Amsterdam Weekly: Vol 4 Issue 16, 19-25 April 2007

Volume 4, Issue 16

19 - 25 APRIL 2007

The Dining Issue

Now with natural flavour enhancers

FREE

www.amsterdamweekly.nl

A belly bond is born:

Johannes van Dam meets the Undercover Glutton page 6 The world of Food Center Amsterdam page 4 The wรถrst is yet to come page 4 Edible weeds of De Bijlmer page 5 MUSIC: Han Bennink, master drummer in fluxus p. 12 / FILM: The labyrinth that is Fantastic Film Festival p. 21

Short List . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Music/Clubs . . . . . . . . .13 Gay & Lesbian . . . . . . . .15 Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Dining . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Classifieds/Comics . . .25

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ATTACHMENTS In this issue Dining. It’s foodamental stuff—right up there with sex. For Johannes van Dam, it’s a living—eating, that is, not the other thing—while for the Undercover Glutton, it’s, well... more of a calling. Perhaps these titans of the table will be inspired to review two new restaurants opening this week.

Restaurant Freud, on Spaarndammerstraat, promises ‘insanely tasty food’ prepared and served by, yes, former psychiatric patients. Meanwhile, across town in a round chapel, As flaunts conscious eating habits by offering dishes defined by season and temperature. With pigs, chickens and veg raised by their own hands, they promise a ‘return to nature’. But really, a true return to nature means packing a picnic and picking out one of the city’s erogenous zones. The gemeente has kindly published Hier werden we verliefd, a book that charts Amsterdam’s hot spots for love.

Vondelpark goes beyond code red—it glows purple with passion. Now there’s a tip. Bon appétit and bless those tax dollars!

On the cover BATTLE OF THE BELLIES Photo by Victor Bergen-Henegouwen www.bergen-henegouwen.com

Next week Queen’s Day

Letters Got an opinion? We want to hear it. inbox@amsterdamweekly.nl

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 Classifieds: classifieds@amsterdamweekly.nl PUBLISHER Todd Savage EDITOR Steve Korver ASSISTANT EDITOR Kim Renfrew AGENDA EDITOR Steven McCarron FILM EDITOR Julie Phillips PROOFREADER Karina Hof EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Sarah Gehrke ART DIRECTOR Bas Morsch PRODUCTION MANAGER Vela Arbutina PRODUCTION DESIGNERS Mattijs Arts, Rogier Charles SALES ASSOCIATES Reed van Brunschot, Simone Klomp, Carolina Salazar OPERATIONS MANAGER Monique Gruter OPERATIONS ASSISTANT Desislava Pentcheva DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Patrick van der Klugt DISTRIBUTION/MARKETING INTERN Heini Suokari FINANCIAL ADVISER Kurt Schmidt (Veresis Consulting) PRINTER Corelio Printing Amsterdam Weekly is published every week on Wednesday and is available free at locations all over Amsterdam. Subscriptions are available for €60 per six months within the Netherlands and €90 per six months within Europe. Agenda submissions are welcome, at least two weeks in advance. New contributors are invited to visit Amsterdam Weekly’s website for contributor guidelines. Contents of Amsterdam Weekly (ISSN 1872-3268) are copyright 2007 Amsterdam Weekly BV. All rights reserved.

15 DISPOSED CHEWING GUMS by Arnoud Holleman

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19-25 April 2007

SIMON WALD-LASOWSKI

AROUND TOWN

Welcome to Food Valley Behind the belt of ‘de buik van Amsterdam’.

By Jonathan Maas Early Monday morning, and rain is pouring down and a strong wind blowing.

Under pitch-dark skies, the gate to the site of Food Center Amsterdam on Jan van Galenstraat opens. Right here is where tonight’s dinner starts.

The FCA is the city’s main wholesale market. It began in 1934, when a market for potatoes, vegetables and fruit was founded to centralise food distribution.

At that time—not unlike now—retail and delivery traffic was getting out of hand. In the following years, the market grew bigger and bigger. Wholesale traders began

Juicy fruit.

setting up businesses onsite. By 1954, the De Ruyterkade fish auction moved in, to be joined 30 years later by an abattoir.

Today, the FCA is the place where retailers in Amsterdam and surroundings buy everything from strawberries to steak.

Pallets with apples and oranges from delivery vans are being loaded in front C van der Meij and CK Korkmaz Fruit. It’s just after 7 a.m. now, the centre’s busiest time. Loaded trolleys are pushed pell-mell and two guys are on the go with a waterstofzuiger on the roof of a shop.

Marktmeester Aloys Wiegerinck walks around the site. He’s been in the job for 18 years. ‘I make sure people don’t pile their stuff on the carriageways,’ he says. ‘Sometimes people even dump washing machines here: environmental offences. They get fined for that.’

Wiegerinck is assisted by two colleagues and around 24 cameras, overseeing this 26-hectare site that contains 100 wholesalers and is staffed by about 2,000 employees. It’s the markt-

meester’s job to see that everyone follows the rules. The 30k/h speed limit, for example. ‘There are little trucks driving around at fifteen kilometres per hour,’ says Wiegerinck. ‘If they get between two big ones driving at seventy, we have a situation. We aren’t rigid, though. If we see people driving at forty kilometres an hour, we tell them off, but we don’t fine them right away. Our relationship with the wholesale dealers is pretty good.’

Another thing that Wiegerinck and his colleagues ensure is that are no individual shoppers filling up grocery bags on the cheap. ‘The Center is not for consumers—it’s to protect retailers. If people buy their meat here it’s disadvantageous for butchers. And believe me, people do try to sneak in.’

The wind blows down a pile of crates.

Frans van der Meij runs out of his shop to clean up the mess. Why does he run his business from the centre? ‘We’ve been here for years. All of my customers are in this neighbourhood, they know how to find me.’ But he’s also aware of the location’s disadvantages, too: ‘There are always traffic jams on the ring road— there are suppliers who don’t want to deliver here anymore. It takes suppliers from Italy twelve hours to reach me; half the journey is the last bit, in Holland.

That’s madness,’ Van der Meij says.

The FCA is like a bit like a meubelboulevard for food, he explains, and competition is fierce. Van der Meij watches the prices of his neighbours closely, but if they lower the price of apples he doesn’t necessarily do the same. ‘We distinguish ourselves by our quality.’

Jan Brouwer of Arie Brouwer Fruithandel is happy to be near rivals: ‘You can get everything here, from meat to bread. That’s good for our customers: the restaurants, catering industry and market traders. They can do all their buying within an hour. If I ran my business alone on an industrial site, I wouldn’t get half the customers I have now.’

Although it’s pretty quiet now—8 a.m.—rush hour is normally between 7.30 a.m. and 10 a.m., as most customers visit before they open up their shops and market stalls. ‘I got here at 4.30,’ says Brouwer, cheerily and without so much as a dark circle under his eyes. ‘I’m used to the early hours—I’ve been doing it for fifteen years.’

Why aren’t there many customers right now? ‘On Monday mornings lots of shops are closed,’ Wiegerinck explains.

‘Wholesale dealers who deliver to the retailers don’t come here then. Another thing is that markets depend on the weather. With a wind-force seven, people don’t go to the market for fun, and traders also don’t want to see their stalls blown away.’

Wiegerinck heads away from the attractive piles of fresh fruits and vegetables towards the abattoir, passing containers of offal. A sickly smell comes from stacks of animal skins, piled up like carpets at IKEA. Rain washes blood from the skins across the grey pavement. Most of the abattoir’s windows are blocked out, bar a couple. Through one of them, two men can be seen plucking at dead

chickens. In the room next door, a rabbit is being gutted.

The FCA has an annual turnover of nearly 1.5 billion euro, and it’s meat that’s responsible for most of the money: unsurprising, considering the abattoir supplies Vroegop, where Dirk van den Broek gets its meat.

It’s early afternoon now. The fruit and grocery shops are closing down, while at De Kweker, a kind of Makro-style megastore, retailers start filling up their shopping trolleys. It’s never really quiet at the centre. Within a few hours, the gate will close to the retailers, but the supply chain of everything that ends up in the stomach of Amsterdammers is a 24/7 business. Just like any metropolis, this food city never sleeps. www.foodcenter.nl

Sausage in the spotlight World’s worst artist gets reflective.

By Floris Dogterom ‘To cause total confusion is my goal, and the sausage is my means,’ says artist Fredie Beckmans, surrounded by his own paintings of sausages, hanging on the walls at Star Bikes Café on De Ruyterkade. Beckmans is president of the Nederlandse Worstclub and, as such, organises public meetings during which he invites people to become club members. What they get in return remains unclear. ‘Half of the visitors think they are attending a meeting like that of any other club and the other half sees it as an art event,’ says Beckmans. ‘It’s a clash of expectations, with confusion as a result.’

The sausage has played a part in Beckmans’ life since the days he was a cooking performance world champion.

He would, for instance, cook against another chef in a boxing ring while reciting poetry and ‘shouting things’, as he puts it. ‘I would also hang sausage paintings on the wall of the venue, the same kind you see here. I’d sell them for twenty-five euro a piece, fifty euro each for two and a hundred euro each for three.

Three are more expensive because in that case I add a boredom surcharge—for me, that is, because I have to make new paintings. Anyway, I’d rather sell something than make money.’ Beckmans laughs out loud while stamping his feet.

To Beckmans, the sausage is a metaphor for everything ugly, vulgar and unhealthy. He explains: ‘In his Aesthetik des Haesslichen [‘The aesthetics of ugliness’], philosopher Karl Rosenkranz says that for centuries art has focused on beauty, while there should also be room for ugliness. Ugliness might even be something that meets appreciation. The

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Eat your weeds Artists show what’s sprouting in De Bijlmer.

SIMON WALD-LASOWSKI

By Mark Wedin

same goes for the sausage. The sausage is considered to be something unhealthy— by the way, I am not against healthy food,’ Beckmans chuckles. ‘When people ask me why I make such a fuss about the sausage, I tell them I want to put the sausage back in the art spotlight, where it belongs.’

And Beckmans receives other remarks, too. ‘People say: “Fredie, don’t you know that sausages have sexual connotations on the gay scene?” I say: “Are you being serious?” Or they ask me if I know that the Dutch word worst has a different meaning in English. To which I reply “No, really?”’ There’s no end to Beckmans’ chuckling. He obviously loves taking the piss.

On a much more serious note, however, Beckmans received this year’s essay prize from esteemed literary-political magazine Hollands Maandblad for ‘Worstlust’ [‘sausage craving’], a work which sees Beckmans travel through Germany combining trivia on sausages with German philosophers. Beckmans states that, on a deeper level, in the essay he tries to connect sense with nonsense. He

Best of times, sausage of times.

says: ‘The other day I was referred to as artist-cum-philosopher. That made me really proud. And more and more requests for lectures are coming in from philosophy students. Typically, in those lectures I look for answers, try to explain phenomena. But I beat around the bush.

To give an example: I was asked to do a lecture on sadomasochism. But in the end, the whole thing was about me. My philosophical texts and my art are interchangeable.’

Sitting at Star Bikes Café, he takes out a 4-CD package from the Amsterdam record label Carcassettes. On one CD, by Worstclub, he sings. The band aim at ‘unlocking culinary music through redefining the sausage.’ Linda, who works at the café, puts on the CD at Beckmans’ request, and he loudly sings along.

‘Veeeeeeeeeeet! “Vet” is such a nice word to sing,’ he declares.

Openbare Worstclub meeting, De Boekenmarkt op het Spui, 20 April, 15.00, www.worstclub.nl

‘We found rucola. It’s real rucola! I think I’m going to make a salad.’ Artists Marjolijn Dijkman and Aletta de Jong are busy all week looking for edible weeds, plants and herbs growing in De Bijlmer. In the first hour alone, they had already found and labelled over 12 different, naturally occurring varieties. They’re part of The Go-Between, an exhibition in De Bijlmer that’s been going all month, and involves 11 artists—many of them flown in from different parts of the globe—creating art that interacts with the highly fluctuating nature of the neighbourhood and its residents. Dijkman and De Jong’s project, entitled ‘City Food’, has them wandering the area with a couple of books on edible plants and talking to anyone that walks by.

‘We want to raise awareness of how we’re living,’ says Dijkman. ‘Everyone is consuming from the supermarket, and not aware of what’s around them. You always see these plants labelled in botanical gardens or in a very scientific setting, but not in a normal public area.’

‘It’s kind of hard to believe you can eat this,’ adds De Jong. ‘But I heard that the soil in De Bijlmer is actually very good. When they first built here, they brought in very high-quality soil. In the rest of the Netherlands they advise strongly against eating wild plants, but here they might be more edible. You can also question how healthy what you buy in the shops is. Here, maybe a dog peed, but at least there’s no added chemicals.’

‘And there’s not much pollution,’ notes Dijkman. ‘The roads are well separated from the living areas. Maybe we’ll find paradise in De Bijlmer.’

Just then, a stocky Surinamese resident walks past and they ask if he knows

of any edible plants nearby. He happily obliges, leading them to a few long strands of leaves growing out of a patch of grass. ‘This is very good in salad,’ he smiles.

They insert a ‘City Food’ label into the soil and thank him. ‘People who come from outside the Netherlands seem to be more familiar with which plants you can eat,’ says Dijkman.

‘And they’re very friendly here,’ adds De Jong. ‘De Bijlmer has this bad reputation, but we’ve seen nothing but smiles and respect.’ Then a little girl rides by on her tricycle and advises them not to get too close to the water. ‘It’s easy to fall in,’ she warns, before pedalling off.

The two artists will continue labelling everything they find around De Bijlmer until 22 April. The exhibition’s headquarters reside in Florijn 42, where artists and curators are bustling about, serving food, screening films and provoking conversation—as artists tend to do.

‘We liked the idea of producing an active encounter,’ explains curator Camila Marambio, ‘not just coming in and plopping down art, as usually happens in galleries. And lots of residents are coming. They see that they’re welcome and they bring their friends the next day.’

Daragh Reeves, another artist involved in the project, is re-filming the new Mark Wahlberg movie, Shooter, currently showing at De Bijlmer’s Pathé Cinema. He placed an open casting call to all residents, and is substituting the film’s locations for local areas, while using the same script.

When Reeves’ film screens on Sunday, the viewers may be munching on leaves of fresh dandelions (AKA paardenbloemen) picked by Dijkman and De Jong. The young leaves and unopened buds of the plant are surprisingly full of vitamins, and provide more iron than spinach—not to mention that they taste better than you’d expect. Though De Jong does admit: ‘I’m actually getting a bit hungry, but I don’t think I want to eat one.’

The Go-Between, until 22 April, Florijn 42, www.deappeljuice.com

Good enough for Popeye.

MARK WEDIN

19-25 April 2007

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Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007

BELLY BONDING ëITH GLUTTON ±ND ¥ ±N D±è

BY STEVE KORVER ILLUSTRATIONS BY YVO SPREY

In one corner: Johannes van Dam,Het Parool’s food critic,who puts fear into the hearts of the city’s restaurateurs—he can make them,he can break them.In the other corner: Amsterdam Weekly’s Undercover Glutton—he still gets to eat in peace.We have brought them together to discuss their mutual love—nay,uncontrollable passion—for food.It turns out they have a lot in common besides diabetes.Whenever one mentioned a particular dish,the other would kindly provide a soundtrack of salivation and pleasurable gekreun—a near-constant backdrop of gesmekkle.It was really quite sweet.The interview took place in one of Van Dam’s favourite haunts,Café Luxembourg on Spui.

When Van Dam enters,he asks:‘So you want to talk about my food passion?’

He pats his belly:‘Well,it’s only growing by the day.’The Undercover Glutton pats his belly in response.A bond is born.

19-25 April 2007

Amsterdam Weekly

THE BIRé OF A PAÜION What are your earliest food memories?

JvD I had a father who was interested in food and especially the taste of things. I remember, as a child I ate tomatoes on bread and poured sugar over it [UG moans]. Then someone suggested trying salt, so I did and that was good, too.

Another memory is from when I was six or seven; my mother asked me to make her some tea, and I decided to add a lot of sugar to make it real tasty even though I knew she didn’t use it. I thought she did that out of thrift or something. She spat it out, but then explained that was because she wasn’t used to it. So I began doing without sugar in my tea for two weeks, thinking I would enjoy the sugar even more afterwards. But then I spat it out as well! I learned then that taste is very much about what you’re used to.

UG My memory is almost the same but I never stopped with sugar! I was born premature. I didn’t want to eat, and my father fed me sugar water. Ever since, I’ve had a passion for sweet things. My mother would make brown bread-andbutter sandwiches with tomatoes and salt and pepper, and sprinkle sugar over it. My father also had a food column back then, in South Africa, along with a few restaurants. So we were brought up with good food. I just loved to eat. I had a Russian grandmother who made the best pancakes in the world... Oh, and her fried fillets of sole.

So both your parents were good cooks?

UG Yes...

JvD Not at all! My mother is still alive, and she is still not. My father tried. On weekends and holidays he’d try something fancy from a very fat cookbook, but he almost always failed. I started cooking Sunday brunch for the family when I was seven or eight. Later, I cooked for my fellow students, and I’ve never stopped. I’m quite good, but I didn’t get it from my parents.

If you were a dish what dish would you be?

JvD I am a dish! They tell me so. I would be me.

UG You are what you eat after all... If I was served as a dish I would feed a lot of people. The meat would be tender and rich from all the nice things I have eaten.

I think a roast...

JvD You are a roast. You are as big as me!

UG You know, my brother is a film caterer. He also has the passion. In his will he wants to be cremated, but his last wish is to be marinated and stuffed—the whole works. His wife freaked out. I asked him if he was serious and he said yes. Sure, you need a bit of a perverse sense of humour, but after all, eating is a communal thing.

That’s what I believe anyway.

JvD I would be a simple peasant dish, with honest ingredients. Not many of them... something with potatoes, onions and cheese.

UG Actually, I would be a terrine.

JvD Why’s that?

UG Because I adore terrine. I really do. I really, really do.

JvD I make marvellous terrine.

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[Communal drool session commences.]

JvD I prefer salted anchovies, which I put in white wine or beer to desalinate a little bit—not too much. Then you dry them, put on parsley and a lot of olive oil. Then the hard-boiled eggs—with bread or toast. Ahhh.

[More communal dribbling.]

éE TRICKS OF éE TR±DE

Bread + tomato + sugar = childhood.

Any other passions besides food and cooking?

UG Theatre. And people. Writing. Movies.

Nature. I love watching nature programmes. It’s kind of odd, but it’s as if nature provides a bounty for the table. If I’m on a train, for example, and we’re passing sheep, I’m dividing them up into different dishes. Or cows, into burgers and roasts.

JvD Like a Dutch poet once said: I’m fine with sunsets as long as there is a good glass of jenever with it. I also love writing and I was doing that before I started to write about food. I also love comics, art, poetry and history. And I have a whole collection of books on hoaxes and conmen because it says so much about how people think.

At what point does food stop being a passion and start becoming a liability?

UG With diabetes. I have diabetes.

JvD Yes, me too. There’s also cholesterol...

UG Heart problems...

JvD I am in and out of the hospital these days. Diabetes is something we share with most of our food-reviewing colleagues. Except for that scrawny little woman who doesn’t seem to like her food but writes about it anyway...

What dish since childhood have you still not got tired of?

JvD Potato purée. It should be good potatoes, well made. But, then, it’s always marvellous. In restaurants, when it says ‘served with purée’, I go: ‘Maybe I should take that’. But lots of things: kroketten of course...

UG Bacon and eggs. Bacon, because it was against my religion. But I asked my dad who was eating some what it was like and he said ‘here’ and stuffed a mouthful in my mouth. I spent the rest of the day in

the hot African sunshine, waiting to be struck by lightning and it didn’t happen.

So then I had it everyday. The good, grilled bacon, crispy.

JvD Oh, ja. That’s good.

UG Maybe when you’re exposed to trying all these different types of food, no matter how exotic, you become jaded and want something simple.

JvD Just like me and my purée. But for we Dutch it’s more about the uitsmijter where the meat is not fried with the egg. I have a version with pastrami, which I put on the bread and put the fried egg on top so it heats the pastrami and the fat just oozes into the bread. I can tell you it’s really marvellous. The best way you can treat both egg and pastrami.

UG Where do you get your pastrami?

JvD Fred de Leeuw on Utrechtsestraat.

He makes it from the beautiful Wagyu, the Japanese fat cow. Well-smoked and welltreated. Here, they usually inject it with salt water...

UG I had pastrami in New York and had to bring back whole bags of the stuff. Isn’t it pickled beef, but half-timed pickled, then roasted and smoked?

JvD Not roasted, steamed. You salt it dry with the herbs and spices. Leave it for three or four days. Then you smoke it and steam it. But here, they just inject it with fluids.

UG Like embalming fluids...

JvD Yes, and they use lean meat. And fat is taste and succulence. It’s a pity about that, but it’s true.

UG I understand we also share a passion for boiled eggs with anchovies. When I read that in one of your books, the blood drained from my face. I like a freshly baked roll. Butter. A hard-boiled egg. And anchovies. To me that is LICKKKK. JvD Anchovies are fermented and contain a lot of natural taste enhancers. It makes you drool.

UG Really!

How did your passion become your trade?

JvD I was in journalism and suggested to a paper I start writing about food like Waverly Root did in the International Herald Tribune. My first book was based on the way he wrote his book Food. Only later did I start to review restaurants, since I was afraid that I’d be recognised and that it would make it impossible to write an objective report. But later I learned, if you have enough experience, it doesn’t matter. A bad cook will stay a bad cook no matter if you are there or not.

Same with a bad waiter. Because you aren’t judging mistakes but the level someone is working at. And a mistake is a mistake. The level always stays the same.

UG I just started two years ago. I wasn’t the first choice but...

JvD They scraped the bottom of the barrel and there you were?

UG Yes, pretty much. Well, I had been porpoising in and out of horeca for a long time. I’ve worked everywhere from a food-freezing factory to fancy digs. But I do love food. So I was given a chance and it worked out. But I’m a newcomer.

How do you prepare before going to a restaurant you’re about to review?

JvD The first thing I do is choose a restaurant. Usually, I take a kind of restaurant that I haven’t reviewed the week before. Not two Italians in a month, not two expensive ones in a row. If it’s a very specific cuisine—like this week, I did a Vietnamese—I just take out my Vietnamese cookbooks and keep them handy to check names and so on. But usually I don’t prepare very much. I used to use them more before, when I didn’t know everything like I do now [laughter]. And I always pack my own knife. A very sharp one. There were Americans in a restaurant I was eating at once. We were all eating steak and they asked me why I used my own knife. I told them: just look at your plates—they all had a red pond of liquid on them—and mine was completely dry.

My juice was still in the meat and therefore much tastier, while they ripped the meat apart. It’s very convincing.

