madame Satã Sat 14.15/16.00 The Cave of the Yellow Dog Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 17.45 Grbavica Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 18.00, 20.00, 22.00, Sat 13.15, Sun also 11.15 Into Great Silence Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 20.15, Fri, Sun, Wed also 15.45, Sat, Sun also 12.30 Un Matin bonne heure Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 18.45 The Story of the Weeping Camel Sun 13.30 The Wayward Cloud Fri 23.15 We Are the Champions Fri-Sun, Wed 15.15

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Tues 20.30

De Uitkijk Prinsengracht 452, 623 7460

Pathé ArenA ArenA Boulevard 600, 0900 1458

Buddha's Lost Children daily 19.15, Sun also 14.00 China Blue daily 21.30 Fateless daily 16.00

Adrift daily 18.40, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 13.35 Cars (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 13.05, 15.50, Sat, Sun also 10.35

21-27 September 2006

Amsterdam Weekly

Alchemy in the bakery Bakkerij Mediterranee Haarlemmerdijk 184, 620 3550 Open Daily 08.00-18.00 Cash On a busy spot busy spot across the road from The Movies on Haarlemmerdijk, the site where Bakkerij Mediterranee is located has been in use for this same purpose for over a hundred years, and will no doubt continue so for the next hundred.

Unless, that is, Hans Brinker loses control of the dyke, which would soggy out the pastries no end. But, then again, maybe we could escape the floods by binding together these lighter-than-air confections, and float to safety.

Now, before you send the bus to collect the gaga Glutton, you have to taste the croissants baked in this place. They are the best in town.

They are hand-made, in the traditional way— over a thousand of them a day. Not by machine, please note, but by skilled bakers. The dough is rolled out by hand: the fingers contain the magic golden touch for blending flour and butter to create marvels.

Then it’s a question of time: first letting the dough rest, then rise as impressively as the Montgolfiers pulling an ooh and aah at jaded Versailles with their hot air balloon.

When you walk in to Mediterranee, your eyes are smitten by the ‘friendship wall’, tiled with photos of long-time friends and customers.

They are as numerous as the delicious baked articles that diminish as quickly as dew in the dessert— I mean desert. Trays that slide in full of pain au chocolat, croissants, all feather-light.

THE UNDERCOVER GLUTTON The gents behind the counter are attending hungry customers. Mini pizzas slide into the oven, as pastries filled with tuna or spinach and cheese slide out.

Trays that leave empty, to go back to the kitchen for refilling.

Everyone wins here: whatever you order, you won’t be disappointed. The daily clients

trundle in to glower over the newspapers, slurp coffee and chat before or after shopping, a timehonoured routine.

The gents behind the counter have no time

25

to sit down and join their loyal customers for a chinwag, however. They are constantly busy, attending to hungry customers lured in by their snuffling noses.

Mini pizzas slide into the oven, as pastries filled with tuna or spinach and cheese slide out. And everything is halal here, so if you hanker after a chunk of oink, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

Mahommet, the current owner, is a warm, genial man who has everything under control, in particular the high quality and standards of the products he sells. His customers love him.

Your Glutton went for the croissants: buttery, sweetish in flavour, a crisp outer layer concealed a melting inner-texture that makes an exemplary addition to any breakfast. They’re a must at just 70 cents each.

Still not satisfied, the Glutton moved in on some dainty North African cookies of four different types and shapes. One crescent-shaped goody filled with crushed almonds and a hint of rosewater—not sweet, but lovely, nevertheless.

A mini-cupcake with crushed roasted peanuts and sesame seeds in a ball with caramel—or was it light coffee?—icing. Great.

Then a sweet triangle of ground almonds wrapped in gossamer filo pastry, very refined.

Then a pinched disc with a couple of nuts poking out from either side. Delicious. I shall have them flown in daily when I become the Caliph of New York.

My taste buds got in a tizzy over gooey lemon tartlet with a crusty biscuit base that needed fork and teaspoon to eat. The rice pudding tarts were a creamy pleasure, too.

What? Did you eat that all in one sitting?

Glutton hangs his head, pretending to be shamed. Then he burps loudly, which thankfully is interpreted as a sign of genteel politeness in other cultures.