UG I do what I call a flyby. I target the place. I go past and look at the menu and see if you’ve been there. I look at the numbers you gave and when you were there last.

JvD I find it a pity that I can’t do that.

What’s the difference in approach for you two?

JvD I always go with an assistant who has booked the table for us. He goes in first. Once, he got seated at the worst table—against the wall and not by the river—at Excelsior. Then I showed up and they panicked and wanted to put us at another table. I said it was fine, but in the

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review I recommended that readers should reserve under my name or Freddy Heineken’s. A little humour is important.

But these things should be mentioned.

My assistant and I always order two fourcourse meals so I can taste them all. You need that many to be impartial and to rule out the mistakes. I once had a cake made with bad cream. It was made by an assistant who hadn’t tasted it. But I didn’t even mention it in the review because otherwise the restaurant was perfect, and mentioning it would have made the review too negative. It was just a mistake.

It shouldn’t have happened. But it was not a mistake in the attitudes or the level they were cooking at.

UG There are many gremlins in horeca to be sure... Well, I’m different. I’m totally anonymous. And to have a private life is great—you can misbehave. But one side of me would love to have people running in fear and trembling when I walk in.

JvD [laughs] But it’s not fun. I would much prefer to be anonymous. I once even asked the make-up artist who did Van Kooten & De Bie to try to change me into someone else. But he wasn’t able to. But then there’s The New York Times’ Ruth Reichl, who wrote a book about taking on different personae to review restaurants. Anonymity is very important in New York City. There’s even prices on the heads of some reviewers—up to twenty-five thousand dollars for just a picture. But she says if she doesn’t put on a disguise the restaurateur will get his friends to sit nearby and praise the meal loudly. Well, sorry: you’re an idiot if that makes any difference to you. They can’t suddenly get a butcher with better meat. They can’t make another soup for you because there’s no time. That’s why I always take dishes that I know they had to prepare beforehand. Also dishes of different foodstuffs and techniques, so I get the full picture.

Once in a two-star restaurant, I received a mixed seafood starter and there was just so much of it. So I described it in detail so they’d have to serve the same to future customers.

They don’t do that kind of thing anymore. At 11 they gave me more than the table next to me. Even Paul Witteman, who is much more famous than me, got less—I joked to him that obviously he wasn’t famous enough. Then I went to the kitchen and saw that all the plates had this tiny amount. So I took a point away. They weren’t happy with that but if you give me something extra, I take something extra. I also hate it when the owner pushes his own wines, promoting his own tastes. I hate that. Rot op, I think—a gentleman’s translation of ‘fuck off’.

How do you deal with the pressure to be ‘right’?

JvD Ah. Well I try to be. I work very hard, so I always check everything. I do make mistakes but, now, rarely. Because I know a lot depends on it. If I write a bad review it’ll certainly hit hard, if I write a good review it’ll hit them, too. I know it’s a responsibility and I take it very seriously. I’ve been accused of being wrong a lot of times, but it’s always nonsense. It’s usually from people who don’t know anything and who are regular customers in a restaurant and don’t want to be called a moron and be told they eat shit, yet they

Amsterdam Weekly

‘It’s because Michelin keeps on advocating things like that—it sells tyres I guess.

But I’m getting tired of it.’

19-25 April 2007

we did not want to give you this dish, but you asked for it.’ Then later, he said: ‘Oh, he just came here one time and he thinks he can pass judgement.’ I had been there ten times. And he admitted it was shit and now it’s me that’s shit. Well, he’s a lying bastard—but now we’re like friends again.

UG I’ve been asked to play him in a strange movie this year. I get to cook a human being.

And that’s a dream of yours, isn’t it?

UG Yes, it is.

Steak tastes nicer with a sharpened slicer.

love to eat shit and just go back for another portion of shit. I’m telling them they eat shit—and they do.

UG I let the readers know it’s a personal observation. It’s like you learn kitchen forensics. The plate arrives in front of you.

First you leave the garnishes aside (they just take up space) and look at the actual products. Where are they from? Are they from Hanos or are they from Aldi?

Is it dangerous to get to know the culinary players in town?

JvD I have one good friend who’s a chef, but I have never reviewed his restaurant.

The rest are acquaintances. They act like friends but they aren’t real friends. Sometimes it results in a fight. Like Joop Braakhekke from Le Garage who started lying about it. Once I said: ‘This is shit.’

And he said: ‘Oh yes, it’s shit and actually

It ain’t kroket science.

So what shows a restaurant’s mettle?

JvD One thing I always take is a crème brûlée. In one way it’s a very simple dish, but it can be ruined in hundreds of ways—and usually they are ruined. It says a lot: the differences in very simple dishes like that are very obvious. I had the worst one of my life about a month ago: the cream came from a pack with clotted sugar on top, not caramelised.

And people like it, apparently. But some people are lost forever [laughter].

Potato purée can also tell a lot. But it starts with the bread: if they bring hard butter you know they just don’t have any consideration for the way we consume. Sometimes it’s even worse— you can see a layer of butter and there’s another layer under it. You can do archaeology, and see they top up the butter every time and the bottom layer is very far gone [laughter]. Once I discovered that in a very expensive restaurant which was owned by one of the big criminals connected to the one who’s now on trial. But I had to state it in the review.

Which place was this?

JvD You know I’m not one to tell. But he’s in jail now—and the cook definitely should be! There should always be a balance—between sweetness and acidity.

That’s very important. I wrote about The Dylan last week. It’s one of the most expensive places, and the cook did not know anything about the necessity of adding acidity to, for instance, fish. If you don’t, it’s flat. Just a splash of lemon juice, wine or vinegar adds tremendously to a fish dish. And then you pay seventy euros for a four-course meal and it was rubbish. It was just so sleepprovoking. He also deconstructed some dishes as well—took them apart but then didn’t put them back together again. Like a timepiece, it was all the separate elements, but it didn’t work. It happens all the time. They want to be fancy and modern. They take things from better chefs who have invested, like Ferran Adrià in Spain. He deconstructs. He invented that whole thing, and they try to imitate him and they just cannot do it. One chef took things from Adrià, changed them, and from a very clever idea made complete rubbish. And he had three stars! It’s because Michelin keeps on advocating things like that—it sells tyres I guess. But I’m getting tired of it.

UG This gentleman is a gourmet. I’m a pig. A gourmand, because I like to eat.

And sometimes I eat pure rubbish. But I like chocolate mousse. If there’s chocolate mousse on the menu, I will order it.

JvD It’s like my crème brûlée. There are about four or five ways of doing it right and hundreds of doing it wrong.

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What’s the biggest faux pas a restaurant can make?

JvD I once had spoilt liver. Liver that was so far gone that it seeped through the fork.

UG RRRGGGHHHHH!!!!

JvD Can you imagine that? It was green.

Awful. I must say the cook was fired on the day my article came out. Later, everyone thought: ‘Van Dam has such power!’

But later, I heard that the managers from the company—Krasnopolsky, a quite large company—had wanted to get rid of the cook for a year but couldn’t get permission. So they were, in fact, grateful...

UG My bane is getting served vegetables from the day before. And they bullshit me that it’s fresh.

JvD Happens all the time.

UG And second-time hashed-up potatoes—and the idea of having to pay for it!

It’s just an attitude. A lackadaisical attitude. Amsterdam restaurants need to get over that.

JvD The problem is that most Dutch accept this shit. As long as there is a ribbon around it, they’ll eat shit. I have a beautiful drawing by Yrrah, the cartoonist, where, in the background there are four or five ladies eating cakes and in the foreground, there’s the cook in the kitchen and he’s decorating the cakes by squeezing a dachshund. Terrible! That’s why a lot of restaurants can go on doing that. We have a task to prevent these kinds of...

UG Outrages!

JvD Then there’s fried potato. What they do is put a little paprika powder in the pan and a bit of fat and just mix it up with some boiled potatoes and heat it a bit, so it looks like it’s fried but it’s not all.

UG And crust is very important!

JvD There is a lot of cheating in the kitchen. There are even books that tell how you how do it. I’ll fight that to the death.

UG To the revolution!

Power—how much do you actually have? How do you deal with it?

JvD Well, it’s not my idea, but some of my colleagues—and politicians—tell me that I’m the only journalist with any real power. I can make a restaurant close or stay open. There was an Indonesian restaurant with only two or three tables... I wrote about it and then it was sold out every night. The owners had put all their money into it, and thanked me for giving them a chance at a pension.

But I take it very seriously. I’ve never cheated. Never been bought.

UG Well, I’m definitely smaller-scale.

Sometimes I do come by a place and think they need a boost and then I’ll write it—and if there’s a positive reaction, great. I found a great Turkish place, Temiz Slagerij, with grilled chicken.

Their rotisserie attracted me as if it was that grand wonder-like monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wanted to do a dance around it and let everyone know.

Ever felt the urge to start a restaurant and let others make a judgement?

UG Absolutely not.

JvD No. I’ve been offered and thought about it, but no. Also, now there are restaurants that weren’t there ten years ago that are almost the way I’d like them, so there’s less of a need. Anyway, I’m a bad employer and I’m not really an obedi-

Amsterdam Weekly

“Their rotisserie attracted me as if it was that grand wonder-like monolith from 2001; A Space Odyssey.I wanted to do a dance around it and let everyone know.”

Two food critics taste twice as sweet.

ent person. I can’t stand people who think they are much better than I am. If I had to serve them I’d send them away crying into the street. I can’t do it. But I do give advice to restaurants. Freely. But that’s it.

UG Once there was a stage when I thought I’d love something by a beach with a patio, a barbecue pit and contact with the fishermen, and a tomato patch with a few herbs growing. You’d be able to get lovely grilled fish, a delicious salad and a cup of nice wine—nothing fancy, but drinkable. With live music and dancing after dinner. Really simple. But again: no.

JvD I just reviewed a little place, Gartine on Taksteeg. They are open for breakfast, lunch, high tea, but no dinner—they close at six. They have a big garden and a greenhouse in Almere Haven where they grow all their vegetables and fruits and herbs. Everything organic. Darling couple. Simple place. I imagine it was their dream—like I had, like you had. Marvellous.

éE ±MáERD±è SCENE So what does Amsterdam have going for it?

JvD Variety and quality. Also cuisine.

Good dishes. You can get shit, of course, but it’s our task to tell people where they should go and where not to go. That’s why I detest all those newspapers and magazines that only review the good

ones. So you don’t know which ones to avoid. I always give tips on how the cooks can improve. I never only say: ‘This is niet lekker.’ I always say why.

UG I agree about variety. I was brought up in Africa with a limited amount of exposure to cuisine. And Amsterdam is a nexus point. You got your variety, quality but also your lousiness in a small village.

JvD ‘A cosmopolitan village,’ is what I always say.

What about cheap variety? You’ve got Chin-Indo-Suri but that’s it. Where’s the cheap Vietnamese?

JvD Well, that Vietnamese I just reviewed is cheap. The small pho is eight euros fifty and is enough for a meal. You can get four steamed spring rolls with shrimp for four euros. And they’re perfect.

What’s missing here?

JvD It’s changed somewhat but I do miss the French- and Belgian-style brasseries where you could get a good meal of cuisine bourgeois. Here it’s shit or very fancy—which can still be shit.

How about Flo? JvD It’s quite posh. But it comes close.

I’m very happy it’s there because it sets a standard. There’s also Côte Ouest and the French Café. It’s getting better.

How about places like Harkema and Dauphine?

JvD That’s too fancy. Just like Café Amsterdam. It’s too Dutch, which means they are skimping on everything. It looks like a French menu but it’s actually managerial. It’s not the cook but the manager

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who decides.

UG It’s a cost-effective menu.

JvD Very cost-effective. Well, all menus should be cost-effective, but the priority is that there’s enough and it’s very tasty.

But these places are just fancy. The names are fancy, the dishes, the surroundings are fancy—or modern, or whatever they are. The food remains mediocre at best.

UG I miss food courts like they have in Paris or Berlin, with a variety of meat you can buy it by the ounce. Quality stuff from all over Europe.

JvD We used to have that at De Bijenkorf, but they thought it was too expensive.

The manager who did the cheeses went to Albert Heijn. We do have little shops and markets, but no food halls. That would be a good thing. Or a market like in...

UG London...

JvD Or Barcelona. Or better supermarkets. In Belgium, the supermarkets are much better quality. But here, no.

What kind of local places do you return to time after time?

JvD You want our secret addresses? Le Petit Latin. It has a French cook preparing Provençal food. It’s really quite simple, in a cellar just around the corner.

Also Bordewijk. And a few Indonesians.

But usually, I cook myself.

UG One of my favourites is New King.

JvD Also one of mine—simple and always good. There’s a review of mine hanging on the wall.

UG Me too! I also love Tasca de Lisboa.

That does Portuguese chicken piri piri. I love to eat with my fingers, to pick up a whole grilled chicken and...

JvD Ja! UG And of course TjingTjing, but I’m biased because it’s a friend. But I think he’s good because I see what he does and he’s finicky. Everything has to be cooked to the moment.

JvD I love that. I love cooks who are finicky.

UG The vegetables begin raw and need to be cooked then, at the moment. Also potatoes—I’ve helped out grating rösti till my fingers bleed.

Most memorable Amsterfood moment?

JvD Well, the liver was very memorable.

But you want something positive don’t you? Hmm, that’s very hard. It’s like asking a parent which one of their children they prefer...

UG I’d have to choose a bit from every special place to make a composite. It’s like who’s your best friend. Your best friend is a group—a composite of all the people you love.

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SHORT LIST

Woyzeck, Thursday, Het Muziektheater

Electro rock: Aux Raus

THURSDAY19 APRIL Performance: De Hand die Vergissingen Maakt The theatre group Warner & Consorten are usually to be found performing their artmusic-dance-drama hybrid on the street, in public parks or in abandoned factories.

So it’s a rare treat, in fact, to see them in the comparatively conventional setting of a former squat and the venue for their latest venture, ‘The Hand that Makes Mistakes’.

The evening promises to be an experimental laboratory performance that will see the group mount a mixture of improvised object and physical theatre. They balance sound, dance, image and voice, to give each evening a clear starting point; however, with individual paths and secret missions all part of the game, even the players have no idea how their performance will end. In Dutch. (Kim Renfrew) OT301 (Thur, Fri 20.30), €7. Also Friday.

Theatre: Woyzeck What is it about Woyzeck that flame-pulls avant-gardists of every stripe? Rule-trashers from Berg to Herzog to Wilson have had their way with Georg Büchner’s fragmented, unfinished 1837 drama of an Everyman—actually, an Every-yutz—undone by bourgeois fuddy-duddydom. Now comes an exuberant reinterpretation by a young company straight outta Iceland, the Vesturport Theater/Reykjavic City Theater, in a show that marries acrobatics, flamingo-flamboyant costumes, crazed decor and hyperkinesis to music by none other than Nick Cave (along with fellow Bad Seeder Warren Ellis). Featuring 10 actors, six singers, a guitarist and a percussionist, the performance transposes the tale to a water treatment facility, making the evening even more splashy. In English. (Steve Schneider) Het Muziektheater (Thur, Sat 20.15, Sun 14.00), €15-€40.

The first Ramones record or Slayer’s Reign in Blood prove that 30 minutes are enough to turn teenage bedrooms into trashed mosh pits. Dutch gabber-punk weirdoes Aux Raus aim for the same hit-and-run effect with their joyfully aggressive debut album This Is How This Works. The Aux Raus story sounds like an urban myth: destined to become an obscure novelty act on the local club circuit, the wild duo were discovered

by Carlos Amorales, a conceptual artist living in Amsterdam. Amorales took Aux Raus to his native Mexico and got them a deal on Nuevos Ricos. After convincing some of the meanest-looking street punks in Mexico City, vocalist Bastiaan Bosma and guitarist Luuk Bouwman were ready to melt down art audiences in Barcelona, Paris, Berlin and New York. The auxraus.com website collects hilarious videos of this ‘world tour’. Tonight the band are celebrating the release of their CD, backed by DJs Lady Aïda and Joost van Bellen. (Marinus de Ruiter) Studio 80, 21.00, €6.

Festival: LiteSide Oriental and Western forms of cultural expression mix ’n’ mash during the four days of LiteSide. Tonight, the festival opens outdoors of Odeon (19.00) with German-Turkish artist Nezaket Ekici, who challenges biased thought between cultures and sexes with her graceful performances. A cross-section of LiteSide is shown at the opening party (Odeon, 20.30-23.30), with dance, comedy, jazz, rap and techno. Friday night starts with a cooking party hosted by Indian chef and artist Ali Zaidi, while The Nu Wave Comedy show features five comedians tackling multi-cultural issues (Sugar Factory, 21.00). On Saturday night, literary talent gathers WoordWapen, with Mustafa Stitou and Abdelkader Benali (Sugar Factory, 21.00), while winners of the national Shimmy Shake contest perform at Sunday’s belly dance afternoon (Sugar Factory, 16.00). Closing it all down again is artist Oreet Ashery with Welcome Home, a festive night that also deals with the fate of Palestinians in Israel (De Balie, 20.30). (Marinus de Ruiter) De Balie, Odeon and Sugar Factory, various times and prices.

Theatre: Pune Highway Three friends are stuck together in a seedy hotel room on the Mumbai-Pune highway. One of them lies, one stammers and the other jokes around. All three are feeling guilty and helpless about what happened a couple of hours ago. Their conversations reveal the cause of their emotional turmoil: the fourth man in the group was stabbed by unknown gangsters in the late, dark hours. Fear for their own lives prevented them from stepping in. And while fear may well have saved their lives, it doesn’t help them deal with the consequences of their actions—or in this case, inaction. The tone is sharp and cynical as the relationships between the friends become more clear. In Hindi and English. (Shyama Daryanani) KIT Tropentheater, 20.30, €16. Also Friday.

FRIDAY 20 APRIL Dance: Pulse+ Krisztina de Châtel always looks for different ways of doing contemporary dance. This year, the choreographer is artist-in-residence at Amsterdam’s Academie voor Bouwkunst: every year, the institute invites an artist from a completely different discipline to inspire designers and students. In recent times, her company have mounted shows at unconventional sites like churches and museums. Pulse premiered last year in theatres and is now being staged in an extended version at Orgelpark, the former

19-25 April 2007

Amsterdam Weekly

church now dedicated to organ music. The original Pulse is a mesmerising performance based on pulsating piano etudes by György Ligeti. Its martial rhythm is visually enhanced by the militaristic outfits created by talented designer Aziz. Pulse+ is accompanied by live piano and organ; the choreography has been expanded, with sections based on Ligeti’s organ pieces, including the notorious Volumina, which requires all the keys of the manual to be used at once. (Marinus de Ruiter) Orgelpark (Thur-Sun 20.15), €12.50.

Jazz: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum Apparently, a hundred years ago there really was a Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. God knows what it actually exhibited, minus soporific primates. The modern-day SGM is quite different. Instead of hairy apes, this museum exhibits a keen sense for expanding rock, jazz and funk through off-kilter methods. To begin, they mostly play home-made instruments, and have been known to screen presentations during songs to coordinate with the music. Additionally, members play three or four regular instruments each and pull off a satisfying sound that mixes the progressive tendencies of King Crimson and Can with more typical rock ’n’ roll, jazz and funk. With brand-new album In Glorious Times out next month, expect a smattering of old and new, sleepy and riled-up, eccentric and more eccentric. The band tour constantly, and their return to the Bimhuis is sure to be great, because oddball sounds from oddball musicians sound sweetest in a jazz theatre. (Shain Shapiro) Bimhuis, 21.00, €14.

SUNDAY 22 APRIL Rock: Idlewild Originating in Edinburgh in 1997, this quintet have come a long way in 10 years. Back then, their music was a blur of punky noise matched only by their dizzying stage presence—band members were more likely to be flailing on the floor than upright and visible, but the buzz was incredible. They were even labelled the Scottish Nirvana when first singles emerged. Over the years their audience grew and their sound matured.

Pretty quickly they were playing the biggest festivals and being compared to R.E.M. more than Gang of Four, and their music followed the progression of a band starting at 20 and steadily mellowing as their 30s approached. Last month they released their fifth full-length, Make Another World, and it’s easily the best thing they’ve done in years.

Once again there’s real drive and energy to the songwriting (maybe because frontman Roddy Woomble exorcised the quieter songs in his solo folk album last year). Either way, Idlewild sound refreshed and right on form. (Steven McCarron) Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.30, €12 + membership.

MONDAY 23 APRIL Pop: Brett Anderson The Return of Old Britpop Heroes, Pt 1. Back in the days when Suede were the best new band in Britain, Brett Anderson wore navel-length leather jackets and swung his microphone in the air, while singing songs dismissed by some as bombastic kitsch but hailed by others for beautifully bringing out the romance of everyday life. (I was in love with him, so went with the latter opinion.) After intra-band bitching, guitarist Bernard Butler walked. Though Suede successfully continued without him for many years, everyone kept waiting for Brett and Bernard to reunite. Then everyone stopped waiting. Then they did reunite, in 2006, to produce a boring album as The Tears. Anderson’s recent solo debut, meanwhile, sounds suspiciously like ‘finally I’ve found myself’ kind of stuff, but maybe I’m just bitter because he never gave me a call—so you better go and see for yourself. And Brett, if you’re reading this, now you know where to contact me... (Sarah Gehrke) Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €16 + membership.

TUESDAY 24 APRIL Pop: Ash And now the flipside: Pt 2. Ash, when they began, were at the other end of the Britpop scale from Suede, musically and lyric-wise. While Suede were chasing the dragon through the fields of Cathay, Ash were drinking wine with a teenage love who still had her school skirt on. After success hit them in their late teens, Ash—naturally—started doing lots of drugs, and second album Nu-Clear Sounds was a pretty schizophrenic affair. Though hated by fans and critics alike, it still contained some really good songs, while next record Free All Angels showed they had truly sorted themselves out, perfecting the mixture of happy-go-lucky punk pop and string-laden ballads that made them famous. Of course, I was in love with Tim Wheeler, too, but he went off and married someone else. I also found follow-up album Meltdown (as well as their new songs) quite disappointing. Even so, Ash gigs are always great fun, and tonight will be no exception. (Sarah Gehrke) Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 21.00, €13 + membership.

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

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Amsterdam Weekly

Legendary drummer celebrates birthday, and all the great musicians come out to create a feast of sound.

HAN BENNINK ROLLS INTO SIXTY FIVE MUSIC Zeng! Han Bennink 65 Bimhuis, 21 April, 21.00, €16

By Mark Wedin

If you’ve never heard the name Han Bennink, give yourself a quick pat on the back—then a slap on the thigh. Then hit something with a drumstick. Hard. If you listen closely to the different timbres produced, you may begin to understand the world of a master drummer known for coaxing sounds out of any object within reach.

Bennink, ever youthful, turns 65 this week and is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s played with jazz legends like Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster and Eric Dolphy. He’s active with The Ex, particularly in their collaborations with Ethiopian musicians like Mohammed ‘Jimmy’ Mohammed and Getatchew Mekurya.

And his gigging schedule with his own groups, including Instant Composers Pool (ICP) and Clusone, is somewhat relentless. Yet, beyond it all, he remains gracious and affable, and is often to be seen drinking beer with audience members after a show, and talking about anything that comes up.

If you’ve not heard him play, words alone cannot serve as a substitute for the sound. Bennink is an indefinable drummer who seems to follow one main mantra: keep it free. Free improv is his bag and once he walks onstage, you never know what’s going to happen. He may roll

a billiard ball across the floor, beat on an object he found backstage, or demonstrate his ferocious brushwork on the snare. We caught up with him last week in the middle of ICP’s American tour for a chat. (And yes, he’s also really nice to talk to on the phone.)

It’s fairly well known that your first drum was a kitchen chair, and that you are still fond of playing chairs.

Yes, I like to play on chairs. My father was a percussionist and we were not wealthy, so he didn’t buy me any drums. He let me struggle on the chair. My cymbal was an empty wine bottle and my tom-tom was a skull [laughs]. That was my first drum kit.

Then, bit by bit, I got a snare drum and so on. My father never taught me. I would go with him to the studio and I would wait until the room was empty—sometimes it took hours—and then I would sit at the drum set and play. I also gigged with my father a lot in the army. I had my own work by sixteen or seventeen. I did Dixieland and floor shows. After a while, I reduced the amount of things I was doing.

But all that stuff, it gave me a sort of mixed foundation. I still use all these different forms.

Is it true that you never learned to read music?

Yes, that’s true. Not even a note as big as a cow, as my father used to say. When I was a kid I would carry my music books, Gene Krupa and such things. But I only walked with them, I never opened them. I did it all by ear and I’m happy now about that,

but there were times that I had regrets.

I worked with a French chansonnier once, and they thought I could read music. I just turned the pages when the piano player turned his pages. They caught on soon and weren’t so happy. But I never could understand what all that fly poop on paper was about.

Tell me about you and the Fluxus movement.

Fluxus and Dada is a part of me. It’s in my mind, it’s what I do. For some people it’s Rembrandt or Van Gogh. But I feel comfy when I’m around [poet/painter Francis] Picabia, and manifestos, and Futurism.

Because of your Fluxus connections, do people often expect you to do quite silly things?

Two years ago, there was an artist who made an entire drum set out of cheese, and he asked me to play it for an installation. The snare was made of Gouda, the tom-tom was made of mature cheese, and so forth. There were contact mikes in the cheese, someone else was playing with the sound. I found it horrible actually, but I did it. And then, it becomes world famous [laughs]. Jay Leno wanted me because of it.

You’re always breaking drumsticks while playing. I heard that a piece once flew and knocked a cigarette out of [pianist] Misha Mengelberg’s mouth.

Yes, that’s true. But I’ll tell you a better story. One time I was playing with George Lewis and the ICP in Florence. I did a rim shot and this lady in the audience starts screaming. I looked and the stick had flown into her eye and broken her glasses. Her husband asked me after the show for sixty thousand lira—which is about sixty euros—because you don’t want to go to a show and have your glasses broken.

How do you keep up with so many broken sticks?

When Germany was divided, the communist part was very cheap for us and there happened to be a village where they only made instruments. I would go there and get two thousand pairs of sticks. Now I

19-25 April 2007

Hit it! In fact, hit anything you can lay your hands on. Even cheese.

buy all my sticks in America. You can get brushes here for nineteen dollars and the same brush in Europe costs thirty-six euros. Or five dollars for sticks here, where it costs sixteen euros over there.

It’s incredible. After we’re done talking, I’m going to shave and then go out and buy my sticks.

What are you listening to these days?

Oh, all kinds of music. Of course I listen at home to my favourite jazz numbers.

But sometimes I don’t want to listen to music at all. You get home from tour and you just want to rest. My favourite hobby is actually buying recordings of birds and listening to that.

Do you still practise outside in a field where cows gather around, watching and chewing?

I’m not in that shed anymore. I was separated from my family in a little shed with no toilet and one light bulb. But now, suddenly I have a little house in a small village near Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to go there, I’m so often on tour.

What do you bring on tour?

I reduce myself to only bringing a snare drum. Same thing in Amsterdam. I go on my bike to gigs and bring only my snare.

Jazz is always on the top floor or down in the cellar, so you don’t want to carry too much. The bass player is happy because you don’t take up too much space. And it develops your brushplaying immensely.

What do you want for your birthday?

Well, we’ve got this party at the Bimhuis.

ICP will be there. That group is now the most balanced it has ever been. Guus Janssen will be there—I love to play with him. Peter Brötzmann, Michael Moore, Terrie Ex, DJ Jules Deelder. Everyone’s coming. It’s gonna be so nice. I just want to be there for that night.

Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007

Marie Celeste, GRRRL!, see Friday

MUSIC Send listing suggestions at least two weeks in advance to agenda@amsterdamweekly.nl.

confused emotions of his wife Dejanira. Performed by De Nederlandse Opera. Het Muziektheater, 19.30, €20-€85 Rock: The Church Australian rockers dating back to 1980. Tackling styles like new wave, neo-psychedelic and prog-ish rock over the years, they’re not exactly known for their hit singles, but the sold out signs say it all. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 19.30, sold out

Thursday 19 April

Rock: My Dying Bride Atmospheric and romantic— to a deathly extent—doom metal. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.00, €20 + membership

Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra A vocal programme performed with help from Nederlands Kamerkoor. Featured are Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore; Mass in C; and Haydn’s Symphony No.104. Conducted by Ton Koopman. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €55

Pop/Rock: Subbacultcha! They may be veterans of the Excelsior guitar pop scene, but you can’t keep a good band down. So tonight Amsterdammers Scram C launch their new album, with the added bonus of support from young pretenders the Hospital Bombers.

De Nieuwe Anita, 20.00, €6

Pop/Rock: Absynthe Minded Belgian rockers presenting new album There Is Nothing. Support from Storybox. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €8 + membership

Classical: John Mills & Mai-Britt Wagnilld The British classical guitarist is joined by Norwegian soprano Wagnilld for interpretations of works by Schubert, Barrios, Morel, Villa-Lobos, Walton, Scheiber and Grieg. English Reformed Church, 20.15, €17

Big band: Karnatic Lab Festival 2007 Concluding the contemporary, jazz and world music feast, tonight’s festivities take the form of a ‘Tribute to the East’. On tap are a CD launch from Balkan-influenced trio STriCat, a screening of the documentary The Soundscape of Lukacs Miklos and a tribute to late Indian vocalist Jahnavi Jayaprakash, which is led by two musicians from Bangalore and an Indian Bharatanatyam dancer from Boston. Bimhuis, 20.30, €14

Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (See Thursday) Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €55 Rock: Fake It Or Leave It Cover bands galore, including Gunz ’n’ Rozes, Red Hot Chilli Bastards and All The Young Dudes. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €13 + membership Americana: Stephen Simmons Authentic acoustic roots music direct from Nashville. Pleintheater, 20.30, €10 Rock: GRRRL! All-girl rock night featuring sets from Marie Celeste and Von Tease. Winston Kingdom, 21.00, €5 Punk: Punkerherrie Political hardcore from Pedestrians (US), Karaktermoord and Whole in the Head (UK).

OCCII, 21.00, €5

Maxïmo Park Rock: Maxïmo Park The voice of vocalist Paul Smith is hardly multi-dimensional—typically bellowing passionately in a thick Geordie accent—but this energetic bunch are still abrupt, jagged and lyrically raw. Storming onto the European scene with hit single ‘Apply Some Pressure’ in 2005, they’ve proved themselves to be much more than one-hit-wonders, recently following up debut album with Our Earthly Pleasures.

Melkweg, The Max, 20.30, sold out Contemporary: Wilde Bloesem: Nieuw Ensemble The final presentation of the Nieuw Ensemble’s composers workshop features new works by composition students from the conservatories of Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam. Entitled Orientations, tonight’s programme combines Western and non-Western instruments and ideas. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.30, €12.50 Electro rock: Aux Raus They’ve played every toilet in town and a whole lot more, but it seems to have paid off: the electro noise punk duo have sold their socks to score a distribution deal with PIAS, and tonight they launch new album This Is How This Works. See Short List. Studio 80, 21.00, €6 Singer-songwriter: Lisa Graciano Bluesy guitar music. There’s also an open-mike session. Skek, 21.30, free

Jazz: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum Crazy-named avant-garde jazz. See Short List. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14 Rock: Small Faces, Faces, Rod Stewart session Do ya think I’m sexy? Ross Curry and his selection of local musos are keen to find out. Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 22.00, €7.50 Rock: The Pastrellis Swinging rock ’n’ roll. Maloe Melo, 22.00, €5

Saturday 21 April Festival: North Sea Acoustic & Electric Music Festival Just slightly out of town, the diverse mix of artists at this two-day event includes The Zombies, Alamo Race Track, Four Good Men, Dr Feelgood and much more. See www.nsc-music.nl. North Sea Venue, Zaandam, 13.00, €27.50 day pass, €45 weekend pass Rock: The Powerfest 2007 Punk, emo, hardcore and all that noisy angst-ridden jazz. The all-day party features sets from the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Sparta, MxPx, Mindless Self Indulgence, Motion City Soundtrack, Senses Fail, All That Remains, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Misery Signals, The Sleeping, Grown At Home, Mewithoutyou and Kid Down. Melkweg, 13.30, €30 + membership Classical: Cuarteto Latinoamericano Performing works by Iranian composer Reza Vali. Noorderkerk, 14.00, €10

Friday 20 April

Classical: Jonathan Gilad A piano recital by the Frenchman, featuring works by Mozart, Rachmaninov and Chopin. Concertgebouw, Kleine Zaal, 20.15, €27

Classical: Lunch Concert Students from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Bethaniënklooster, 12.30, free

Classical: La Primavera Performing French and German works from the late Renaissance. English Reformed Church, 20.15, €18

Opera: Hercules What’s an opera without jealousy?

Fortunately, Handel’s interpretation of the Hercules myth has it in bucket loads, not least drawing on the

Pop/Rock: Kruup 6x4 Marcel Kruup celebrates his 35th birthday tonight by playing in half the many bands he’s been in: Herb Spectacles, Los Tiki Boys

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14 and The Hik. The show marks the release of a compilation of internationally inspired Dutch tunes featuring the evening’s performers as well as Krupp’s other bands, Goslana, The Hangouts and The Parlando’s.

Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.30, €8 + membership Ska: The Skatalites Reggae, ska and rocksteady grooves from these old Jamaican masters who originally formed in the early ’60s. Support from Rude Rich & The High Notes. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.30, €17.50 + membership

Pop: Scissor Sisters Second album Ta-Dah! proved a huge success last year, and if you’re into falsetto voices and disco beats this show’s for you. If you don’t feel like dancin’, however, you needn’t be too sad that the Sisters are sold out. Heineken Music Hall, 20.00, sold out Rock: Sideburns Stomp Greasy rock ’n’ roll night with sets from The Chelsea Smiles (US), SubWoofer Testing Days and The Rawberries. Winston Kingdom, 20.00, €5

Rock: The Unit Danish rockers. Support from Strfckr and Black Bandit. Winston Kingdom, 21.00, €5

Classical: Severin von Eckardstein Piano recital.

Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €35

Jazz: Zeng! Han Bennink 65 A musical birthday party for the Zaandam-born drummer. The list of participating guests is long and varied, but included are: the ICP Orchestra, Joachim Badenhorst, Misha Mengelberg, Ab Baars, Simon Toldam Rosengren, Terrie Ex, Michael Moore and Guus Janssen, all performing in everchanging combinations. See article on p. 12. Bimhuis, 21.00, €16

Singer-songwriter: Ellen ten Damme Playing songs from new album Impossible Girl. Support from Merrel Hutton. KHL Koffiehuis, 20.30, €6

Rock: The Bent Moustache There are tons of release parties in Amsterdam this week, but if you’re into your local indie music, this is the one to catch. The Bent Moustache are signed to Transformed Dreams and preparing to take on the world with new CD Forst.

Think: The Fall, Can, My Bloody Valentine, Spaceman 3, Bogshed, The Nightingales, The Membranes, The Ex, Dog Faced Hermans and Captain Beefheart.

OT301, 22.00, €5

Sunday 22 April Festival: North Sea Acoustic & Electric Music Festival (See Saturday) North Sea Venue, Zaandam, 13.00, €27.50 day pass, €45 weekend pass Pop/Rock: M-Jo Indie rock. Ruigoord, 14.00, free Classical: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (See Thursday) Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 14.15, €45/€55 Classical: Van Swieten Society Classics by Beethoven are performed by this period quartet, featuring violinist Rémy Baudet, violist Bernadette Verhagen, cellist Jaap ter Linden and fortepianist Bart van Oort. Concertgebouw, Kleine Zaal, 14.15, €26.50 Classical: Ensemble Corona CD presentation from a trio specialising in authentic 16th- and 17th-century music. Amstelkerk, 14.30, €10 Folk: Jozef van Wissem Part 16th-century lute maestro, part contemporary rock star, Van Wissem focuses tonight on the music of old, as he presents new CD A Rose By Any Other Name. Bethaniënklooster, 15.00, €15 Pop/Rock: Benjy Ferree Lo-fi folk that occasionally bursts alive with the spirit of garage rock. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 16.00, €8 + membership World: Khaled Algerian raï superstar. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 19.30, €35 + membership

Contemporary: Nederlands Blazers Ensemble & Cappella Amsterdam A Proms aan ’t IJ performance entitled The Heavenly Garden. Composer Peter-Jan Wagemans reinvents himself by looking back to the purity of 11th- and 12th-century compositions by Hildegard von Bingen and Perotinus. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €20 Rock: The Scientists Influential indie rockers from Perth, Australia. Support from Phantom Four and TittyTwistersOrchestra. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €12.50 + membership Jazz: Erdmann 3000 Avant-garde jazz noise from young Berlin sax player Daniel Erdmann and his group, who are as influenced by Stravinski as The Dead Kennedys and John Coltrane. Bimhuis, 21.00, €14 Electronica/Jazz: The Cinematic Orchestra A Ninja Tune special as the British jazzy improv turntablists present songs from their upcoming album, Ma Fleur.

Fanatics of the label can seek a special ticket deal that includes entry to DJ Food and DK’s show on 27 April at www.melkweg.nl. Melkweg, The Max, 21.00, €16 + membership Rock: Idlewild Poetic Scottish rock that still packs a punch after ten years. See Short List. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.30, €12 + membership Punk: The Day the Country Died Featuring live sets from Bad Influence (BE), Toxic Waste (UK) and The Dragged (UK). At the heart of proceedings is a screening of The Day the Country Died—the story of the anarcho-punk movement told by some of its most influential performers. OCCII, €5

Monday 23 April Opera: Hercules (See Friday) Het Muziektheater, 19.30, €20-€85 Singer-songwriter: Malcolm Middleton The Scottish songwriter is best known for his role in ‘kings of the dour’ Arab Strap, but with that band now defunct, Middleton’s been left to focus on a solo career. In the past, such work was sparser and more emotionally vulnerable than Arab Strap’s poetically drunken dirges, but new album A Brighter Beat does just what it says on the packaging—it’s upbeat and vibrant. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 19.30, €10 + membership Rock: Subbacultcha! A Kinky Star Records 10-year special featuring exuberant sets from three Belgian outfits: Monokiri, The Needle and the Pain Reaction and Coem. Bitterzoet, 20.00, €6

Scissor Sisters

World: Yang Xiuming, Lin Youren & Li Guangzu A China in Contrast performance featuring three masters of the stringed instrument, who grew up immersed in the traditions of traditional Chinese classical music. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €20 Experimental: DNK-Amsterdam Featuring an elec-

tro-acoustic live set by Audible (Yutaka Makino and DJ Sniff). OT301, 21.30, €4

Tuesday 24 April Country: Kimmie Rhodes Texan singer-songwriter who’s worked with the likes of Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.00, €8.50 + membership Folk: Wasser Umsonnst Ghosty lo-fi folk from Vollmar (US), Elephant Micah (US) and The Puddle Parade. No chatting—or you’ll miss it. De Nieuwe Anita, 20.00, €6 World: Goran Bregovic’s Wedding and Funeral Band A cross-border, multicultural sensation that brings together gypsy music, Bulgarian voices, jazz and rock. Tonight Bregovic will unleash a new composition called Forgive Me, Is This the Way to the Future?, performed with help from American conductor Kristjan Järvi and his Absolute Ensemble.

Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €45/discount tickets: www.amsterdamweekly.nl Contemporary: Asko Ensemble Contemporary classical music taking a big nod to the guitar. Guest guitarist is Florian Magnus Maier, helping the ensemble perform the world premiere of his own ‘Hatching Souls’ and Corrie van Binsbergen’s ‘Silent Movements’, along with works by Michel van der Aa and Mark Anthony Turnage. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €20 Singer-songwriter: Acoustic Talent Night Performers include Dezibel, John Carrie, Coleta, De Dolende Dichters, Jane on the Roof, Gerod Shea and Doe Maar Niet. Twstd, 21.00, free

19-25 April 2007

CLUBS Thursday 19 April De Dixo Eclectic tunes with the bonus of funk, soul and dance beats from Orfeo and Linke Soep. Club Meander, 22.00-03.00, €4 Vunst Where have all the students gone? Hoping for musical diversity and cheap booze at this new Thursday slot. Club 8, 22.00-03.00, €5, free before 23.30 Cosmic Club With Kareem Raihani and friends.

Akhnaton, 22.00-04.00, €5 Vreemd Outlandish electro and live performances.

Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €8 Dirty Disco With the dirtyish diverse disco grooves of MODA (Fightclub), MNO (Basserk) and BRNRD (AsWell). Studio 80, 23.00-late, €10 Poptrash Three decades’ worth of rock, electro and hiphop with The Punchout DJs. Tonight also features the rather raw ’80s-style electro of Stikka. Melkweg, The Max, 23.00-late, €5 ¿Que Pasa? Latin-crossover night with reggae, folk, ska, punk and mestizo. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 23.00late, €7

Friday 20 April

Rock: Le Club Hex Le Club Suburbia and HEX join forces for some midweek fun, including a set from raw guitar/drum duo The Moi Non Plus—featuring Leon Filo Castro and Baster(that)dam Weekly—and electro garage band Sixteens. OCCII, 21.00, €5

Extravers A tri-sexy minimal psychiatric, extravagant music and art healing experience. Tonight is driven by the electro grooves of Pablo Sandoval, Renzo and Krause, with help from video art and other clubbing anomalies. Club 8, 22.00-04.00, €7.50

Bluegrass: Hackensaw Boys This modern bluegrass ensemble seem perpetually on tour. From banjoplucking fun to swaying acoustic strums, the Boys always manage to create fresh, genuine-sounding folk music without a hint of parody. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.00, €12.50 + membership

Bpitch Control Camping Boiling Berlin beats from Ellen Allien and Zander VT. 11, 22.00-4.00, €12

Wednesday 25 April Singer-songwriter: Thomas Dybdahl Earnest Norwegian songwriter out on the road in support of his album Science. Support from Washington. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 19.30, €12.50 + membership Rock: Last Days Of April Classic emo—without the pop grandeur and running mascara—from the hardworking Swedes. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.00, €6 + membership Classical: Sofia Festival Orkest Performing Elgar’s Serenade in E, Mendelssohn’s Concerto in D and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C; conducted by Martin Panteleev. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €28 Contemporary: Schönberg Kwartet Performing a quartet of works by Louis Andriessen, spanning 1957 to 2006. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €20 Jazz: Brokkenavond 2x2 Corrie van Binsbergen’s monthly programme where anything can happen.

Zaal 100, 21.00, €5 Jazz: The Super Quintet Free-funk heavyweights, featuring saxophonist/clarinettist David Murray, trombonist Craig Harris, guitarist Jan Kuiper, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and drummer Calvin Weston.

Bimhuis, 21.00, €16

AppleTree Release Party Launch of the new BeauLove CD, while Bart Skillz and Boris Werner do their unmistakeable thing in the club. Flex Bar, 22.00late, €7 NuJazz Revolutions Organic electro jazz. Akhnaton, 23.00-05.00, €8.50 Toolroom Knights Not quite as fun a night of quality carpentry, but the popular dance hits from the Toolroom cupboard should suffice. Sets from D-Ramirez, Dave Spoon, Erick E and Lucien Foort. The Powerzone, 23.00-05.00, €15 Fashion Radio & Re-Disco-Very Stylish un-disco from Lupe, Jesse Voorn, Bogomir Doringer and the ReDisco-Very DJ crew. Studio 80, 23.00-late, €7.50 Paradisoul Headlined by R&B singer Robin Thicke (son of Growing Pains’ Alan Thicke), and for some internationalism, there’s a Brasil Favela Special upstairs.

Paradiso, 23.59-05.00, €12.50 + membership DJ Eclipse Hippity hoppin’ in a Non Phixion style. Also with DJ Turne. Melkweg, The Max, 23.59-late, €7 + membership Sonic Warfare Pt II Dutch and English dubstep from Distance, Loefah, Plastician, U Dub MC and Sgt Pokes.

Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 23.59-late, €12 + membership

Saturday 21 April Flush It! Rock, house, funk, disco and electro from RFH Delfos (M.U.L.T.I.S.E.X.I.), DJ Lava (Get Physical) and Superior Experience (Bas Kosters band). Café

Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007

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Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 21.00, €5 Club Rascal Indie rock to dance to. Club 8, 21.3004.00, €4 MAD2 Featuring Cassy (Berlin) and Mal Borrowed & Frei Bauwerker. 11, 22.00-04.00, €12 Pret! Modern hits and old favourites. Plus a live set from Ms Feelgood. Club Meander, 22.00-04.00, €4 Vonk Latin house supplied by Roog, Soul Avengerz, Billy the Klit, Stef Vrolijk and Baggi Begovic. Hotel Arena, 22.00-04.00, €20 De Shit! Open-minded night promising electro disco, minimal and tech-house. De Kring, 23.00-04.00, €6

GAY& LESBIAN Thursday 19 April Cocktail Night Grab a sundowner at the newest bar on Gay Street. ’t Leeuwtje, 15.00-01.00,

Mars Assault Soundsystem Techno, hardcore and breakcore with an alien persuasion. OCCII, 23.0004.00, €4

Friday 20 April

Istanbul Minimal Minimal mastery, all from Turkey.