Amsterdam Weekly

26

WEEKLY CLASSIFIEDS Ads are free, space permitting. They will be posted both to the paper and online. Guaranteed placement is available for a small fee; see our website for details. Ads may be published in English, het Nederlands or whatever language is best for you to communicate your message. How to submit an ad: via our website at www.amsterdamweekly.nl, by fax at 020 620 1666 or post to Amsterdam Weekly, De Ruyterkade 106, 1011 AB Amsterdam. Deadline: Monday at 12.00, the week of publication.

AD OF THE WEEK TANTRIC MASSAGEFor curious men open to experience electricity in their bodies through sexual energy. 1.5-hr session for €50 either in my place or at yours. Call 06 2022 4973 and ask for Francisco or email f27036@hotmail.com.

HOUSING OFFERED NICE ROOM for rent, temporarily, with balcony in A’dam Zuid, De Pijp. Call 06 4465 8641.

APT TO LET IN NOORDfor month Oct. Spacious and light, only 5 min from ferry, furnished and all facilities, internet connection available. Only quiet reliable person/couple. Rent

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TEMPORARY APT to rent in West/Baarsjes. Tiny two-room furnished apt (45m2) to rent for Nov & Dec (€500/mth).

Email gloss@raketnet.nl.

WESTERMARKT, 1 BDRM Newly renovated, nicely furnished, 85m2 apt avail from mid-Oct to Apr. Beautiful views, 4th floor with lift. All new appliances, 2 flat screen cable TVs, ADSL, washing machine, dishwasher, printer & copier. Complete bthrm, separate toilet, fireplace. €1650/mth, 2 month min. Email NFabric737@aol.com.

HOUSING WANTED APT WANTEDProfessional cou-

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STUDIO WANTED Help! French journalist, 33, single, looking for studio in any area in A’dam from 1 Oct. My budget is €550/mth incl. Can be a ‘tijdelijk’ property. jeromeherve@hotmail.com.

NEED APT/STUDIO to rent. Hi, I’m a young Australian man looking for small apt or studio to rent in A’dam. I can afford to pay-up to €500/mth incl. I like the areas of Westerpark, Centrum, De Pijp or Oud-Zuid. Contact Shane on 06 1512 2795 or email mobileshane@hotmail.com. Dank U! 2 BDRM APT WANTEDMinimum 50m2 and central. A Swedish/Dutch working couple. Max €900/mth incl. Contact Marie on m_innie@hotmail.com or 06 4402 1301.

ROOM WANTEDAussie traveller seeks room to rent until the 28 Oct. Preferably in Oud West or anywhere near the centre. Call Adrian on 06 2742 8847 or email adrianscaduto@hotmail.com.

APT WANTED around A’dam Center (i.e. De Baarsjes, Oud West, Vondelpark, Zuid, De Pijp) for a single expat working in a Dutch multinational company.

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Email savas_simatos@hotmail.com.

APT WANTED Clean, young, Dutch-Portuguese couple seeks a cozy little apt for up to €700..

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SHORT-TERM APT wanted for 6 weeks from 17 Sept for professional American guy moving into the city for work. Please contact kbell75@gmail.com if you can help.

HOUSING TO SHARE STUDIO SHARE I’m a cool guy (31 y.o. smoker) looking for cool guy to share nice furnished studio in A’dam centre. €300/mth from 1 Oct. Call 06 2204 8845.

STUDIO/ROOM WANTED25 y.o. student, 4th year Conservatorium van A’dam looking for studio apt or apt to share. €400/mth

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ROOMMATE WANTED Unfurnished bedroom for €250/mth.

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LOOKING TO SHAREYoung, working student will be more than happy to share facilities with you! I’m easy-going, clean and looking to move in the beginning of Oct. Call me on 06 2675 8745.

HAARLEMMERMEER SHARE 2 jonge mensen uit California zoeken een 3de huisgenoot die boven de 25 jaar is. (Wij snakken om beter nederlands te spreken.) Jij krijgt jouw eigen kamer in ons rijtjeshuis in Hoofddorp. Roken (mag) allen buiten.

Huurprijs is €500 per maand.

Email paulhp2000@yahoo.com voor meer informatie.

OTHER SPACES LOOKING FOR OFFICE Temporary office space needed. Preferably in Oud West for small culturally-oriented business. Share is OK if space is suitable. Write info@danshuis.nl or call 06 5424 2984.

WORK OFFERED NIGHT RECEPTIONIST Looking for a night receptionist for a 2star hotel in A’dam Center.

Please apply or contact 428 1618/info@oranjetulp.nl.