Renowned DJ/producer Onur Ozer forms the core of the programme, with support from Batu, Tolga Duya and Philogresz. Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €12

Vrouwenavond The biggest weekly women’s night in Amsterdam, with men, straights, whatever welcome as friends. Music tonight supplied by DJ Mundo. Café Sappho, 22.00, free

Wasteland Superstar remixer/hiphop DJ Clark Kent (DE), Benny Rodrigues, Randy Katana, Melly Mel, Natarcia and Manga present tunes for the scantily clad and wasted. The Powerzone, 23.00-05.00, €45

Twisted Tunes Tonight’s DJ Benjamin is famed for spinning in Gran Canaria and at White Parties. Plus another chance to get a hep B jab (between 23.00 and 00.30), courtesy of the GGD. PRIK, 22.00-03.00, free

Disco Exota Studio 80’s unofficial disco weekend draws to a close with sets from Daniele Baldelli (Discoteca Cosmic, Italy) and Tako. Studio 80, 23.00-late, €10 Bassline Hiphop, R&B and anything else with a rumbling bass groove. Paradiso, 23.59-05.00, €12

Goldrush Dance classics remixed and pumped up (like the men on the dance floor) by DJ Jerry Black.

Exit, 23.00-05.00, €5

Gemengd Zwemmen Two rooms of noise. In the Max, for better or worse, it’s classic ’90s; in the Oude Zaal, expect a mix of indie, pop, rock and dance tunes.

Melkweg, 23.59-late, €8

Sunday 22 April

Sunday 22 April

Netherbears Bi-weekly get together of the social group for hairy fellas. See http://home.tiscali.nl/ netherbears. De Barderij, 19.00, free

Club Aid An evening of diverse music from a local and international line-up of artists, including Vleppyie Auwurs, Y-Bond, Goesting, Vitreous and HassieBassie, plus an exhibition of drawings by Portuguese artist Silvana Godinho. Proceeds go to charity and it’ll cure your Sunday blues. Club 8, 18.00-01.00, €7.50

Garbo in Exit Women take over Exit for the early session. Mainstream hits on the dance floor, Indonesion buffet on the ground floor. Exit, 16.00-22.00, €4,50

Tuesday 24 April

E.N.D. Electronation’s weekly Sunday night slot.

Tonight’s party features sets from Arter and Lupe. Bitterzoet, 21.00-03.00, €5/€8

Little Britain (Movie Night)

Cheeky Monday Jungle and drum & bass night. Winston Kingdom, 22.00-03.00, €6

Movie Night Is there a movie tonight? Computer says no. But there are several episodes of the BBC’s Little Britain, the campest comedy series ever to squeeze its chubby legs into vinyl hotpants. PRIK, 19.00-23.00, free

Tuesday 24 April Voidd Sessions Electro and techno with a live slant.

Winston Kingdom, 21.00-03.00, €6 HipHopClub With live sets from Brakko Trixxx and Cinnamon, plus DJs Switch, Vic, Abstract, Lovesupreme and Rachid Larouz. Studio 80, 21.00-late, €5, free before 22.00

Wednesday 25 April Rub-a-Dub A reggae party featuring live sets from Marqmarquis and 4WARD, plus mellow soundsystem grooves till late. Winston Kingdom, 21.00-03.00, €5

STAGE Opening Performance: De Hand die Vergissingen Maakt Experimental performance laboratory from Warner & Consorten. In Dutch. OT301, (Thur, Fri 20.30), €7 Theatre: Neerlantis—No Dogs Allowed A play about the continuing threat of environmental catastrophes.

How will global warming affect the Netherlands? Will we all drown? In Dutch. Theater Bellevue, (Thur-Sat 20.30), €12.50/€15 Theatre: Simon Says A mime performance about subtle violence by Sarah Ringoet. Three women onstage create a series of sober abstract images.

Melkweg Theater, (Thur-Sun 20.30), €8 Theatre: Pune Highway The consequences of inaction in an Indian roadside motel. See Short List. KIT Tropentheater, (Thur-Fri) 20.30, €16 Performance: Jikeleza A creative benefit programme for the organisation Jikeleza, which offers free dance lessons to street children in South Africa. Jimmy Woo, (Sun 19.00), €10 Dance: Pulse+ New dance piece, new venue. See Short List. Orgelpark, (Thur-Sun 20.15), €12.50

WickedJazzSounds Jazz, hiphop, broken beats, nujazz, funk and Afro sounds, as classic vinyl collides with live musicians. Sugar Factory, 23.00-05.00, €8.50

Monday 23 April

Blind Date, see Ongoing

Wednesday 25 April Balkan night Cross-dressing antics from the gateway to the East, hosted by Dora Multinational. Lellebel, free Bückstück.brutale Musik Join Bückstück in the vaults of thought-provoking music. Dj’s van 21.00-24.00 PRIK, 21.00-24.00, free F*cking Pop Queers The dance floor is a war zone and the weapon of choice is pop. Let battle commence. Studio 80, 3.00-05.00, free before 00.00, €5 after

Dance: Les Corps Étrangers French Compagnie Accrorap combine influences from all continents to present a choreography that boasts many elements: from hiphop to kathak dance, from Hindu rituals to acrobatic spectacles. Theater Bellevue, (Mon, Tues 20.30), €10-€17.50

Theatre: Zelfportret, dat kan geen toeval zijn A performance that takes the form of an old-fashioned slide show—with drinks and snacks as part of the effects. The actors engage in dialogue with the audience as they portray a Dutch generation that grew up in the idealistic ’70s, yet is now living in a constrained and jittery nation struggling with its identity. In Dutch.

Frascati, (Wed 20.30), €12

Ongoing Theatre: Twee A series of comedic yet nonetheless touching dialogues, all about love, loneliness and not wanting to sleep alone. In Dutch. Frascati, (Thur-Sat 21.00), €12 Theatre: Schuur A yuppie couple escaping from Amsterdam’s Grachtengordel attempt to start afresh on a small island—but they carry a dark secret with them.

In Dutch. Frascati, (Thur-Sat) 20.30, €12 Theatre: De Pelikaan One of August Strindberg’s four ‘chamber plays’, this family drama contains expressionist and absurdist elements. In Dutch. De Brakke Grond, (Thur-Sat 20.30), €14 Music/Theatre: Diamonds and Pearls Music theatre group Het Groot Niet Te Vermijden trample through music history, defying the borders between art and kitsch, purity and persiflage. They now celebrate their 20th anniversary with a gleeful show that presents the highlights of their repertoire. De Kleine Komedie, (Thur-Sat 20.15), €15.50- €19.50 Music/Theatre: Woyzeck The unconventional Icelandic theatre company present Georg Büchner’s tragedy of the common man. See Short List. In English. Het Muziektheater, (Thur, Sat 20.15, Sun 14.00), €15-€40

Theatre: Breakfastklub This play is loosely based on the 1985 John Hughes flick about a group of high school kids sitting in Saturday detention. Will this performance end with Simple Minds, too? In Dutch.

Frascati, (Mon-Wed 20.00), €12

Theatre: Maeterlinck Marthaler’s new piece is inspired by Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck’s fairy tale De blauwe vogel (The Blue Bird), around which he creates a dreamlike universe filled with music. In Dutch. Stadsschouwburg, (Thur, Fri 20.15), €11.50€25

Dance: Le Sous Sol After Le Jardin and Le Salon, Belgian collective Peeping Tom present the final part of their trilogy that’s earned them international success.

Stadsschouwburg, (Tues 20.15), €11-€20

Comedy: easyLaughs Comedy improv in English.

Two different shows every Friday night. Many different laughs. CREA Muziekzaal, (Fri 20.30, 22.30), €10/€5 (late night)

Dance: Blind Date A politically inspired dance performance by American choreographer Bill T Jones and the Arnie Zane Dance Company. Featuring music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Bach, the Irish folk of Mrs McGrath, Otis Redding and R Kelly, it’s certainly a diverse affair, raising subjects like sexuality, racism and political power structures along the way. Het Muziektheater, (Wed 20.15), €15-€30

Performance: Improfiësta A theatresport event. In Dutch. CREA Theater, (Sat 20.30), €8 Theatre: Jeanne d’Arc On the eve of her execution, Joan of Arc gets the chance to escape being burnt at the stake, provided she delivers a full confession.

While pondering her dilemma, both God and the hangman pay a visit. In Dutch. Meervaart, (Sun 20.30), €13

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19-25 April 2007 World Press Photo Exhibition of winning photos from the 2006 World Press Photo competition, including Photo of the Year, the image of Lebanese youth driving through a bombed neighbourhood by US photographer Spencer Platt. The Oude Kerk features Platt in an additional exhibition, and also shows the collection Africa=Hot!, which examines climate change in Africa. Oude Kerk (Mon-Sat 10.30-17.30, Sun 13.00-17.30, opens Tuesday, until 17 June

Museums Ryan Gander: The Last Work A Docking Space event that sees Gander transform the space into a monochrome blue-painted room with an audio work playback. Visitors can experience a whispering girl express her thoughts on the nature of artistic practice and watch a video presenting the artist’s journey from his studio to his house. Stedelijk Museum CS (Daily 10.00-18.00), closing Sunday Politiek in prent 2006 Last year’s political dramas in print. Persmuseum (Tues-Fri 10.00-17.00, Sun 12.0017.00), until 29 April Jan van der Heyden The first monographic exhibition in the Netherlands since 1937 of one of the leading 17th-century painters of Dutch cityscapes. He was also fascinated by firefighting and is still remembered to this day by many as the inventor of the fire hose.

Rijksmuseum (Daily 09.00-18.00), until 30 April Grafiek portfolio Ten internationally renowned artists offer new works in support of the museum’s renewal.

Eberhard Havekost, Sarah Morris, Dirk Skreber, Jonathan Meese, Daniel Richter, Gert and Uwe Tobias, Angus Fairhurst, Luc Tuymans, Wilhelm Sasnal and Michael Raedecker have all signed their pieces, available in a limited printing of 100 portfolios. All profits go towards costs for the museum’s new building.

Stedelijk Museum CS (Daily 10.00-18.00), until 1 May

Dutch Fantasy: New Images of Dutch Fashion, see Opening

ART Opening Dutch Fantasy: New Images of Dutch Fashion Discover a new generation of Dutch fashion photographers driven by creativity and experimentalism. Participants include: Peter Jeroense, Piet Paris, Denise van Leeuwen, Yke Schotten, I’m Jac, Fleur van Maarschalkerwaart, Ferdinand, Wendelien Daan, Vivianne Sassen and Bianca Pilet. Artspace Witzenhausen (Tues-Sun 13.00-19.00), opens Thursday, until 13 May

Jim Harris: Constructies en gebouwen Recent oil paintings from the English artist, exploring the theme of structures and building projects. Galerie Krijger + Katwijk (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), opens Saturday, until 26 May Marjolein Rothman: Iconography II The final segment in the Dutch painter’s exploration of iconography. In this batch, Rothman no longer just looks at the history of idols in paintings, but goes on to prove that, correctly following the rules, anyone can become a figurehead. Motive Gallery (Wed-Sat 13.0018.00), opens Saturday, until 2 June

Architecture of the Night: Luminous Buildings A voyage into the dark night and the beautiful buildings and lighting designs that can transform the look and feel of cities. Packed with illuminated models, artworks and stunning night photography, there’s an environmental message, too, with focus on light pollution and energy efficiency.

Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00. Sun 11.0017.00), Rotterdam, until 6 May Behind the Curtains Fifteen innovative architectural designs by Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk, whose expressive buildings are icons within cities, appreciated equally by tenants and passers-by. Museum Hilversum (Tues-Sat 11.00-17.00, Sun 12.00-17.00), Hilversum, until 6 May Che! An analysis of the posterboy for the revolution, whose starting point is Korda’s 1960 portrait. Tropenmuseum (Daily 10.00-17.00), until 6 May Rommert Boonstra: Days as Grass A selection of recent works, apropos of the Dutch photographer and writer turning 65. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), until 9 May

Nicolas Fenouillat: Mijn Stalker A video work by the French artist, who references elements of his daily experience in a poetic way evocative of Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. De Glashandel (Thur 17.00-20.00, Fri-Sat 15.00-18.00), opens Thursday, closing Sunday

Vergessene Fahnen (Forgotten Flags) German artist Florian Thalhofer presents an interactive road movie and photos as he gives an account of fellow countrymen who, months after the World Cup football in 2006, are still displaying the national flag proudly— an act previously feared for its association with right-wing nationalism. Also enjoy specially imported Bavarian beer and learn how to eat Weißwurst. Mediamatic (Wed-Fri 18.00-23.00), until 11 May

Recyclage The artists in this exhibition reinvent cultural objects and artefacts to give them new meaning. De Brakke Grond (Mon 13.00-18.00, TuesFri 10.00-20.30, Sat, Sun 13.00-20.30), opens Friday, until 27 May

Beauty and the Bead: From Madonna to the Maasai This first exhibition ever to focus on beads as a worldwide phenomenon features beaded costumes from every epoch and all corners of the earth. Tropenmuseum (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 12.00-17.00), until 13 May

Van Gogh’s Friends This print room exhibition features drawings by artists from Van Gogh’s circle of friends. These include painters who later acquired fame, including Paul Gauguin and Henri ToulouseLautrec, but also others who unjustly remained lesser known, such as Hans Olaf Heyerdahl and Meijer de Haan. Van Gogh Museum (Mon-Thur, Sat, Sun 10.0018.00, Fri 10.00-22.00), opens Friday, until 8 July

The Rise A work by German artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, realised during their five-month residence in Amsterdam’s Zuidas. Dealing primarily in the medium of film, they concentrate on the complex relationship between the visual language of a building, its psychological effects and the political-economic reality in which it functions. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (Tues-Sun 11.00-17.00), until 13 May

Every Wind That Blows Video works by Kostana ˇ Banovic, ´ Ergin Cavusoglu, ¸ ˇ Esra Ersen, Ivan Grubanov and Ahmet Ögöt, ˇ in which the artists present personal points of intervention regarding their past, present and cultural traditions. SMART Project Space (Tues-Sat 12.00-17.00), opens Saturday, until 26 May Hertzberger’s Amsterdam Definitely having attained éminence gris status, the architect Herman Hertzberger will be 75 this year. Displayed in this exhibition are the maquettes of all his Amsterdam projects, thus presenting a cityscape in miniature that shows not only the realised plans, but also unexecuted designs. ARCAM (Tues-Sat 13.00-17.00), opens Saturday, until 2 June

Raimond Wouda: School Raimond Wouda: School The photographs here have been taken at numerous secondary schools in the Netherlands. Yet remarkable is the photographer’s conscious choice to avoid capturing images from classes, instead focusing on places where the pupils relax in between lessons. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), opens Saturday, until 17 June Travels Through Paradise Got an idea of paradise?

No less than 55 hobbyists, designers, architects and artists have been asked to design their own pieces of paradise. The catch? None could be bigger than one metre, for the results were joined together to form a miniature landscape along which a model train journeys. Exhibition visitors, as though passengers on the train, can look out its window to view the mini paradise via projection. Platform 21 (Wed-Sat 12.00-21.00), opens Saturday, until 27 May

25 Uitvergrote Stills Uit De Nooijer-films Alongside the exhibition of Nooijer film stills, the video installation ‘100 Years of Beauty’ is on display. Matching this are photographs of 100 people born between 1902 and 2002, illustrating the human circle of life. Filmmuseum (Mon-Fri 09.00-22.15, Sat, Sun one hour prior to show-22.15), until 13 May SIZE matters! Images of buildings and constructions from 1955 to 1985, illustrating Amsterdam’s unique urban development. Zuiderkerk (Mon-Fri 09.00-16.00, Sat 12.00-16.00), until 16 May Mapping the City This group exhibition focuses on the relationship between artists and the city from 1960

19-25 April 2007 to the present day. The show revolves around the way in which artists perceive urban space, with emphasis on the city as social community, its behaviour, poses and urban rituals. Participating artists include Doug Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Stanley Brouwn, Matthew Buckingham, Philip Lorca diCorcia and many more.

Stedelijk Museum CS (Daily 10.00-18.00), until 20 May Ten Klooster: A Man With Two Lives Showing over 50 works by the Indonesian-Dutch artist Ten Klooster, varying from paintings to wood engravings. Tropenmuseum (Daily 10.00-17.00), until 20 May Robert Capa: Retrospective Taking a broad look at the work of Robert Capa (1913-1954), the legendary war photographer and founder of modern photojournalism. His photos of the Spanish Civil War and D-Day are etched in everyone’s memory and have shaped our image of the 20th century. Joods Historisch Museum (Daily 11.00-17.00), until 20 May Eva Besnyö: Unknown Photos Work by Eva Besnyö (1910-2003) has featured in countless publications and exhibitions. Yet after her death, many still unknown and previously unpublished photos were discovered in her archive. This exhibition presents a selection of these photos, underscoring her reputation as one of the greatest photographers in the Netherlands. Joods Historisch Museum (Daily 11.00-17.00), until 20 May

Amsterdam Weekly Lucebert. Drawings Gouaches, drawings in Indian ink and works on paper in mixed media, dating from 1948 to 1993. There’s also an accompanying publication with text (in Dutch and English) by the Dutch author Cyrille Offermans. CoBrA Museum (Tues-Sun 11.00-17.00), until 3 June Flowers Under the Magnifying Glass: A Homage to Linnaeus A celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), who studied and worked in the Netherlands from 1735 to 1738. In collaboration with the National Herbarium Nederland, this exhibition provides an overview of depictions of flowers, mainly by Dutch artists or artists who worked in the Netherlands. Teylers Museum (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 12.00-17.00), Haarlem, until 3 June Brave New World Works by contemporary Spanish, Russian and Dutch artists, who level criticisms at Western society and its democratic system in a disturbing, ironic or sarcastic manner. Participating artists include El Perro (SP), AES+F (Russia) and the Dutch artists Marc Bijl, Jeroen Jongeleen and Renzo Martens. CoBrA Museum (Tues-Sun 11.00-17.00), until 3 June Lights & Drawings Light and shadow are the literal and figurative focus of this exhibition by the New Yorkbased artist and activist Paul Chan. His projections, together with charcoal drawings, collages and digital studies are presented in six rooms. The works all revolve around the digital animation series The 7 Lights, which Chan has been working on since 2005 and which will ultimately consist of seven pieces. This first major museum presentation in Europe presents all the Lights completed so far. Stedelijk Museum CS (Daily 10.00-18.00), until 10 June De Engelse Kerk op het Begijnhof: 1607-2007 Exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the English Reformed Church. Amsterdams Historisch Museum (Mon-Fri 10.00-17.00, Sat, Sun 11.00-17.00), until 17 June

Joan Colom: El Raval Joan Colom: El Raval A selection of work by the Spanish photographer, featuring 84 black-and-white pictures from 1958 to 1961, all taken during Colom’s nearly daily visits to Barcelona’s Barrio Chino district.

Known today as the Raval, the neighbourhood was once a centre of prostitution and crime. Foam (SatWed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), until 20 May Rembrandt in Berlin Excerpts from the worldrenowned collection of Rembrandt drawings from Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett. Rembrandthuis (Daily 10.00-17.00), until 27 May Miriam Bäckström & Ursula Mayer Films by Austrian artist Mayer and Swedish artist Bäckström in collaboration with the Impakt Festival. Centraal Museum (Tues-Sun 11.00-17.00), Utrecht, until 28 May Moderniteit in de Tropen: Architectuur in Nederlands-Indië In the beginning of the 20th century, architects working in the Dutch East Indies created a unique style that combined their Dutch background with local traditions and influences from modern American architecture. This collection features photographs, drawings and maquettes from Indonesia between 1850 and 1950. Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 11.00-17.00), Rotterdam, until 3 June

Testimony One of the most influential—and published—photojournalists, Nachtwey has spent more than 20 years visiting crisis areas like Rwanda, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Northern Ireland. This exhibition reflects his sense of responsibility to give a voice to victims. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00-17.00, Thur, Fri 10.0021.00), until 20 June Genesis An examination of the similarities between art and science. While the two fields may have entirely different objectives, the results of their work on information look remarkably alike. Participating artists and scientists include Ad Dekkers, Mark Dion, Edo Dooijes, Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen, Charles & Ray Eames, Ed Emschwiller and George Gessert, amongst others. Centraal Museum (Tues-Thur, Sat, Sun 12.0017.00, Fri 12.00-21.00), Utrecht, until 12 August

here include the four impressive triptychs ‘Carnival’, ‘Acrobats’, ‘The Actors’ and ‘Perseus’. Van Gogh Museum (Sat-Thur 10.00-18.00, Fri 10.00-22.00), until 19 August Dutch Eyes The relocated photography museum reopens with a broad overview of Dutch photography.

Nederlands Fotomuseum (Tues-Fri 10.00-17.00, Sat, Sun 11.00-17.00), Rotterdam, until 26 August Persia The St Petersburg Hermitage lends some of its dazzling collection of Persian art to Amsterdam. This exhibition includes antiquities of the Islamic period all through the end of the Qajar dynasty in 1925. Hermitage Amsterdam (Daily 10.00-17.00), until 16 September Scenes and Traces A lengthy exhibition focussing on three parts of the Stedelijk Museum collection: design, video and photography. Stedelijk Museum CS (Daily 10.00-18.00), until 25 November

Galleries Boghe Works by the artist who helped paint the MTV Europe Pimp My Ride garage. Wolf & Pack (Sun, Mon 13.00-19.00, Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 12.00-19.00, Thur 12.00-21.00), closing Friday Craftwerk Contemporary French ceramics. Maison Descartes (Mon-Thur 10.00-21.00, Fri 10.00-17.00), closing Friday Blackmail The artists of Red Stamp Gallery present a series of photographs, collages and 3-D objects, all erotically charged and with a focus on fetishism and the female body. With works by Christian Zanotto, Simone Lucietti, Ketra, Damian Boyall and Sonia Arata. Red Stamp Art Gallery (Tue-Sat 13.00-18.00), closing Saturday Jens Wolf New paintings from the German artist, whose latest series features experiments with concentric circles. Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries (Wed-Sat 12.00-17.00), closing Saturday

17 Appel, Frans Boomsma, Gijs Frieling, Lon Robbé, Ronald Ruseler, CA Wertheim, Luuk Wilmering, GéKarel van der Sterren, Margreet Bouman, Koen Ebeling Koning, Fons van Laar and Herman Geerdink. Arti et Amicitiae (Tues-Sun 13.00-18.00), closing Sunday SeaSideLight Artworks by Mathilde Cuijpers and Eric de Nie, inspired by the glorious light and atmosphere of the seaside. Arti et Amicitiae (Tues-Sun 13.0018.00), closing Sunday Sirens Exhibition tracing the development of the siren from an instrument initially created for sound analysis into the role of auditory alert we’re more familiar with.

Alongside a historical account, the exhibition looks at artistic appropriation of the machine, with participating artists presenting their own interpretation of sirens.

66 East (Fri-Sun 14.00-18.00), closing Sunday The Go-Between De Bijlmer plays host to a series of art projects inspired by and taking place in the very heart of the district. See article on p. 4. Various locations, De Bijlmer, closing Sunday Jonathan van der Putten Paintings. Horse Move Project Space (Fri-Sun 14.00-20.00), closing Sunday Works of Friends We Like Video works by Taatske Pieterson, Regina Kelaita, Marta Jurkiewicz, Casper Lambeck, Tijmen Hauer, Gerbrand Burger, Willehad Eilers, Sebastian Christoffel, Joris Lindhout and Orpheu de Jong. Plan B (Fri, Sun 13.00-17.00), closing Sunday Marketa Jirouskova Photography from her recent trip to the Ross Sea region of Antarctica on an ice breaker.

IISG (Mon-Fri 09.00-17.45), until 27 April Anouk Kruithof, Aram Tanis Two solo exhibitions: Kruithof presents a study of the psychological and sociological aspects of angst, while Tanis provides images from Japan. Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie (Thur-Sat 13.00-17.00), until 28 April Group Exhibition Marc Bijl, Lucy Wood, Katrina Daschner and others. Upstream Gallery (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), until 28 April Jakob Fioole: The Shape of Things to Come Paintings. AYAC’S (Fri, Sat 13.00-17.30), until 28 April ArtOlive Offline #2 Diverse works from three young artists: Erica Scheper, Marin de Jong and Douwe Dijkstra. ArtOlive (Mon-Fri 11.00-17.00, Sun 12.00-17.00), until 29 April Ars Macabra Holandica: A Celebration of the Fantastic A unique exhibition bringing together Dutch comic artists, illustrators,animators, photographers, designers, sculptors and painters, all of them sharing a love for the bizarre, the horrific and the fantastic.

ABC Treehouse (Thur-Sun 13.00-18.00), until 29 April

Fahrettin Örenli

The Apocalypse of Max Beckmann A nice companion piece to the collection on display at the Van Gogh Museum, this series features 27 lithographs from the German expressionist, all inspired by the Biblical apocalypse. Featured are two versions: the series of original lithographs in black and white and the lithographs that Beckmann himself painted in watercolours. Bijbels Museum (Mon-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 11.00-17.00), until 19 August

Fahrettin Örenli Recent works from the Turkish-Dutch artist. Dubbelbee Galerie (Wed-Sat 12.00-17.30), closing Saturday

Max Beckmann in Amsterdam, 1937-1947 An extensive retrospective of the work produced by the artist during his years in Amsterdam. One of the most distinguished German artists of the 20th century, Beckmann fled to the city in 1937 after the Nazis had labelled his paintings Entartete Kunst. His works bear witness to his interest in the world of cabaret, Dutch landscape and life in Amsterdam, and works featured

Tim Ayres Ayres’ exhibition On the status of the glass of water at its halfway mark features large-scale paintings that mix bold colours with text and design. Vous Etes Ici (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), closing Saturday

Sipke Huismans New works. AdK Actuele Kunst (WedSat 12.30-17.30), closing Saturday Marc Ruygrok, Rob Regeer Sculptures and drawings

by Ruygrok and mixed artworks by Regeer. METIS_NL (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), closing Saturday

Mens-Wereld / Ode-Angst: Passage 2 An artistic quest for meaning and coherence among nature, society and culture. Participants include: Marlies

De Belofte PAKT continue their exploration of the autonomy of the art e//////lite with help from students of the Netherlands’ art academies. P/////AKT (Thur-Sun 14.00-18.00), until 29 April Primavera 2007 A group exhibition featuring 10 contemporary artists from Italy, the UK and the Netherlands. The themes of renewal and ‘first truth’ have inspired a range of works in diverse disciplines and media, from artefacts and painting to photography, sound and digital projection. Punt WG (Fri, Sat 15.00-19.00, Sun 14.00-18.00), until 29 April Van Huis Uit... The results of a research project by the Meertens Instituut about immigrant families and interiors of their homes. The project focuses on the influence that class, ethnicity and tradition have on way of life, and the resulting exhibition presents a collage of photographs and stories about migration, material culture, identity and cultural exchange. Imagine IC (Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 11.00-17.00, Thur 11.00-21.00), until 30 April

18 The New Black and White Four photographers with a refreshing take on traditional black-and-white techniques. Hup Gallery (Tues-Fri 12.00-17.00), until 1 May Hendrik Kerstens: Paula Kerstens’ photographs, said by some to bring to mind the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. Artspace Witzenhausen (Thur-Sat 12.0018.00), until 5 May Telcosystems: Meta_Epics II Unique audio-visual computer art from international trio Telcosystems.

With self-developed software, these systems allow computers to generate and compose image and sound, meaning the artists use almost no source material that stems from outside the machines. TAG Den Haag (Wed-Sat 12.00-17.00), Den Haag, until 5 May Voorbijsnellend Ogenblik By placing two images next to each other that are seemingly similar, but which are in fact polar opposites, photographer Lucienne van der Mijle tells her own story of Japan and its contrasts between tradition and modernity. Melkweg Galerie (Wed-Sun 13.00-20.00), until 6 May

Amsterdam Weekly New Horizons Subtitled Room for New Jewellery, this new gallery aims to cross borders both physical and metaphorical, and makes a start with the aptly named first exhibition. Galerie Rob Koudijs, until 12 May 50 jaar Galerie Espace Holland’s oldest gallery for contemporary art celebrates its 50th anniversary with an exhibition featuring a large number of their regulars, including the likes of Karel Appel, Lucebert, Roger Raveel, Lucassen and Jan Roeland. Galerie Espace (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 12 May John Lurie: All-Stars of Voodoo Voodoo-inspired paintings by the American all-rounder. Galerie Gabriel Rolt (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), until 13 May White Wash of What Went Wrong A collection set in the window displays of the former ABN AMRO building restored as a public art space. Klaas Weert and Rae Witvoet introduce their second in a series of exhibitions entitled Neo Neo Conceptual Pop. Rembrandtplein (Daily), until 15 May Dark Mirror The differences between the actions of

19-25 April 2007

man and beast are not always as great as we like to think. This group exhibition of video art and film explores the relationship between our social conditioning and animal instincts, often depicting the prominence of human emotion and instinct over rational thought. Montevideo/Time Based Arts (Tues-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 19 May

The Day After Yesterday A solo exhibition by Slovakborn artist Roman Ondák. It features three new video and photo works, which try to engage the viewer in a dialogue about what might happen if one takes another route, both literally and metaphorically. bak (Wed-Sat 12.00-17.00, Sun 13.00-17.00), Utrecht, until 27 May

Ingo Meller New works by the conceptual German painter. Slewe Gallery (Tues-Sat 14.00-17.00), until 19 May

David Goldblatt: Intersections ‘Intersections’ is the term Goldblatt (1930) uses for the human and ideological crosscurrents that make up South African society and that he captures in his photos—sharp yet subtle images of the nation. It was only after technical developments in digital photography allowed him to achieve the same depth and graphical expression in colour as he could in black and white that he embarked upon a new, multi-hued journey. Huis Marseille (Tues-Sun 11.00-18.00), until 28 May

Modern Solitude A group exhibition dealing with various facets of the modern individual’s solitary existence. These include the urge to inject meaning into life via spirituality, sexuality and physicality. Participants include Eylem Aladogan, Natalia Benedetti, Job Koelewijn, Gabriel Lester, Renzo Martens, Shana Moulton and Berend Strik. Galerie Fons Welters (TuesSat 13.00-18.00), until 19 May Polska Seven artists present a contemporary vision of Poland through photography, video and music. WM Gallery (Thur-Sat 14.00-18.00), until 26 May

Erotix: Red Threads of Passion Homoerotic artworks from Danish artists Knud Odde, Jens Birkemose and Peter Skovgaard. Galerie Jos Art (Tues-Sun 11.0017.30), until 30 May UitZicht An ArtWalk Amsterdam presentation that will guide you through a selection of studios, homes and gardens in the Westerpark area. Curated by Guda Koster and Matthijs Muller, the tour incorporates artists such as Hamid El Kanbouhi, Aam Solleveld, Jans Muskee, Linda Molenaar, Wim Bosch, Jan Theun van Rees, Frank Mandersloot, Paul de Reus, among others. To see route or download the accompanying audio tour see www.artwalkamsterdam.nl.

Van Hallstraat 51 (Daily), until 17 June W139/BASEMENT Providing opportunities for young artists and young art collectors, the Post CS basement is offering space to let at affordable rates for a onemonth period. At the end of each month, the exhibits will be auctioned. See www.w139.nl/basement.

W139/Basement, until 24 June Het Licht van Tunesië Multimedia installation by Maarten Rens and Anita Mizrahi. De Levante (WedSun 13.00-17.30), until 22 July

EVENTS Thursday 19 April Lecture: Jessica Morgan The curator of Tate Modern in London talks about the work of Roman Ondák, whose current exhibition The Day After Yesterday is currently on display. In English. bak, Utrecht 20.00, free, reservations recommended

Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier Multidisciplinary: Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier The foundation offers a multi-hued agenda for the evening. Dick El Demasiado, AKA Dick Verdult, rounds off his working period at the Atelier with a performance. Alex de Vries and Maria Tuerlings debate about the importance of specialised studios for artists.

And a book presentation provides an overview of past projects. 11, 20.00, free Festival: LiteSide East meets West at this multicultural mash-up. See Short List. Sugar Factory, Odeon, De Balie, various times and prices

Friday 20 April Art/Walk: Atelier Route: Oostelijke Eilanden Installations, dance performances, concerts, paintings and so on, all inspired by the theme ‘cross-pollution’.

Today and Sunday, EnergeticA is the central location, but sprawl along Kattenburg, Wittenburg, Oostenburg, Het Funen, De Kadijken and Entrepotdok. For route see www.saoe.nl. Amsterdam Oost/Watergraafsmeer, 19.30-22.00, €5 Poetry/Music: Continuity Literary crossover specialists CrimeJazz present a multi-generational evening with two solo performances: one by father, one by son. Steve Ben Israel is a jazz musician who was part of the ’50s New York underground comedy scene.

Baba Israel is a hiphop and spoken-word artist who tours the world with the group Open Thought. Podium Mozaïek, 20.30, €10

Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007 Fashion: Blinded by the Lights ...And Beyond present their new fashion collection, taking inspiration from the moment when the lights flick on and you’re met with the reality that the party’s over. Music is provided by Dans le Rock and My Little Soundsystem.

W139, 20.30, free Lecture: 18e Globaliseringslezing: Shaking up Citizenship Dutch-born American sociologist Saskia Sassen is renowned for her research on globalisation processes and recently published the book Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Tonight’s lecture is on the diminishing role of the nation state and the shifting of citizen loyalties in times of globalisation. In English. Felix Meritis, 20.30, €12.50

LiteSide Festival: LiteSide See Short List. Sugar Factory, Odeon, De Balie, various times and prices

art and smut. After causing a stir by applying for subsidies at Gemeente Amersfoort, the organisers have succeeded in staging an extensive porn-related programme featuring many local and international artists. Various times, prices and locations in Amersfoort

Saturday 21 April Poetry: De Week van de Poëzie In celebration of the national week of poetry, organisations across the country have been invited to hold diverse word-lovin’ activities. Central to the week is the award ceremony of the VSB Poëzieprijs. See www.weekvandepoezie.nl.

Various locations, times and prices

Poetry: De Week van de Poëzie (See Saturday) Various locations, times and prices Art/Talk: World Press Photo Awards Days (See Saturday) Felix Meritis, 10.00, free Art/Walk: Atelier Route: Oostelijke Eilanden (See Friday) Amsterdam Oost/Watergraafsmeer, 12.0018.00, free Debate: Groeten uit Amsterdam aan zee Climate change discussions following on from COM.PLOT’s play Neerlantis, No Dogs Allowed, which is currently running at Theater Bellevue. In Dutch. De Balie, 15.30, €4

Discussion: Broeinest ‘Anti-militarism and conscientious objection in Turkey’ is the title of this discussion about military conscription in Turkey. Also scheduled are a film screening and a debate. In English with Dutch translation. Plantage Doklaan 8-12, 20.00, free Literature: António Lobo Antunes: Fado Alexandrino An evening with the respected Portuguese author, along with guests Harrie Lemmens and Hans Maarten van den Brink. In English. De Balie, 20.00, €9 Lecture: Lloyd Time on Mondays A lecture on Japanese philosophy and art, by comparative theologist Lourens Minnema and the Japanese artist Chikako Watanabe. Lloyd Hotel, 21.00, free Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival (See Friday) Various locations, times and prices in Amersfoort

Art/Talk: World Press Photo Awards Days The winners of the annual World Press Photo Contest present their recent works over the weekend. Photographer Susan Meiselas will also give the annual Sem Presser Lecture about Collaborative Projects. In English. Felix Meritis, 10.00, free

Debate/Music: Het Noodlotweekend (See Saturday) Stadsschouwburg, 16.00, €15

Art/Walk: Atelier Route: Oostelijke Eilanden (See Friday) Amsterdam Oost/Watergraafsmeer, 12.0018.00, free

Festival: LiteSide See Short List. Sugar Factory, Odeon, De Balie, various times and prices

Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival (See Friday) Various locations, times and prices in Amersfoort

Festival: Marxism Festival (See Friday) CREA, various times and prices

Theatre/Lecture: De Toneelschrijfdagen #6 It’s all about theatre as De Balie kicks off Tweede Toneelschrijflente: six days of lectures and new plays written by Het Platform Theaterauteurs, Het Syndicaat, Vlaamse Braakland/Zhe Building and guest authors.

De Balie, various times and prices

Debate/Music: Het Noodlotweekend Chance? Providence? Coincidence? Own fault? Urban Myth dedicates a weekend to the concept of fate, and the belief therein. Guests include philosophers Frank Meester and Coen Simon, medium/healer Sonia Pereira, De Varkensfabriek and many more. Also with musical performances by Esther Apituley and Roosbeef. Stadsschouwburg, 20.00, €15

Festival: Marxism Festival There’s sadly no sign of Harpo, but if you’re looking to get political, guests over the next three days include David Hilliard, a founder of the Black Panther Party, Khaled Hroub of Al-Jazeera, French activist Susan George and many more. See www.internationalesocialisten.org. CREA, various times and prices

Festival: LiteSide See Short List. Sugar Factory, Odeon, De Balie, various times and prices

Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival The paintings and poetry at this festival all teeter on the edge between

Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival (See Friday) Various times, prices and locations in Amersfoort

ADDRESSES

Sunday 22 April

19

Festival: Marxism Festival (See Friday) CREA, various times and prices

Art/Film: Video Shorts Featuring a screening of Alpha by Jorgos Loukakos and Madeleine Aktypi.

OT301, 20.30, €4

Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival (See Friday) Various locations, times and prices in Amersfoort

Tuesday 24 April Poetry: De Week van de Poëzie (See Saturday) Various locations, times and prices

Monday 23 April Poetry: De Week van de Poëzie (See Saturday) Various locations, times and prices Discussion: Women Inc No kids no trouble? Shifting the debate away from the question of how women can combine having children with a career, this evening deals with those who see childlessness as a key to emancipation. In Dutch. Pakhuis de Zwijger, 20.00, free

Wednesday 25 April Poetry: De Week van de Poëzie (See Saturday) Various locations, times and prices Multidisciplinary: Pornofestival (See Friday) Various locations, times and prices in Amersfoort Theatre/Lecture: De Toneelschrijfdagen #6 (See Tuesday) De Balie, various times and prices

Galerie Fons Welters Bloemstraat 140, 423 3046

Oude Kerk Oudekerksplein 23, 625 8284

Galerie Gabriel Rolt Elandsgracht 34, 785 5146

P/////AKT Zeeburgerpad 53, 06 5427 0879

Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam Rozenstraat 59, 422 0471

Galerie Jos Art KSNM-laan 291, 418 7003

P60 Stadsplein 100A, Amstelveen, 023 345 3445

Stedelijk Museum CS Oosterdokskade 5, 573 2911

Pakhuis de Zwijger Piet Heinkade 179-181, 788 4444

Studio 80 Rembrandtplein 70, 521 8333

66 East Sumatrastraat 66, 06 4475 4773

Galerie Krijger + Katwijk Lange Leidsedwarsstraat 198200, 627 3808

ABC Treehouse Voetboogstraat 11, 423 0967

Galerie Rob Koudijs Elandsgracht 12, 331 8796

AdK Actuele Kunst Prinsengracht 534, 320 9242

Persmuseum Zeeburgerkade 10, 692 8810

De Glashandel Witte de Withstraat 139

Akhnaton Nieuwezijds Kolk 25, 624 3396

Plan B2 Herengracht 32

Heineken Music Hall ArenA Boulevard 590, 0900 300 1250

11 Oosterdokskade 3-5, 625 5999

Amstelkerk Amstelveld 10, 520 0060 Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie Bethaniënstraat 9, 622 4899

Hermitage Amsterdam Nieuwe Herengracht 14, 530 8751

Amsterdams Historisch Museum Kalverstraat 92, 523 1822

Hotel Arena ’s-Gravesandestraat 51, 850 2400

ARCAM Prins Hendrikkade 600, 620 4878 Arti et Amicitiae Rokin 112, 624 5134 ArtOlive Polonceaukade 17, 675 8504 Artspace Witzenhausen Hazenstraat 60, 644 9898 Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries Bilderdijkstraat 165C, 412 1772 AYAC'S Keizersgracht 166, 638 5240 Badcuyp 1e Sweelinckstraat 10, 675 9669 bak Lange Nieuwstraat 4, Utrecht, 030 231 6125 De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, 553 5151 Bethaniënklooster Barndesteeg 6, 625 0078 Bijbels Museum Herengracht 366-368, 624 2436 Bimhuis Piet Heinkade 3, 788 2150 Bitterzoet Spuistraat 2, 521 3001 De Brakke Grond Nes 45, 626 6866 Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina Veemkade 576, 419 3368 Café Sappho Vijzelstraat 103, 423 1509 Centraal Museum Nicolaaskerkhof, Utrecht, 030 236 2362 Club 8 Admiraal de Ruyterweg 56B, 685 1703 Club Meander Voetboogstraat 3, 625 8430 CoBrA Museum Sandbergplein 1-3, Amstelveen, 547 5050 Concertgebouw Concertgebouwplein 2-6, 671 8345 Consortium Veemkade 570, 06 2611 8950 CREA Muziekzaal Turfdraagsterpad 17, 525 1400 CREA Theater Turfdraagsterpad 17, 525 1400 CREA, various halls Turfdraagsterpad 17, 525 1400 DanceStreet 1e Rozendwarsstraat 10, 489 7676 De Barderij De Barderij, 420 5132 Dubbelbee Galerie Gerard Doustraat 142-144, 623 2884

Horse Move Project Space Oosterdokskade 5 Post CS Huis Marseille Keizersgracht 401, 531 8989

Paradiso Weteringschans 6-8, 626 4521

Platform 21 Prinses Irenestraat 19, 344 9449 Pleintheater Sajetplein 39, 665 4568 Podium Mozaïek Bos en Lommerweg 191, 580 0380 The Powerzone Spaklerweg, 681 8866 PRIK Spuistraat 109, 06 4544 2321

Sugar Factory Lijnbaansgracht 238, 627 0008 TAG Den Haag Stille Veerkade 19, Den Haag Teylers Museum Spaarne 16, Haarlem, 023 516 0960 Theater Bellevue Leidsekade 90, 530 5301 Tropenmuseum Linnaeusstraat 2, 568 8200 Twstd Weteringschans 157, 320 7030 Under the Grand Chapiteau Next to ArenA, 621 1288 Upstream Gallery Kromme Waal 11, 428 4284 Van Gogh Museum Paulus Potterstraat 7, 570 5200

Hup Gallery Tesselschadestraat 15, 515 8589

Punt WG Marius van Bouwdijk Bastiaansestraat 15, 618 7848

IISG Cruquiusweg 31, 668 5866

Red Stamp Art Gallery Rusland 22, 420 8684

Vous Etes Ici Lijnbaansgracht 314, 612 7979

Imagine IC Bijlmerplein 1006-1008, 489 4866

Rembrandthuis Jodenbreestraat 4, 520 0400

W139 Warmoesstraat 139, 622 9434

Jimmy Woo Korte Leidsedwarsstraat 18, 626 3150

Rijksmuseum Jan Luykenstraat 1, 674 7000

W139/Basement Oosterdokskade 5, 06 2427 6657

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

Ruigoord Ruigoord 15, 497 5702

Winston Kingdom Warmoesstraat 129, 623 1380

Skek Zeedijk 4-8, 427 0551

WM Gallery Elandsgracht 35, 421 1113

Slewe Gallery Kerkstraat 105A, 625 7214

Wolf & Pack 232 Spuistraat, 427 0786 Zaal 100 De Wittenstraat 100, 688 0127

De Kleine Komedie Amstel 56-58, 624 0534

SMART Project Space Arie Biemondstraat 107-113, 427 5953

De Kring Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 7-9, 623 6985

Stadsschouwburg Leidseplein 26, 624 2311

’t Leeuwtje Reguliersdwarsstraat 105

KHL Koffiehuis Oostelijke Handelskade 44, 779 1575 KIT Tropentheater Mauritskade 63, 568 8711

Lellebel Utrechtsestraat 4, 427 5139 De Levante Hobbemastraat 28, 671 5485 Lexion Avenue Overtoom 65, Westzaan, 0900-BelLexion Lloyd Hotel Oostelijke Handelskade 34, 419 1840 Maison Descartes Vijzelgracht 2A, 531 9500 Maloe Melo Lijnbaansgracht 163, 420 4592 Mediamatic Post CS, Oosterdokskade 5, 638 9901 Meervaart Meer en Vaart 300, 410 7777 Melkweg Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 531 8181 Melkweg Galerie Marnixstraat 409, 531 8181 METIS_NL Lijnbaansgracht 316, 638 9863 Montevideo/Time Based Arts Keizersgracht 264, 623 7101 Motive Gallery Elandsgracht 10, 330 3668 Museum Hilversum Kerkbrink 6, Hilversum, 035 629 2826 Muziekgebouw Piet Heinkade 1, 788 2010 Het Muziektheater Amstel 3, 625 5455 Nederlands Architectuurinstituut Museumpark 25, Rotterdam, 010 440 1200

English Reformed Church Begijnhof 48, 624 9665

Nederlands Fotomuseum Wilhelminakade 332, Rotterdam, 010 213 2011

Exit Reguliersdwarsstraat 42, 625 8788

De Nieuwe Anita Frederik Hendrikstraat 111, 06 4150 3512

Felix Meritis Keizersgracht 324, 626 2321

Noorderkerk Noordermarkt 44, 626 6436

Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400

North Sea Venue Hemkade 48, Zaandam, 075 616 0290

Flex Bar Pazzanistraat 1, 486 2123

OCCII Amstelveenseweg 134, 671 7778

Foam Keizersgracht 609, 551 6546

Odeon Singel 460, 624 9711

Frascati Nes 63, 626 6866

Orgelpark Orgelpark, 51 58111

Galerie Espace Keizersgracht 548, 624 0802

OT301 Overtoom 301, 779 4913

Volta Houtmankade 334-336, 628 6429

Zuiderkerk Zuiderkerkhof 72, 552 7987

Amsterdam Weekly

20

Holy cow for the people!