UNDUTCHABLES A'DAMTourist agents all languages; Internal Communication Manager

21-27 September 2006 English; Flemish/Dutch sales; English sales; Inside sales French; Swedish Accounts Payable. Please send your CV to Amsterdam@undutchables.nl or check www.undutchables.nl.

colourful little home furnishings store. Many nice home accessories for yourself or for a gift.

Opposites Attract, Marnixstraat 65D, 612 2605, Open Tue & Thu–Sun.

FRENCH / SCANDANAVIAN SPEAKERS? ARTO Professionals looking for commercial outbound call agents who are native French or Scandanavian speakers. Job with great potential at international sales organisation! Please call 5317900, come

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SNOWBOARD Ride 158 snowboard with Preston bindings (for soft boots). Very well-maintained, perfect for beginners and complete with board bag. €150 ONO. Call Paul on 06 4678 1498.

TELESALES MSI-ACI looks for native English for lead generation in UK. Good salary. Send your CV to callcenter@msiaci.com or call 715 9500.

WORK WANTED ANY WORK WANTED English graduate, male, seeks part- or full-time work here in A’dam.

Email jaymail_2000@ yahoo.com.

PART-TIME WORK Danish girl, 23 y.o. studying beeds part-time job as soon as possible! Give me a call on 06 1616 5935 or email cecilie.otzen@ gmail.com.

BABYSITTER/CLEANER Young and vibrant 22 y.o. looking for work as babysitter/cleaner. Consider myself a hard worker with excellent referrences. Speaks Dutch as well as English with First Aid course. Contact me at lie_rad@hotmail.com.

FOR SALE COLOURFUL HOME FURNISHINGS Recently opened bright &

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SERVICES BEST MOVINGSERVICE IN TOWN Driver with van (10m3) or truck (40m3) available. Plus extra moving men, hoisting rope and elevator. Any combinations possible. Call Taco on 06 4486 4390, email info@vrachttaxi.com or check out www.vrachttaxi.com.

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SEWING LESSONS Got a machine and haven’t quite fig-

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FRED'S PET CARE Do you need someone to take care of your pets? Friendly dog walker with references. Available from7.0020.00. Reasonable rates. Just call Fred on 06 4994 7980.

ENGLISH MAN WITH VAN can help with removals big or small, in or outside of country. Reasonable rates, quick service.

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HEALTH & WELLNESS PERSONAL COACHINGSlender You Relaxation for body and mind. Fine-tune your conditioning and maximise your figure. Personal coaching for people with medical or health issues.

1 hour Slender You = 7 hours traditional work out! Slender

Amsterdam Weekly

21-27 September 2006 You is located on Heverleestraat 1. Call 669 6641 for more info.

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Restore your natural breathing mechanism. Lessons by qualified teacher.

Check www.bodyandmind-at.nl, call 676 5215 or email bodyandmind@planet.nl.

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For free session, email info@thewatersfine.org or visit www.thewatersfine.org. Come on in, the water’s fine!

NATURAL HEALINGMedical Practice Wassenaar for Energy-therapy, Hypno-therapy and Medical Herbal Treatment. Works for all physical and mental problems and illnesses. For information and appointment contact Bernard Trip on (070) 302 0451 or mob. 06 28651610. Also courses and workshops in personal development.

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Sagar: 06 4626 5412.

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Good references available. Call now! Daco: 06 4275 6045.

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NEED HELP WITH YOUR MAC? Mac lover helps you with basic setups, minor trouble shooting,

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Help with purchasing the right MAC, call Sagar at 779 1926.

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Clothing optional!

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bindu.org, 320 9585.

THAI MASSAGE www.timeforthaimassage.com.

PAINTING CLASSES by professional artist, various techniques, all styles. For info contact 681 3067/joneiselin@hetnet.nl.

COURSES CAPOEIRA lessons with ‘grupo Balança’ in A’dam! Mon/Wed 20.00-22.00 and Sat 15.0017.00. Andreas Schelfhoutstraat 54 (Surinameplein) 06 2810 8800/www. balanca.nl.

INTRO TO TANTRABe fully alive!

You are invited to join us for an experience that will change your relationship to sex and spirit forever! In this workshop you will learn Tantric techniques to open your body, heart & soul to the natural flow of sexual energy.

De Roos Centrum. www.chandrabindu.org. 320 9585.

TANTRA RETREAT Ecstasy of the heart. When you love, love completely. Love gives nothing less thaneverything.Inyourlovemaking, be total. Love making has no wallsorbarriers,nohidingplaces.

Your loving holds within it your greatest potential, the promise of awakening. www.chandra-

QIGONG-CHI KUNG Feel more grounded, centered, relaxed, energetic. It’s possible with qigong/chi kung. Courses & free openlessonsin3locations.Small groups. Playful, undogmatic, open approach. Info: 770 1063, www.chi-kung-training.com.

PIANO LESSONS Piano studio Groenburgwal. Husband and wife team, Dutch/American, have openings in their teaching studio.10 years experience teaching piano to expatriat families at the American School in The Hague. All ages and levels welcome. Call 624 0602.

INTUITIVE & CREATIVECareer & Intuition 3 day; Clairvoyance Training 8-evenings; Workshop Love & Fear; Starts 21,27, 29 Oct. Free Intro evening. Info: careerandintuition@ hotmail.com.

HYPNOSIS WORKSHOPPersonal development workshop 23, 24 Sep. How do we create reality?

How can we be in control of the process of creation? What is hypnosis? How can I master my emotions and create the life I choose? For more information, please visit www.aurora-holistic-center.nl/workshps/metahypnosnl.htm.

LEARNTAICHIforbalanceinbody, mind & spirit, for health and relaxation &/or as training for selfdefense. Jacob Obrechtstraat.

Free introduction lesson. See www.taiyang.nlorcall6230835.

LANGUAGES DUTCH YOUR WAY!Experienced teacher, offering tailor-made Dutch lessons to individuals & groups at all levels. Positive teaching, personal program, flexible hours, only €15/hr. Contact 061730 4465 or carla_geenen@yahoo.com.

PRIVATE ENGLISH lessons for all purposes by qualified teacher with university teaching expe-

EXCELLENT DUTCH LESSONS Improve conversation or for professional purposes or studies, NT2, indiv lessons, €15/hr and intense courses and online lessons/online min intensive: 15 hrs = €187.50. Adults & children. http://home.tiscali.nl/stylusphant/indexdutch.html, 06 3612 2870, exellentdutch@hotmail.com.

5 FRIDAYS UNIQUE DUTCH course. Easy to schedule. Start 29 Sept from 13.00-16.00 hr. €310. Enjoy quality in language courses. Jump into natural Dutch at AcquestDutch, 1 stop from Leidseplein. 624 9745 or school@acquestdutch.com.

SPANISH COURSES How do I become Don Juan in Spain?

Joost Weet Het! Organises Spanish courses for beginners and advanced. Fun classes and not expensive!Qualifiednativeteacher. Start 21 Aug, duration 8 wks, 2 times per week, 2 hours. Price: €7.50 per hour. Call 420 8146 or visit us at www.joostweethet.nl.

INTENSIVE DUTCH COURSES are not only for summertime.

At Joost Weet Het! The sun always shines! Our new intensive courses start18 Sept. Classes 4 x 4 hours per week, 2, 3 or 4 weeks course. €490 for 4 weeks. All levels. Call 420 8146

or visit us at www.joostweethet.nl. Email info@aprenderholandes.nl.

LANGUAGE COACH Would speaking Dutch make you feel better? Call 625 3231 or go to www.talencoach.com.

PERSONALS M4M Reliable, smart, clean, sexy Englishman. Need a friend for an evening out? Or just to help you to relax a bit? Very professional & discreet. Mobile with car. Contact me for rates. blackout0628645760@hotmail.co.uk.

LOOKING FOR A LADYNice gentelman from A’dam, will be 55 on 30 Sept, and would like to meet a sincere lady for a friendship relation and maybe more...

I’m 168 cm tall, 70 kg, nonsmoker, with sense of humor, romantic. It’s not good being alone... Call me on 06 218 95842 or email si-si@37.com.

ANNOUNCEMENTS OLD BLUE JEANS Help! Starving artist needs your old blue jeans for art project. Any condition/size. Call 06 3380 9100.

WOMEN'S CLUBVery open and informal women’s club invites new members. If you enjoy going to the theatre, restaurants, films, shows etc, with good company and are over 40 years of age, please contact Kathryn at ksedman@gmail.com.

2 KOOKS TIX WANTED I want to buy 2 tickets for the Kooks Concert at the Paradiso in Nov. cecilie.otzen@gmail.com.