Burgermeester Albert Cuypstraat 48, 670 9339 Open Daily 12.00-23.00 Cash, PIN Are you prone to fast-food frenzies? Do you sometimes watch enormously obese people, looking like stranded minky whales, being lifted by cranes into hospital beds on television? It’s quite morbidly fascinating. (Pass the popcorn, please).

And do these images stem the tide of mooing hordes stampeding to queue up for muck patties?

They do not.

But fear not, salvation is at hand in the form of organically farmed meat, shaped into burgers before your very eyes at a chic new joint in De Pijp, called Burgermeester. What is hype and what is hip? Your Glutton went to check it out.

It was almost hidden amongst the exotic Albert Cuypstraat restaurants offering something healthy to young, dynamic diet-conscious people—like me, for example. I entered a long room, one half containing an open kitchen with grill, preparation area and service counter. There was an almost Japanese simplicity to it. The opposite half was made up of seating and tables. Comfy red leatherette wall couches, black tables, white walls and a long photomontage of contented cattle for green-minded types to be reminded of who they were eating.

Sizzle, sizzle went the griddle. Aromatic smells caressed my snuffling nasal cavity. An energetic trio were at work. The friendly chefs wore latex gloves while handling the burgers, moulding the ingredients before popping them on the fire. There’s a strict hygiene colour code

THE UNDERCOVER GLUTTON My troika of little burgers arrived on individual side plates; they looked great, dainty in size yet with something of the home kitchen about them. for the chopping boards: one for lamb, one for beef, then fish, and veggies... My stomach growled for attention. ‘Hurry up, stupid!’ it said.

‘Feed me!’

I looked at the menu with dismay, not knowing what I wanted. There was a very special sounding falafel burger with grilled vegetables, Parmesan cheese and a mint-lemon mayonnaise

19-25 April 2007

(€5.50 for regular, €2.50 for mini). Or maybe a lamb burger with red onion compote and horseradish mayo (€6.50/€3.25). They made my mouth drool like Niagara Falls. But happily for me, I could get a mini-burger trio for €8, so I was able to wrap my chops round a wide range of flavours.

Flushed with curiosity and greed, I requested a Meester Biefburger (beef, grilled veggies and tarragon mayo); the lamb; and the burger of the month: grilled tuna with asparagus and chilli mayo.

My troika of little burgers arrived on individual side plates; they looked great, dainty in size yet with something of the home kitchen about them. These were posh burgers, to be sure. The rolls were hot and crisp, the meat so juicily tender and the sauces delightful. This trio satisfied me, filling the hollow space until my next feeding. I contentedly licked my fingers.

Burgermeester produces really upmarket stuff: you can get extra ingredients like pancetta, grilled vegetables, red onion compote, different cheeses or forest mushrooms to enhance your choices. There are side orders available, like salad, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, or half a corncob with butter and salt.

I looked around to see who was there, and what were they eating: my fellow diners were varied. There was a couple in business suits, slurping the fresh fruit milkshakes and seriously discussing marketing strategy. Farther up, near the entrance, a boasting loudmouth wearing expensive threads impressed his two female companions, who nodded admiringly at each word he uttered. I tucked into my food—small, costly and worth every cent. Whenever the strong desire for a good-quality hamburger arises, I will be back—this is the most interesting burger joint in town.

19-25 April 2007

Amsterdam Weekly

The Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival moves past the slasher: Scandinavians rule, a Spanish nightmare lends gravitas.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE GOREHOUNDS FILM 23rd Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival 18-25 April, www.afff.nl Pan’s Labyrinth 18 and 21 April, Pathé City

By Luuk van Huët

If the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival were a Hollywood blockbuster, it would be a rags-to-riches tale. Starting out as the Weekend of Terror in the old Alhambra cinema in 1984, the festival has evolved from an in-crowd gathering of gorehounds to a well-rounded festival devoted to fantastic cinema for young and old. For the 23rd edition of AFFF, we caught up with festival director Jan Doense to ask about its new success.

‘Well, the last thing I’d want us to become is respectable, but for the past couple of years our programme has focused less on horror and more on other genres, like fantasy and thrillers. By broadening our appeal and becoming bigger, we’ve been able to get structural subsidies.’

This year’s focus on the Nordic countries originated in last year’s programme.

Doense recalls: ‘We showed some interesting Scandinavian films last year, but we didn’t realise the connection until after the festival. When we started to brainstorm about this edition, it immediately appealed to us. The Scandinavian film situation has much in common with the Dutch one, in that most films are made with tiny budgets. We hope the Scandinavian films will inspire Dutch film-makers.

‘We plan to focus on Russian, Turkish and Hindi horror in future editions, but to keep our stress levels low, we decided to keep it a bit closer to home this year.’

Compared to last year, the Nederhorror scene has been remarkably quiet.

Doense notes: ‘Last year we had Dood Eind and Sl8n8, films I’m very fond of, but they didn’t perform well at the box office. This made the powers that be, mostly the distributors, point to those titles and say: “There’s no market for Dutch horror!” And without a distributor it's almost impossible to make a film.’

A possible solution can be found in the string of low-budget independents showing at AFFF. Doense says that though it means more security and a longer production process, ‘working with

digital video and shooting on a shoestring budget can produce results.’

A new feature of AFFF is the Eyes Wide Open category, similar to the Midnight Madness at the Toronto International Film Festival. Doense explains: ‘A lot of the films that came our way were so strange that they were hard to categorise. In the main programme they might’ve stuck out like sore thumbs.

So we decided to experiment this year by screening four films at midnight. I’ve seen them all and they’re incredibly weird, but great films.’

Exemplary of the maturing AFFF is Pan’s Labyrinth, the opening film by Spanish director Guillermo del Toro. The three-word review would be ‘Alice in Fascistland’, but this Oscar winner is a great example of how the fantastic can enrich a film instead of making it whimsical or childish.

As in Del Toro’s captivating 2002 film The Devil’s Backbone, the setting is Spain in the 1940s. The Civil War is just over, and 12-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) move to the countryside to live with her new father, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). He is an officer in Franco’s victorious army, out to erase remaining pockets of resistance.

The bookish Ofelia finds shelter from her cruel surroundings, sadistic brute of a father and sickly mother in a mysterious labyrinth not far from her new home. She is led there by a huge cricket that she encounters in the forest; once there, she meets a large satyr who gives her a startling revelation. Ofelia is actually Princess Moanna, daughter of the King of the Underworld. She was led astray many years ago and can return only if she per-

21

Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winner, AKA ‘Alice in Fascistland’.

forms three dangerous tasks. So begins Ofelia’s quest to reclaim her noble heritage, a quest fraught with peril both before and behind the looking glass.

While some viewers will see Ofelia’s adventures in the underworld as the fantasies of a troubled young girl, Del Toro seems to be aiming higher than metaphor.

The violence and terror that dominate the ‘real’ world have their counterparts in the underworld, and both domains are presented as consistent realities. And although both historical and contemporary parallels can be drawn, the greatest achievement of Pan’s Labyrinth is that it is a remarkable fairy tale in its own merits, even before you start analysing all the symptomatic layers.

The acting is superb across the board, and the production design is an astoundingly successful blend of CGI and old-fashioned special effects. There are spine-chilling scenes in both worlds that might enter the permanent repertoire of your own dream theatre, although Captain Vidal deserves special mention for his penchant for face-mashing with a wine bottle and extended bouts of handson torture.

And just as in the fairy tales of Grimm before Disney sugar-coated them, there’s a heartbreaking sadness that gives the film a gravitas rarely seen in fantasy.

There are no singing dwarves, chatting gargoyles or happy endings in Pan’s Labyrinth, but this beautiful, bittersweet gem will stay in your mind and your heart a long time after you see it. Maybe even forever after.

22

Amsterdam Weekly

Ellen ten Damme

FILM Edited by Julie Phillips.This week’s films reviewed

by Shyama Daryanani (SD),Angela Dress (AD), Don Druker (DD),Andrea Gronvall (AG),John Hartnett (JH),Luuk van Huët (LvH),JR Jones (JJ), Dave Kehr (DK),Peter Margasak (PM),Steven McCarron (SM),Marie-Claire Melzer (MM),Mike Peek (MP),Julie Phillips (JP),Jonathan Rosenbaum (JR),Marinus de Ruiter (MdR) and Bregtje Schudel (BS).All films are screened in English with Dutch subtitles unless otherwise noted.

Amsterdam Weekly recommends.

Festival Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival The AFFF has evolved from an in-crowd gathering of gorehounds to a well-rounded festival. See review on p. 21. Pathé City

New this week Catch a Fire Based on a true story and written by Shawn Slovo (A World Apart), this Philip Noyce feature shows how a relatively apolitical young man in South Africa (Derek Luke) becomes a dedicated terrorist in the early

19-25 April 2007

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone

’80s after he and his wife (Bonnie Henna) are wrongly arrested for a bombing and he’s tortured (just as torture may now be radicalising Iraqi citizen). That said, the film never strays much beyond the obvious, despite a conscientious effort by Tim Robbins to humanise a white security officer. (JR) 101 min. Pathé Tuschinski Ellen ten Damme In 2005, at age 38, the energetic singer/acrobat/actress Ellen ten Damme was diagnosed with breast cancer. In this impressive documentary (subtitled As I Was Wondering Where This Mixed-up Little Life of Mine Was Leading To), director and cameraman Rob Hodselmans follows her during that difficult year. His camera comes amazingly close: we see her in the hospital, bravely cracking jokes, and then at home, vulnerable after all her treatments, reflecting on her illness and what it has done to her.

Then, when she walks onto a stage, it is amazing to see how this shy, soft-spoken woman transforms into a diva. And it’s more amazing to see her running up and down the stage, even walking on her hands, knowing that she is also undergoing chemotherapy. Her doctors urge taking it easy, advice that is clearly wasted on her.

In one scene, Ten Damme’s physiotherapist tells her that she should not use her arm. In the next shot we see the physiotherapist helping her practise a gymnastic trick. In Dutch. (MM) 66 min. Het Ketelhuis, The Movies Employee of the Month Dane Cook and Dax Shepard are superstore grunts who compete for the film’s title honour on the shaky theory that it will get the winner into bed with new coworker (Jessica Simpson). There’s a great satire to be made here about big-box stores screwing their working-poor employees, but Hollywood studios

covet DVD rack space at those same stores, so instead we’re supposed to get excited about which of these two idiots earns more gold stars. (JJ) 103 min. Pathé De Munt I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone This leisurely, sensual new film from minimalist Malaysian-Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang (The Wayward Cloud) is about a friendship between three young people adrift in Kuala Lumpur. Hsiao-kang (played by Tsai’s regular leading man, Lee Kang-sheng) is a homeless Chinese man who gets mugged and is rescued by Rawang, an equally impoverished Bangladeshi guest worker. Later, Hsiao-kang meets a waitress named Chyi who helps care for her boss’ paralysed son, and the friendship between Hsiao-kang and Rawang is tested. With Dutch subtitles. 115 min. Rialto Een stukje blauw in de lucht Breda-based film-maker Bob Entrop directed this documentary about Dutch Sinti and Roma who survived German persecution during World War II he also travels to Auschwitz to remember those who did not. 105 min. Rialto Exile Family Movie This touching documentary by Austrian-Iranian director Arash T Riahi records the reunion of a scattered Iranian family. Some have moved to America or Europe, but the majority still live in Iran, where Riahi’s own immediate family cannot return. They stay in touch via letters, videos and webcam but long to be together again. After 20 years, a reunion is at last organised in the one place the Iranian authorities won’t suspect: Mecca. What follows is a heartwarming meeting full of tears, kisses, hugs and discussions about the clash between Muslim and

Five-Word Movie Review

GIMME GIMME CHA CHA HEELS Female Trouble De Nieuwe Anita

Western cultures. The fact that this reunion may also be their last makes it all the more special. With English subtitles. (SD) 90 min. De Balie Sunshine Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) seems to be specialising in the unconventional genre film: the romantic comedy A Life Less Ordinary, the zombie movie 28 Days Later and now the space opera Sunshine. The sun is dying and a crew of eight is sent on a long, hazardous mission to give Sol a jump-start. The name of the spaceship, Icarus, could have been more imaginative, but for the most part Boyle and writer Alex Garland (who also penned 28 Days Later) surprise us with their down-to-earth script. It’s a relief to have the characters behave like rational creatures for a change.

When an important decision has to be made, it’s not the captain who decides, nor the majority, but the one who knows most about the subject and is best

19-25 April 2007

Amsterdam Weekly

equipped to predict their chance of success. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way in the film loses some of its sensible lustre. Suddenly, a psychopath is on the loose and the characters begin to act more and more like mindless drones from a muddled horror movie. At that point, it’s the plot that could use a jumpstart. (BS) 108 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett), a rebellious, deaf teenage girl in Japan and a Mexican au pair caring for two American children. According to director Alejandro González Iñárritu, this is the third film in a trilogy that began with 21 Grams and Amores Perros.

It’s all about relationships, love in the midst of adversity and communication. In many languages with Dutch subtitles. 142 min. Pathé De Munt

Still playing

Blood Diamond Just like the previous effort of director Edward Zwick, The Last Samurai, this film is a hackneyed action flick bearing a preachy message. It may look splendiferous on the big screen, and the intentions are noble, but the underlying tone is condescending and exclusively occidental, with Djimon Hounsou cast in a thankless role as a ‘noble savage’ and Jennifer Connelly as a goody-two-shoes American reporter. The only redeeming factor is Leonardo DiCaprio, who shines as a morally conflicted Rhodesian mercenary; sadly, his Bogart-worthy role doesn’t rescue this insipid flick, despite all the bling bling of the title. (LvH) 143 min. Pathé De Munt

12:08

East of Bucharest ‘Was there or wasn’t there?’ is the central question—and the original title—of this feature film debut by director Corneliu Porumboiu. Sixteen years after Romania was freed from communist rule, a pompous small-time television host decides it’s time for a televised discussion on the revolution. The only two guests he can find are an alcoholic history teacher and an old man, both of whom claim to have been protesting on the streets before dictator Ceausescu fled, thus making the event an uprising. Insightful and funny, with spot-on performances, the film tells us more about current Romania than its light tone might suggest. In Romanian with Dutch subtitles. (BS) 89 min. Filmmuseum 300 Whatever the fanboys expected from Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, it surely wasn’t Leni Riefenstahl-style war porn. The already risible contents of the book are magnified tenfold in the film, so that the Persians are portrayed as deformed, bisexual fundamentalists, while the band of 300 Spartans are engorged, gleaming warriors for the Greek way of life. Spotting your favourite political agenda isn’t too hard, but ultimately imbues too much importance into a flick which has a character proclaim that ‘freedom isn’t free’, while we all know from Team America: World Police that freedom costs $1.05.

(LvH) 117 min. Pathé De Munt Anche libero va bene Italian family drama from Kim Rossi Stuart, told from the point of view of an 11-yearold boy whose mother disappears for weeks at a time, and whose father (played by Rossi Stuart) struggles to hold the family together. The Movies, Rialto

Anche libero va bene Babel In a North African desert, two bored boys herding goats decide to try out their gun. The shot causes a chain reaction that changes the lives of an American

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 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. Rialto Curse of the Golden Flower After wowing the international community of chop-socky lovers with Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Yimou Zhang is poised to bedazzle once again with Curse of the Golden Flower.

Aficionados of the work of gaijin like Segal’s or Van Damme’s will scratch their noggins, but the true connoisseur will appreciate the lavish lushness of the production design, the Machiavellian scheming within the decadent Imperial Court and the expertly choreographed fights, which are mesmerising to behold.

Tricked out with the richest colours, most opulent costume design and most Shakespearean plot of the year, the decline of an empire never looked better. In Mandarin with Dutch subtitles. (LvH) 114 min. Kriterion, Pathé ArenA, Pathé Tuschinski

Destricted Seven major contemporary artists and directors reflect on sex and pornography in this series of short films, recommended to viewers who are not easily offended by either hardcore porn or hardcore experimental art. Cinephiles will welcome the return of Gaspar Noé, who elaborates on the daring narrative style of his 2002 knockout Irréversible. In the segment ‘Impaled’, Larry Clark puts his head on his critics’ chopping block by staging auditions for an actual pornographic scene filmed by himself. Art aficionados will be pleased with Marina Abramovic’s beautiful reenactments of strange erotic rituals found in Balkan folk history. The remaining explicit contributions are by Matthew Barney, Sam Taylor-Wood, Richard Prince and Marco Brambilla. (MdR) 116 min. Rialto

Ex Drummer In this interpretation of the 1994 Flemish novel by Herman Brusselmans, an arrogant writer is convinced by three physically challenged freaks to join their rock band. He decides to lead them in a local band contest to provoke the literary establishment and to get in touch with some ‘real people’ in the process.

Flanders was shocked by the profanity and gross images in this pitch-black comedy, but that was exactly the comment that director Koen Mortier was aiming for in his attempt to break through the indifference of the cultural elite towards genuine social problems. In Flemish with Dutch subtitles. (MdR) 90 min. Het Ketelhuis, Kriterion Freedom Writers Idealistic teacher Erin Gruwell has found a highly unconventional way to connect with her unruly students: actually listening to them. After she hears of their rough lives, she grabs their attention by teaching them about the Holocaust. (One of her texts is The Diary of Anne Frank, which leads to questions such as: ‘Will Anne and Peter get together?’ and ‘When will Anne smoke Hitler?’) The story has its fair share of sentimentality and may be too educational to connect with the target group, but the film redeems itself with sincerity and strong acting, especially from two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank and the young actors playing her students. (BS) 123 min. Pathé De Munt Ghost Rider Maybe it was too much to expect any depth in a film basically revolving around a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle, but director Mark Steven Johnson works his Daredevil mojo once again to royally screw up. Nicolas Cage plays Johnny Blaze as a zany redneck, Eva Mendes seems cast solely as cleavage, and the bad guys look like moping Goth kids who got rejected from The OC. The only inspired moment in the film is when Sam Elliott reveals himself to be the original cowboy Ghost Rider, but that doesn’t justify the fecklessness of this utter drabfest. (LvH) 114 min.

Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

23 The Good German American reporter Jake Geismar (George Clooney) returns to Berlin at the end of World War II to cover the Potsdam Peace Conference. He hopes to find Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), a German girl he once dated, but when he does, he discovers that she is now having an affair with his driver, Corporal Tully (Tobey Maguire). Tully informs the Russians he knows the whereabouts of Lena’s husband Emil and will tell them for 100,000 marks. When he is killed, Geismar becomes determined to find out why everybody is so interested in Emil Brandt. The plot has many twists, most of them neither appealing nor surprising. Together with the beautiful film noir style, they apparently asked so much from director Steven Soderbergh that he forgot about character development. Most of the characters look like noir figures, but not for one second can you imagine them having a life outside the story. While Blanchett is charismatic enough to hold her own, Clooney is definitely no Bogey. (MP) 105 min. Cinecenter, Pathé Tuschinski

The Good German

The

Good Shepherd Director Robert De Niro deglamorises the profession of espionage in The Good Shepherd, viewing the CIA through the personal life of a fictional co-founder, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon).

Almost by accident, Wilson becomes a key Agency figure, but his professional success is paralleled by his perfectly executed personal lapse into isolation and paranoia. People expecting an in-depth exploration of the CIA will be disappointed: The Good Shepherd is less a history lesson than a film about the influence of fate and coincidence on the course of each human life.

(MP) 167 min. Pathé De Munt

The Night of the Hunter Charles Laughton’s first and only film as a director (1955) is an enduring masterpiece—dark, deep, beautiful, aglow. Robert Mitchum, in the role that most fully exploits his ferocious sexuality, is the evil preacher pursuing two orphaned children across a sinister, barren countryside; Lillian Gish is the widow who protects the children.

Laughton’s direction has Germanic overtones—not only in the expressionism that occasionally grips the image, but also in a pervasive, brooding romanticism that suggests the Erl-King of Goethe and Schubert. But ultimately the source of its style and power is mysterious—It is a film without precedents, and without any real equals. (DK) 93 min. Filmmuseum

Special screenings Closely Watched Trains Director Jiri Menzel’s 1966 classic about a Czechoslovakian boy (Vaclav Neckar) and his amorous and military adventures during World War II. It recalls the work of Milos Forman in its elliptically funny yet tender observation of the quirks of humanity. Some uproarious scenes combine with marvellously perceptive observations of both everyday behaviour and the process of a boy’s maturation. (DD) 92 min. Cavia Deep Throat This 1972 hardcore flick, with Linda Lovelace in the title role, was the first, and one of the last, porn films to be distributed in cinemas. It ultimately provoked a powerful anti-porn backlash, particularly since Lovelace later claimed she had been violently coerced into making the film. 61 min. Rialto Don’t Look Back The singer-songwriter Lucky Fonz III introduces DA Pennebaker’s classic Dylan documentary (1967). Melkweg Cinema

Female Trouble This 1975 feature is the best of John Waters’ pre-Hairspray movies and his ultimate concerto for the 300-pound transvestite Divine, whose character will do anything—including commit mass murder—to become famous. As in all of Waters’ early outrages, the technique is cheerfully ramshackle, but Divine’s rage and energy make it vibrate like a sustained aria, with a few metaphors about the beauty of crime borrowed from Jean Genet. With Edith Massey and Mink Stole, as well as some doubling on the part of Divine that allows the star to have sexual congress with him/herself, giving birth to... guess who? Also showing: Richard Kern’s short films Submit to Me and You Killed Me First.

(JR) 90 min. De Nieuwe Anita A Hard Day’s Night This 1964 feature is the Beatles’ first movie and the most fun to watch if you’re not on anything. (The boys themselves weren’t yet on anything more serious than diet pills.) Richard Lester’s comedy was hip at the time, lovable now: the Beatles play cards on the train (while lip-synching ‘I Should Have Known Better’), go to a club, and run

and jump in a field. Ringo takes a long, lonely walk beside the Thames; the boys do a slapstick chase, John says how he found America (‘turned left at Greenland’), and they all make it to the concert just in time. With Wilfrid Brambell as Paul’s granddad. (JP) 87 min. Filmmuseum Der Kick Three German teenagers were inspired by a gruesome homicide in the film American History X to commit a murder of their own. Their story was turned into this 2006 German feature by Andres Veiel: a film based on a true story based on a film, showing in the series Waargebeurde Verhalen. In German with English subtitles. 82 min. De Balie The Knack... and How to Get It Richard Lester’s slapstick rendition of the London stage hit about two men, one who knows how to get girls and the other who wants to learn, never quite comes off, but Lester’s fine sense of comic timing and clever visual style keep this rollicking comic exercise pretty much on keel. One notch below Lester’s inspired A Hard Day’s Night, made the year before. With Rita Tushingham, Michael Crawford and Ray Brooks (1965). (DD) 84 min. Filmmuseum Langer Licht In this promising debut feature by the young Dutch director David Lammers, a father and son try to cope with a family tragedy during a long, hot summer in Amsterdam Noord. The story might not be revolutionary in narrative function or scope, but the cinematography is excruciatingly luscious, turning the overlooked expanses of the North into veritable vistas for viewing pleasure. Besides showcasing the picturesque beauty that lies beneath the mundane surface of the cityscape, the accomplished acting by leads Dai Carter and Raymond Thiry, as well as locals lending street credibility as extras, are worth the price of admission alone. In Dutch. (LvH) 85 min. Het Ketelhuis

Life Is a Miracle This surreal 2004 tale, directed by

Emir Kusturica, depicts a small Bosnian town in overdrive: every emotion borders on the hysterical. The main story focuses on Luka (Slavko Stimac), who’s moved to the village with his bipolar wife and their son

to oversee a railway construction project. Disaster strikes when his wife leaves him for a Hungarian musician and his son joins the army. But Luka remains cheerful, even when his son is taken hostage and he ends up taking a hostage of his own, the lovely Sabaha. Through these colourful characters and absurd moments, Kusturica succeeds in showing us humour and fun in even the most depressing situations. In Serbo-Croat with Dutch subtitles. (BS) 155 min. Cavia Mrs Henderson Presents In Depression-era London a headstrong widowed aristocrat (Judi Dench) turns impresario, renovating Soho’s vacant Windmill Theatre and hiring an innovative producer (Bob Hoskins) to run it. When their initial success staging musical revues around the clock fades, she hits upon the idea of showcasing working-class lovelies in nude tableaux. Dench crackles as the feisty dowager who finds love and true calling late in life in this 2005 drama, elegantly directed by Stephen Frears. (AG) 103 min. Pathé Tuschinski

Mulholland Drive If you missed out on the most

compelling, yet incomprehensible, work ever made by David Lynch, catch this film on the rebound. Naomi Watts steals the show as the aspiring actress Betty (or is it Diane?), while Laura Harring is voluptuous eye candy as Rita in a multilayered tale of amnesia, Hollywood and freaky cowboys, with a lesbian love scene that’s guaranteed to fog up your glasses. Lynch turned the noir genre upside down and inside out with this one. (LvH) 145 min. Kriterion Preserve Me a Seat In this 2006 documentary, director Jim Fields follows efforts by local preservation groups to save beautiful old American movie theatres from demolition. The project centres on the Indian Hills Cinerama in Omaha, which is slated to make way for a parking lot. Dutch premiere. 96 min. Filmhuis Griffioen Le Samouraï Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 story of a lonely hit man (Alain Delon) is stylish and elegant, though not really the holy writ that Quentin Tarantino and John Woo have claimed. The film certainly has its moments (particularly the coordinated police chase

through the Paris metro), though its women characters are faintly ridiculous, while the men are mainly suave icons. Henri Decae’s brilliant colour cinematography finds something metallic blue-grey in virtually every shot, and the film is alluring as long as one remains captivated by its mannerist and slightly monotonous style. In French with English subtitles.

(JR) 105 min. De Roode Bioscoop Short fantastic films Unique shorts from the Fantastic Film Festival in France, including The Sandman (animated), Paques Man, Impressions from Rustavelli and Supremist Composition no.7: The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. Curated

by Aryan Kaganof (AKA Ian Kerkhof). iLLUSEUM

V for Vendetta A politically inspired action-adven-

ture, based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore, set in a future Great Britain being trampled by a totalitarian government, with our hero V (Hugo Weaving) as its unlikely saviour. Hiding behind a Guy Fawkes mask, V boasts no special powers other than a Shakespearean lyrical prowess and a desire to avenge those who have wronged him. But he has the will to inspire a civil uprising against the country’s leaders. Modernising Moore’s plot, the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix trilogy) have produced a talky script punctuated by visually breathtaking action sequences, while they try to sell hope through anarchy and terrorism. (SM) 132 min. OT301 Zidane: un portrait du XXième siècle Over a year before the headbutt incident of last year’s World Cup, video artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno made this experimental documentary on French football legend Zinédine Zidane. They chose a game between Real Madrid and Villareal and set up 17 cameras to follow their hero. Then they spliced the footage together and set it to the dreamy music of Mogwai, using only intertitles to suggest what might be going on in Zizou’s head. The result hints at strange parallels between a sporting match and a work of fiction. 90 min. Melkweg Cinema

Amsterdam Weekly

24 Goya’s Ghosts Seven years have passed since director Milos Forman made his last feature, Man on the Moon, but Goya’s Ghosts wasn’t exactly worth the wait. Instead of focusing on one character, as he does in his masterpieces, here Forman wants too much. Painter Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) lived in turbulent times, and Forman shows all: the merciless rule of the Spanish Inquisition and the rise of Napoleon are intercut with Goya’s own misfortunes. As a result, the film never achieves the depth and richness of Forman’s previous work. A moral centre would have helped, but even there we have to fend for ourselves. Do we go for the impassive painter, his demented muse (Nathalie Portman) or the lecherous monk (Javier Bardem)? The director can’t decide. (BS) The Movies, Pathé Tuschinski Hot Fuzz The creative team behind Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, return with a vengeance in a buddy-cop flick that, like Shaun, is simultaneously a hilarious spoof and loving homage to a genre. Top bobby Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is demoted for making his colleagues look bad, but finds a crime wave in the sleepy hamlet of Sandford that only he can bring to justice, aided by his loyal sidekick PC Butterman (Frost). Frost and co-writer Pegg prove to be a well-oiled comedic machine, while leaving room for the rest of the star-studded cast (Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Billie Whitelaw) to shine.

(LvH) 121 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

Hot Fuzz

Inland Empire Like an unending zooming shot of a fractal, textured with fire and blood, or a Droste effect in the mirror hall of an insane asylum, the digitally shot Inland Empire both rises above and sinks below standard filmic and narrative conventions. It offers a hallucinatory carnival ride through the murky subconscious of David Lynch, which may prove to be a little too dark, incomprehensible or disturbing for the uninitiated or those with a short attention span. Those who persevere are rewarded with a new masterpiece of modern art, an uncompromising experimental film and plenty to talk about afterwards. (LvH) 172 min.

Cinecenter, Kriterion It’s a Boy/Girl Thing High school enemies Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Zegers accidentally switch bodies—haven’t we seen that plot somewhere before?—in this tame teen comedy. With Sharon Osbourne as Zegers’ mother. 95 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Das Leben der Anderen This Oscar winner by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck mostly deserves all the

FILM TIMES Thursday 19 April until Wednesday 25 April.

Times are provided by cinemas and are subject to last-minute changes. Film times also at www.amsterdamweekly.nl.

De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, 553 5151 Exile Family Movie Sun 18.30 Der Kick Fri 21.00, Sat 20.30.

Cavia Van Hallstraat 52-I, 681 1419 Closely Watched Trains Fri 20.30 Life Is a Miracle Thur 20.30.

Cinecenter Lijnbaansgracht 236, 623 6615 The Good German daily 16.15, 19.30, 21.45, Sun also 11.00, 13.30 Inland Empire daily 16.30, 20.45, Sun also 13.00 Das Leben der Anderen daily 15.45, 18.45, 21.45, Sun also 11.00 Notes on a Scandal daily 21.45, Sun also 11.15, 14.00 La Vie en rose daily 15.45, 18.45.

Cinema Amstelveen Plein 1960 2, Amstelveen, 547 5175 Arthur en de Minimoys Sat, Wed 15.30, Sun 14.00 Assepoester en de Keukenprins Wed 13.30 Beestenboel Sat 13.30, Sun 12.00 The Last King of Scotland Thur-Sat 20.30, Sun 16.15 Notes on a Scandal Tues, Wed 20.30 A Prairie Home Companion Thur 15.00.

Filmhuis Griffioen Uilenstede 106, Amstelveen, 444 5100 A Prairie Home Companion Thur, Fri, Tues 19.00, Thur also 21.15 Preserve Me a Seat Fri, Tues 21.15.

Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400 12:08 East of Bucharest Thur-Sat 21.30, Sun-Wed 17.30 Catch Us If You Can Sun, Mon 19.30 Darling Tues, Wed 19.30 A Hard Day's Night Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 21.45, Sat 19.30 The Knack...and How to Get It Thur, Fri 19.30 The Night of the Hunter daily 19.45

praise and admiration it has received. A study in the dehumanising effects of state surveillance, it focuses on two men living in East Germany in 1984: a playwright (Sebastian Koch) who attracts the interest of the state and a Stasi officer (Ulrich Mühe) whose loyalty to the socialist cause is starting to erode. Predictable and slightly distant, but also disturbing and effective. In German with Dutch subtitles. (LvH) 137 min. Cinecenter, Het Ketelhuis, Pathé Tuschinski, Rialto Namaste, London He is a typical boy from a village in Punjab. She is a Londoner who rejects the Indian lifestyle. He fell in love with her at first sight. She has set her sights on marrying her English boyfriend. Arjun (Akshay Kumar) and Jasmeet (Katrina Kaif) meet during the first trip ‘Jazz’ takes to India. Her father (Rishi Kapoor) arranges their marriage against Jazz’s wishes. Back in London, Jazz rejects Arjun and accepts Charlie’s proposal. But Arjun won’t give up that easily.

Go if you’re in the mood for yet another movie about Indian vs British lifestyles. In Hindi with Dutch subtitles.

(SD) Pathé ArenA Norbit Eddie Murphy returns to the multiple roles and prosthetic blubber of his Nutty Professor movies, playing a trio of grotesques: Norbit, a cringing nebbish with a bad Afro and a speech impediment; his battleax wife, a raging sea of cellulite; and his ageing foster father, one of those crude and insulting Asians who’ve become such a reliable comic type. This dismal comedy joins a growing pile of Murphy disasters, though Thandie Newton provides some visual relief. (JJ) 102 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Normaal zijn we anders A documentary about Dionne, Fran, Bertus and Maurits, four actors with a developmental disability. Directed by Suzanne Engels.

67 min. Het Ketelhuis Notes on a Scandal A bitter old history teacher at a wild English high school (Judi Dench) befriends an attractive young colleague who’s just arrived (Cate Blanchett), only to discover she’s having sex with a 15-year-old student. Adapted from a novel by Zoë Heller, this drama is both literate and urgently plotted, with a voice-over from Dench that cuts like broken glass. Her character is sly, controlling, desperately lonely and capable of anything, and when Blanchett’s secret gets out, a proper chamber drama explodes into something much more troubling.

Richard Eyre (Iris) directed. (JJ) 91 min. Cinecenter, Cinema Amstelveen, The Movies, Pathé Tuschinski Nue propriété Isabelle Huppert plays a Belgian mother who feels her life is weighing her down. She decides to sell her house and, together with her new lover, start a bed and breakfast in the Alps. Left to their own devices, her twin sons take their abandonment out on each other in this film by Joachim Lafosse; the English title is Private Property. In French with Dutch subtitles. 105 min. Pathé Tuschinski

Our Daily Bread Sun 15.45 Ready, Steady, Go! Sat 21.45 WWW: What a Wonderful World Thur-Sat 17.15, Sun, Mon 21.30, Tues, Wed 22.00. iLLUSEUM Witte de Withstraat 120, 770 5581 Short fantastic films Wed 20.30.

Het Ketelhuis Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 684 0090 Assepoester en de Keukenprins Sat 10.00 De Avonturen van het Molletje Sat, Wed 14.30, Sun 12.15, 13.30 Ellen ten Damme Thur-Sat, Mon-Wed 18.15, 21.30, Sun 15.00, 21.30 Ex Drummer daily 19.30, 21.30 Langer Licht Sun 15.30 Das Leben der Anderen Thur, Sun-Wed 17.15, 20.30, Fri, Sat 16.00, 19.00, 21.45, Sun, Wed also 14.30 Little Children Thur-Sat, Mon-Wed 16.45 The Monastery: Mr Vig & the Nun daily 19.45 Normaal zijn we anders Fri, Sat, Mon-Wed 17.00 Schoffies Sun 11.00 Tinke Sat, Wed 15.00, Sun 13.15.

Kriterion Roetersstraat 170, 623 1708 Curse of the Golden Flower daily 17.30, 19.45, Sat, Sun also 15.15 Ex Drummer Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 22.00 Inland Empire daily 17.45, Thur-Mon, Wed 21.00, Sat, Sun 14.30 Little Miss Sunshine Sun 13.15 Mulholland Drive Fri, Sat 0.00, Mon 22.00 Sneak Preview Tues 22.00.

Melkweg Cinema Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 624 1777 Don't Look Back Thur 22.00 Zidane: un portrait du XXième siècle daily 20.00.

The Movies Haarlemmerdijk 159-165, 638 6016 Anche libero va bene daily 17.00, 19.15, 21.30, Sun also 13.00 Beestenboel Sat, Sun, Wed 15.00 Ellen ten Damme daily 19.45, Fri, Sat also 0.00, Sat, Sun, Wed also 15.00 Goya's Ghosts daily 17.15, 21.45, Sun also 12.30 The Last King of Scotland daily 17.00, Fri, Sat also 23.45, Sun also 12.30 Notes on a Scandal daily 17.30, Sun also 13.15 Princess Fri, Sat 23.30 Shut Up and Sing daily 19.30, 21.45, Fri, Sat also 23.45, Sat, Sun, Wed also 15.30 La Vie en rose daily 16.45, 21.15, Sun also 12.15.

De Nieuwe Anita Frederik Hendrikstraat 111, 06 4150 3512, Female Trouble Mon 20.30.

OT301 Overtoom 301, 779 4913 V for Vendetta Tues 20.30.

Perfect Stranger Journalist Halle Berry poses as a temp to infiltrate the business empire of Bruce Willis, whom she suspects of killing her best friend. She winds up in a game of online cat-and-mouse. Directed by James Foley, with a minor role for Dutch model Daniella van Graas. 109 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

A Prairie Home Companion Director Robert Alt-

man’s final film has turned a popular American radio show into an enormously entertaining backstage comedy with country and western music. The movie takes place during a fictional last performance of the show, which has been cancelled by a Texas media conglomerate; as the numbers play onstage, an angel of death (Virginia Madsen) wanders the wings searching for her prey. These hokey plot elements provide an adequate structure for some of the funniest and warmest character improvisations Altman generated in years.

(JJ) 105 min. Cinema Amstelveen, Filmhuis Griffioen

Princess Half Japanese-style animation and half live action, this Danish cult film tells the violent story of a priest’s bloody quest through the sex film industry to avenge the death of his porn star sister and the abuse of her five-year-old daughter. Princess is relentless in its portrayal of porn as a life-ruining business, raising the issue whether its director, cartoonist Anders Morgenthaler, should have toned down his moral judgement. Highly recommended for those not allergic to controversy. In Danish with Dutch subtitles. (MdR) 90 min. The Movies Schoffies Documentary by Marc van Fucht about the herons of Amsterdam. In Dutch. 60 min. Het Ketelhuis Shooter Steely Mark Wahlberg stars as an army sniper, coaxed out of retirement to foil an assassination plot on the president, who discovers that he’s the patsy in a government conspiracy. The story is often ridiculous, but director Antoine Fuqua provides plenty of fun distractions, including an evil Russian in a wheelchair, a conniving US senator (Ned Beatty) and a heroine who favours tank tops. (JJ) 124 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Shut Up and Sing On a stage in London in 2003, on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Nathalie Maines of Texas country band the Dixie Chicks infamously announced: ‘Just so you know, we are ashamed that the president of the US comes from our state.’ Oscarwinning film-maker Barbara Kopple records the fallout in this lively documentary, in which Maines emerges as intelligent and independent-minded, the kind of person you would love to go to the pub with—though maybe not while she was wearing her stage clothes.

(AD) 93 min. The Movies Transylvania Director Tony Gatlif likes to make gypsy road movies—his most famous one being Gadjo Dilo—and his latest film is no exception. This time we follow female protagonist Zingarina (Asia Argento) to

Pathé ArenA ArenA Boulevard 600, 0900 1458 300 (IMAX) daily 15.25, 18.30, 21.25, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.40, Sat, Sun also 10.10 Arthur en de Minimoys Sat, Sun, Wed 13.00, Sat, Sun also 10.45 Assepoester en de Keukenprins Wed 13.45, 15.45 Beestenboel Sat, Sun, Wed 15.35, Sat, Sun also 10.55 Beynelmilel daily 15.15, 18.15, 20.40, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.45 Curse of the Golden Flower daily 17.45, 20.15, Thur-Tues also 15.05, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.30, Sat, Sun also 10.00, 12.30 The Departed Thur-Mon, Wed 20.30 Ghost Rider daily 21.55 Hot Fuzz daily 13.20, 16.05, 18.50, 21.35, Sat, Sun also 10.35 It's a Boy/Girl Thing daily 13.15, 15.30, 20.50, Sat, Sun also 11.00 Mr Bean's Holiday daily 12.10, 14.20, 16.30, 18.45, 21.00, Thur also 13.05, 15.20, 17.40, 19.55, 22.05, Sat, Sun also 10.00 Music & Lyrics daily 18.00, Thur, Fri, Mon also 12.40, 15.35, Sat, Sun, Wed also 13.05 Namaste, London daily 17.50 Night at the Museum (IMAX) Sat, Sun, Wed 12.50 Norbit daily 12.00, 14.35, 17.00, 19.30 North Country Tues 13.30 Perfect Stranger daily 11.50, 14.15, 16.45, 19.20, 21.50 Shooter daily 13.15, 16.00, 19.00, 21.45, Sat, Sun 10.25 Sneak Preview Tues 21.00 Sunshine daily 13.10, 15.50, 19.10, 21.40, Sat, Sun 10.40 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fri-Sun, Wed 12.05, 14.10, 16.15, Sat, Sun also 10.05 Wild Hogs daily 14.55, 17.15, 19.40, 22.00, Thur, Fri, Mon-Wed 12.30, Sat also 10.20, 12.35.

Pathé City Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 15-19, 623 4570 Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Thur-Wed. Pathé De Munt Vijzelstraat 15, 0900 1458 300 Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.55, 15.35, 18.20, 21.35, Sat 11.30, 14.15, 17.05, 20.00, 22.50, Sun also 10.10 Assepoester en de Keukenprins Wed 12.10, 14.20, 16.35 Babel Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 20.30, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 13.05, Sat also 22.10 Beestenboel Sat 10.15, 12.25, 15.10, Sun, Wed 12.15, 14.30, Sun also 10.10 Blood Diamond Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed, Sat 22.20 Employee of the Month Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 13.25, 16.00, 18.40, 21.15, Sun also 10.40, Sat 11.25, 14.05, 16.35, 19.20, 21.50 Freedom Writers Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 16.45, Sat 18.30 Ghost Rider Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 14.15, 17.15, Sun also 11.30, Sat 10.35, 13.10, 16.20, 19.00 The Good Shepherd Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 20.00, Sat 21.40 Hot Fuzz Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.00, 14.50, 18.00, 21.25, Sat 11.55, 14.45, 17.40, 20.30, 23.20

19-25 April 2007 the Romanian region of Transylvania to be reunited with her boyfriend. When he rejects her and their unborn baby, Zingarina is inconsolable. Yet love lurks in unlikely places. It’s uncommon for Gatlif to feature a female lead, yet actress Biro Ünel (the anti-hero of Gegen die Wand) steals every scene. What Transylvania lacks in narrative, it amply makes up for in vibrant music and raw emotion. In French/Romanian/English with Dutch subtitles. (BS) 103 min. Rialto La Vie en rose Any director would have had a hard time adapting Edith Piaf’s eventful life—filled with neglect, disease and death—into a 140-minute movie, yet Olivier Dahan eschews any pretence of coherence.

Seemingly at random, he jumps through time, barely differentiating between important and less relevant events. We get to see the winning match of Piaf’s lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan, but not her role in the French resistance. Both Piaf and Marion Cotillard (giving a remarkable, fragile performance as ‘The Little Sparrow’) deserve better. In French with Dutch subtitles.

(BS) Cinecenter, The Movies, Pathé Tuschinski Wild Hogs John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H Macy are middle-aged motorcycle buffs who soothe their midlife crises with a cross-country expedition to the Pacific Coast. In New Mexico, Travolta (goofing like he hasn’t since he played Vinnie Barbarino) inadvertently torches a biker gang’s roadhouse, and the bikers, led by a sublimely typecast Ray Liotta, hunt them down. Slack direction from Walt Becker sullies this formula comedy, but the cast is agreeable, particularly Marisa Tomei as the diner owner who falls for Macy, and Peter Fonda, turning in his second Easy Rider parody in weeks (the first was in Ghost Rider).

(JJ) 105 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

Wild Hogs WWW:What a Wonderful World Casablanca. Kenza is a traffic policewoman who makes money on the side by lending her cell phone to neighbours and friends, including a prostitute called Souad. Kamel is a hitman who calls Souad after each assignment, but often gets Kenza on the phone and falls in love with her voice.

Director Faouzi Bensaïdi (Mille mois) creates his own style while mixing film noir, animation, romantic comedy, silent movies and other film genres to tell the story of Kamel and Kenza. His use of choreography, from traffic control to how people walk, makes this movie refreshing and playful. In French/Arabic with Dutch subtitles.

(SD) 90 min. Filmmuseum

It's a Boy/Girl Thing Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 13.15, 15.50, 18.30, Sun also 10.55, Sat 12.15, 14.35, 16.55, 19.10 The Last King of Scotland Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 20.50, Sat 21.30 Mr Bean's Holiday Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.45, 15.00, 17.25, 19.40, 21.55, Sun also 10.30, Sat 11.05, 13.20, 15.45, 18.00, 20.20, 22.40 Music & Lyrics Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 12.40, 15.10, 17.40, Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed also 20.15, Sun also 10.20, Sat 10.45, 13.40, 16.10, 18.40, 21.15 Norbit Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 17.50, Thur, Mon, Tues also 12.35, 15.25, Sat 17.10, 19.40 Perfect Stranger Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 18.50, 21.30, Thur, Fri, Sun-Tues also 13.40, 16.15, Sun also 11.05, Sat 10.25, 13.00, 15.35, 18.10, 20.55, 23.30 Shooter Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 15.15, 18.10, 21.00, Thur, Fri, MonWed also 12.25, Sat 11.35, 14.25, 17.15, 20.05, 23.00, Sun 12.30 Sneak Preview Tues 21.45 Sunshine Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 13.55, 16.30, 19.10, Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed also 21.45, Sat, Sun 11.15, Sat also 13.50, 16.45, 19.50, 22.30, Tues also 20.15 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fri, Sun, Wed 15.35, Fri also 13.10, Sat 10.20, 12.40, 14.55, Sun also 11.10, 13.20, Wed also 13.15 Wild Hogs 21.

Pathé Tuschinski Reguliersbreestraat 34, 0900 1458 Catch a Fire daily 16.30, 19.20, 21.45 Curse of the Golden Flower daily 16.15, 21.30 The Good German daily 21.55 Goya's Ghosts daily 13.50, 19.10 Das Leben der Anderen daily 12.10, 15.10, 18.10, 21.10 Mr Bean's Holiday daily 13.45, 16.00, 18.30, 21.00 Mrs Henderson Presents Thur, Tues 13.30 Notes on a Scandal daily 19.10, Fri-Sun, Tues, Wed also 13.30 Nue propriété daily 16.40, 21.50 The Queen daily 13.00 La Vie en rose daily 15.50, 18.50, Fri-Mon, Wed also 12.45.

Rialto Ceintuurbaan 338, 676 8700 Anche libero va bene daily 17.40, 21.45, Sat, Sun also 13.30, Wed also 15.30 Crossing the Bridge:The Sound of Istanbul Fri 16.00 Deep Throat Fri 23.00 Destricted Sat 23.00 I Don't Want to Sleep Alone Thur, Sun-Wed 19.15, Fri, Sat 20.00, Fri-Sun, Wed also 16.30, Sat, Sun also 14.15, Sun also 11.45 Das Leben der Anderen daily 19.00, 22.00, Fri, Sun also 16.15, Sat also 13.15 Solaris Sun 11.00, Wed 15.15 Stukje blauw in de lucht, Een Sat 16.00, Sun 14.00 Transylvania daily 19.45, Sat, Sun also 15.40, Sun also 11.15.

De Roode Bioscoop Haarlemmerplein 7H, 625 7500, Le Samouraï Sun 20.30.

Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007

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.

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25

FINAL CUT PRO Freelance technical assistance needed. Contact 331 4418.

IS PROJECT MANAGERS Immediate opportunities for IS Project Managers, university level with minimum 5 yrs experience, to work for major telecomms company in A’dam.

Experienced with big software applications (ERP, CRM, (PARA) MEDICS OFFICE DWH, Billing). English-speakExpatdoctorlookingforserious ing environment. Contact healthprofessionals(psy/physio/ simon@thewhitedoor.com. giro/etc)tojoinnewexpathealth UNIX EXPERIENCE? We centre in central A’dam. Still have an immediate vacancy officespaceforrent.Pleasecall in A’dam for a Delivery and 06 1771 4131 or mail to huis- Acceptance Coordinator, expeartsen@planet.nl. rienced with UNIX servers, OFFICE WANTED Working ISP applications or web applispace to share for meetings of cations. Good organisational creative team for brain- skills a must. English-speakstorming and to manage our ing environment. Contact project. Internet access need- simon@thewhitedoor.com. ed. Location: A’dam. Email HAIRDRESSERREQUIRED majita7@hotmail.com or call Looking for an experienced 06 4219 0747. self-employed hairdresser for a new salon. Please contact for WORK OFFERED more info. hairchris@aol.com.

BOOKKEEPER Amsterdam NON-DUTCHSPEAKERIfyour Weekly is looking for someone mother tongue is one of the with bookkeeping experience European languages and you forapart-timeposition.Thisper- happen to be looking for a partson is responsible for accounts time job, contact me at Europayable and receivable, gener- peanLanguages@gmail.com. atinginvoices,reconcilingmonth- No sales. end accounts and other finanBUSINESS PARTNERS The cialrecord-keeping.Inaddition, world’s largest company in thejobinvolvessomebasicoffice direct seller of telecommunimanagement tasks. Dutch and cation services is offering indiEnglish is essential. Send a covviduals just like you one of the er letter and CV to Monique mostremarkablecareeropporGruter at monique@amster- tunities in the world today. To damweekly.nl by 27 April. know what our company has NATIVE JAPANESE trans- to offer you call Mr Heeren on lator/speaker based in A’dam 06 2602 0136 or react on needed to proofread texts for www.reneheeren.acnrep.com.

UNDUTCHABLES Recruitment Agency Amstelveen: We are looking for Sales Support speaking native English or native Spanish; Customer service speaking French; Accounts Payable and Account Receivable speaking French or English. Please mail amstelveen@undutchables.nl. See www.undutchables.nl for more positions.

BIKE TAXI DRIVER WielerTaxi Amsterdam is looking for new, motivated, responsible drivers. Combine making money with staying fit.

We work all year round, 12 mths a year. The earlier you start, the better prepared you are for summer. Contact 06 3882 2683/www.wielertaxi.nl/info@wielertaxi.nl for more information.

ing and other foreign language jobs from all the major employment agencies and employers in NL on one website. www.xpatjobs.com.

WORK WANTED SEEK NANNY WORKYoung woman with nanny experience seeks work as nanny to nice family in A’dam and surroundings areas. Desire fulltime but willing to work less hours if required. Enjoy and abletoworkwithchildrenfrom 0-12 y.o. Speak Polish, Greek and English. Please contact 06 4709 7791 for initial appt.

CLEANING/IRONINGNice, friendly, efficient and experienced couple looking for more housecleaning/ironing work in A’dam/Amstelveen for reasonable price. Our work CHEFS WANTED Experi- is fast and good. References enced chefs wanted to join the available. Tel 06 4365 9790. team in a busy brasserie in BABYSITTER AVAILABLE A’dam. Send your CV to info@ Looking for babysitting job for barneys.biz. my 26 y.o. female Polish friend.

WEB DESIGN/PROGRAM: She does not speak English, Directness BV is looking for only Polish and German and flexible web designer and pro- coming to A’dam on 21 April. grammertohelpwithnewappli- Contact Magda on 06 4136 cation. Part-time work (full- 3552/mag.kowalik@gmail.com time later) offered to talented FROM DINGLISH (Dutch individualwhocanhandlePHP English) to captivatingly creand mySQL coding and who ative and eye-catching/mouthwants to be part of something watering native English. Webbig.A’dam-based.EmailAdam. sites, literature, menus, etc, dorrell@directness.net. changed. Please contact murCAREER & INTUITION 4- raydeschot@gmail.com or call week training Fri evenings. 06 3850 0072.

Start 11 April. Coaching group URGENT: WORK WANTED max 15 pers. Define, plan and I am a young female fluent motivate into action. Stop in English and who speaks searching & start living your Dutch looking for work. Have potential! In A’dam. Info: business and journalistic educareerandintuition@yahoo.c cation, but willing to babysit, om. Reservations 06 5080 clean, wait tables, hand out 5589. Free intro evening. flyers, etc. Please contact ENGLISH-SPEAKINGJOBS Lee-Netia at leenetia@hotWe have all the English-speak- mail.com/06 1271 1538.

Amsterdam Weekly

26 FULL-TIME NANNYI am 26 y.o. woman with lot of experience with children looking for a full-time job as nanny.

I live in the center of A’dam and I am also available for evening babysitting. Call Kate on 06 4675 1659.

MARKETING ASSISTANCE I am looking for job as marketing assistance/manager in international company where I can use my native language (Russian). I speak fluent English and fair Dutch.

For further info and CV please contact me: angelina.davydova@gmail.com.

FOR SALE ACERLAPTOPforsale.Bought last year June and still with guarantee. Acer, intel-celeron, 80GB. 280. Call 06 4277 4518.

KEYBOARD for sale. €200.

Call 06 4277 4518.

EVERYTHING MUST GO! Relocation sale: fridge, stove, pots, pans, books, tables, beds, ladies clothes and shoes size 38-42, double divan bed. Call Rose on 06 5043 5174.

LADIES ROLLERBLADES Almost new, size 38/39. Call Rochelle: 684 9035 or 06 5043 5174.

19-25 April 2007

orthopaedic use. Sews in all directions. Email majita7@hotmail.com.

AMERICAN DENTISTYears of experience in US. General, cosmetic, invisalign & implants. Evening & weekend appointments available at www.amsterdamdental.com or amsterdamdental@gmail. com. Free Oral-B Pulsar electric toothbrush if you request a cosmetic consultation online while supply last.

GYPSY HORSESLooking for gypsy horses for import to the US. Email mik@bit-nheavenstables.com.

LIBROS EN ESPANOLDesde Amsterdam y para toda Holanda. Compra y venta de libros, nuevos y usados, en idioma castellano. Novedades de libros recién publicados.

Sistema online y personalizado, con entrega en su domicilio. Mas información en: www.lagacetaeuropea.com.

VEHICLES VESPA PK 50 It’s red and white with both racks front and back. Ran well when parked. Also comes with chain and one helmet. Price is €550.

Email limostu@yahoo.com for pics. Call 06 4656 4369.

SERVICES ACTION STEPS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE Coaching with a friendly, experienced professional. Are you expressing your gifts and talents? Set new goals for success with a plan and strategy. Take action to get what you want in your career/work and in relationships. Testimonies available. Guaranteed. 06 1831 6261.

IN-LINE SKATES Almost brand new skilines, two pairs sizes 41 and 42, perfect condition, high-quality. Call Kate: PIRATE PARTIES Treasure hunt with treasure chest & 06 4675 1659. loot, pirate puppet show, pirate KIDS MOUNTAIN BIKE games, pirate storytime, jugBrand new, size 20’, 18 gears, gling and pirate toys for everyshocks in front and back. In one. Captain Sam the Pirate, original box, easy to put togeth- in full costume and characer. 150. Call 06 2640 3741. ter hosts the party in English.

SEWING MACHINEfor sale. Age 4 years and up. For free Professional, model Class 20 details contact Captain Sam: Patch (like new). Ideal for strangeog@yahoo.com.

living in A’dam or surrounding area? Do you want someone to help you in your housecleaning, ironing or grocery shopping? An experienced, legal, black Dutch guy will help you out with affordable prices. I have good references.

Try me and you will love it very well. fkafriyie@yahoo.com.

FREE COACHING TIPS! Receive free coaching tips via email in my monthly newsletter. Sign up at thewatersfine.org/news. If you’re curious about how coaching can support you in achieving your goals at the office or home, email Ty at info@thewatersfine.org.

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

Reasonablerates,quickservice.

Contact Lee on 06 2388 2184 or isabelleandlee@planet.nl.

NEED A STUNNING WEBSITE?Experiencedwebdesigner builds professional, unique sitesforveryreasonableprices.

Online links to past projects available. Jordan: jordangcz@yahoo.com,0630341238.

shoe repair, luggage and HOUSEKEEPING Are you XPAT PAGES Looking for

English-speaking plumber, cuts starting from €15. Please dentist, lawyer, etc? www.xpat- call for appt on 773 6095. pages.com.

PRODUCTION SERVICESI EXPERIENCEDweb design- will manage everything that er generates professional is needed for your photos/films static and dynamic web pages. productions: accommodation, Multilingual CMS portal sys- travel, location scouting, pertems with Shop functions and mits, professional crews booknewsletter. Interested? Email ings, studios and equipment rentals, castings, everything. erkosys@gawab.com. marjorievanh@gmail.com.

RENOVATING, REPAIR, (French & English spoken, construction work. Experi10 yrs experience). enced ‘standbuilder’ with flexible hours. Call 06 3083 NEED A HAND? Well-travelled, versatile and reliable 6494 and ask for Ernst.

Irishman, 38, new to A’dam, PROFESSIONAL HAIR offers short-term assistance COLOURIST with 15 years in handyman work, decoratexperience offers his exper- ing, gardening, moving house, tise in salon or at home. Nat- etc. Most things considered. ural highlights, tints and cre- Call Jack: 06 1410 3234. ative colours. Contact Daniel at McTavish. Call 06 2413 7392. TULIPANYAre you thinking about starting your own busiWEBSITES & BROCHURES ness? Do you have a compaDo you need a professional ny but administration and website or brochure? Expe- papers are not your thing? rience and creativity at a rea- Do you need a business plan, sonable price. Ask for exam- labour from abroad, to buy ples to ramiro@re-type.com. real estate or moving abroad?

HAIRDRESSER English Call Tulipany on 06 1021 8271 mobile hairdresser in A’dam. or email tulipany@live.nl.

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUSDo you have a problem with food? Maybe we can help.

English-speaking Overeaters Anonymous meetings: Tues 19.00, 3de Hugo de Grootstraat 5.Thur20.00,NieuwezijdsVoorexperience, CIDESCO, BAB- burgwal 282A. For more info TAC ANBOS, soft laser hair call 408 3282 or 06 4874 9590. removal, advanced electrol- DREAM DENTISTCitizen of ysis, P8N8 oxygen facials for the world & American-trained. acne/deep cleansing/anti- Lasting relationships with age at McTavish Hairsalon in patients is important to me. I De Pijp. Contact 06 4079 9921 pledge excellence in all I do or visit www.lindayoungaes- and look forward to helping you thetics.com. make the most of your smile SHIPPERA’dam to Costa Rica.

Email findmehere2@gmail. com.

HEALTH & WELLNESS JUMPING THE ABYSS Specialist counselling in dealing with existential despair, nihilistic emptiness and the loneliness of the long distance thinker under the expert guidance of philosopher and metaphysician Jack Milton. First consultation free. 06 1488 9377.

THINKING ABOUT THERAPY? Heighten your quality of life and improve your relationships with the help of a native English-speaking therapist. My 20 years of professional experience and understanding can help you better cope with feelings and sort Have your hair done in com- BRAZILIAN WAXINGBritish through stressful thoughts. fort of your own home. Hair- Beauty Therapist. 25 years Contact Sagar 06 4626 5412.

TANTRA MASSAGE Sacred sensual massage created to arouse, circulate and increase sexual energy throughout your entire body. www.whitelotuseast.com. Select ‘Goddess Europe’. Contact Shanti on 06 4277 3290.

HOME IMPROVEMENT BOMBA CITY DESIGNInternational design group Bomba City Designs will be based in A’dam from May-Sept. As acclaimed spatial designers we are looking for inspired creatives looking to make something different and adding 15% property value.

Book for a consultation.

Change, create: bombacity@ gmail.com.

PAINTING Professional painting, faux finishes, plastering and construction, interiors exteriors, furniture floors, boats and canal-hous& your mouth’s well-being. For es. Very experienced and crenow and years to come. Con- ative. Free estimates. Please tact 612 6093/www.avicen- call 06 2324 5957. nadental.com.

NEED A CONTRACTOR ?

HEALINGFor healing, stress- For all your electrics, kitchen release and deep relaxation. works, installations of bathHighly experienced healer rooms and toilets, roof and reiki master. Also for rei- repairs, garden works, techki courses. Tel 679 8753 or 06 nical advice, painting, reno2214 3030. vation and reconstruction, restoration, tiling, toilets, MASSAGE floors, carpentry, plumbing MASSAGEVery special expe- and much much more, call rience. Phone 06 2270 2135. the Klus Bus on 06 1899 1782 TOTAL BODY RELAXHeal- or www.klusbus.net. ing fatigue and stress through HOUSE RENOVATIONS!Do touch is powerful and natu- you need cost-effective and ral. Call Kristal: 06 2746 6727. high-quality full house renFULL BODY MASSAGE in ovation? Professional expeA’dam fo men only by young rience and good references. male masseur. Also 4-hands Online links to past projects. massage with 2 male masseurs. Contact 331 6550/06 4451 Call 06 2389 1289 for infor- 7410/karol-rajczyk@homail .com. mation or appointment.

Amsterdam Weekly

19-25 April 2007 MASTER BUILDER with over 25 years experience as home builder and home improvements. No job too small. We do it all: from planning, framing, flooring, electricity, plumbing, etc. Please email amsterdamstu@yahoo. com or call 06 4656 4369.

COMPUTERS

DRAWING AND PAINTING Drawing and painting workshops by professional artist, various techniques, all styles.

For info call 681 3067/joneiselin @hetnet.nl.

GUITAR LESSONSLearn the tricks of the trade about guitar in your own home arranged to your schedule. An experienced guitar teacher with world touring experience and Grammy Award nominations offers private lessons in all styles and levels to any age student. Jim: 06 1395 0986.

PC HOUSE DOCTOR Specialised in virus/spyware removal, H/W, S/W repair, data recovery, wireless, cable/ADSL installation and computer lessons from friendly and experienced Microsoft professional WRITING WORKSHOPThe for reasonable price. Contact Amsterdam Writing Workshops Presents: The Novel.

Mario 06 1644 8230.

We’ll meet the challenges of NEED HELP WITH YOUR this marathon effort: startMAC? MAC-lover helps you with basic setups, minor trou- ing, keeping the faith and finbleshooting, install, net- ishing. Two days on Sat & Sun, working, basic MAC lessons, 19-20 May, 13.00-17.00. ABC setting up programs, MS Word, Treehouse A’dam. Write to QuarkXpress, etc. Help with info@amsterdamwriting.com purchasing the right MAC. or visit www.amsterdamwriContact Sagar at 779 1926. ting.com for more info.

PC GARAGERemove viruses, check for errors, re-install Windows, delete/create partitions from DOS, GHOST, LAN, etc.

Includinglessonsforbeginners: Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, Illusion, Sound Forge, Reason,videoeditingand2Danimation.Contactnsroller@gmail. com or 06 1493 4482.

COURSES

VOICE LESSONS Internationally trained classical singer offering lessons to singers at all levels. Affordable and enjoyable lessons!

For more information call 06 1745 5080.

PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPLearn how to take better pictures in this 8-hr workshop specially designed for beginners with focus on composition, light and angle of view. Admission 160. Dates: 10, 24 May & 14, 28 June.

Location: ABC Treehouse.

For more information call Patricia, 06 2956 6427 or email patricia@patriciaribas.com.

2 May. For more information about the course and other weekly on-going classes, please visit www.yogacafe.org or email info@yogacafe.org.

Dutch/French! Please call hr/wk. We have an unconme: 06 4675 1659, Kate. ventional and very clear learnENGLISH CLASSESwanted ing method. Fun classes, for Spanish native speaker. emphasis on conversation and Elementary level. Preferably inexpensive! Visit www.joostBLISSSmall mind, small joy. joining a small group, and with weethet.nl, call 420 8146 or Infinite mind, infinite joy. classes stressing conversa- email info@joostweethet.nl.

You get to choose! See essen- tional skills. Are you a good DUTCH LESSONS A’DAM tialmeditation.org. (How to teacher or do you know of one? Improve conversation/prodrown a world of worries in Please call 06 1750 8331. fessional purpose/studies/NT2. a sea of bliss.)

NEWINA’DAMStill not found Also online. Min individual YOGAYOGA.NLoffers Hatha, therightenvironmentforlearn- rate €15/hr. Adults & children.

Iyengar and Vinyasa Flow ing Dutch? Try us: C & C Lan- Also intensive courses. Min classes. Daily morning and guage Support. Lessons in a intensive: 15 hrs = €215.55. evening, in English, in A’dam relaxed atmosphere, for indi- Mon-Sun. 10.00-21.00. http:// close to Jordaan. Also class- viduals and small groups. Con- home. tiscali.nl/stylusphant/ es on weekend: 3 on Sat as centration on practical use indexdutch. html, excellentwell as monthly Sun work- and conversation. For details, dutch@hotmail.com or call shops. Visit www.yogayoga.nl visit the website: www.lasu.nl. 06 3612 2870. or call 688 3418.

ENGLISH PRACTICE GRO IMPROVE YOUR DUTCH! PERSONAL YOGA Profes- Weekly practice group led Link Taal Studio, a professional sional & friendly yoga teach- by certified, experienced way to learn Dutch, private er, Jeroen, gives affordable TEFL instructor. Focus on lesssons, small groups, intenclasses in English, German grammar, vocabulary,pro- sive course, etc., starting every and Dutch. Certified in nunciation, comprehension, week, Vijzelgracht 53. Contact Hatha/Ashtanga yoga, RSI and etc. Discussion, reading and linktaalstudio@gmail.com or stress-solving.Exercisesadjust- writing. All levels welcome. 06 4133 9323. ed to your personal needs. The Informal & inexpensive, in DUTCH LESSONS New practice will vitalize and A’dam centrum. Info at evening courses starting in strengthen your body and spir- jehrlichnl@hotmail.com, 486 April and May, centre of it. Contact 06 4138 7253.

A’dam. €200-€250 for 20 hours.

1037.

BIBLE EDUCATIONEnglish- ENGLISH LESSONSoffered Visit www.mercuurtaal.nl or call 693 4250. language, part-time Bible eduby very experienced nativecation offered biweekly on speaking TEFL-certified CITY LANGUAGE WALKS Sat in A’dam, The Hague, RotEnglish teacher. Reasonable improve your Dutch, explorterdam and Eindhoven. For rates and informal learning ing A’dam, practical & daily sitChristians eager to study the environment. Please contact uations, reading & discussing Bible and be active in their 06 2324 5957. newspapers, intermediate levchurch. Low course fee. See el. Information 06 4133 9323 www.dewittenberg.nl/bee, LEARNING DUTCH?JOOST email bee.dewittenberg@ WEET HET! We offer inex- or linktaalstudio@gmail.com. hccnet.nl or call 078 674 7339. pensive evening classes 2x2 SPANISH BEGINNERS A hr/wk. Improve your Dutch new group (3-max. 6 pers.)

LANGUAGES fast at Joost Weet Het and begins Wed 25 April & Wed 2 LANGUAGE EXCHANGE have loads of fun. Courses on May from 19.30-21.00. ClassI’m offering English lessons all levels and real quality. Vis- room ABC Treehouse close in exchange for Vietnamese. it our website www.joost- Kalverstraat&Spui.WithSpanPlease call 06 2626 0310 or weethet.nl, call 420 8146 or ish native teacher. More info: email info@joostweethet.nl. www.unlimitedeurope.org. tefl@europe.com.

IYENGAR YOGA CLASSES with certified Iyengar yoga teacher Cristina Libanori, Tues 19.30-21.00 at Training Centrum, Europaplein 127 near RAI.Tram4(stopDintelstraat). €10/class; with€10-card yoga strippenkaart €9/class. Indiv therapeutic classes arranged WWW.YOGACAFE.ORG byapptat€20/hr.cristina@the- New yoga intermediate & LANGUAGE EXCHANGE INTENSIVE DUTCHCOURS- PRACTICE ENGLISHwith a wheel-of-yoga.com/773 5307. beginner courses starting on My Polish/English for your ES at Joost Weet Het! 4x4 British-Americantutorbyread-

27 ing great English and American drama. Correct grammar and syntax discussing themes of American and British plays and playwrights such as David Hare and Tennessee Williams.

Make English educational and interestingagain!Geminirise@ gmail.com or 06 16 777 520.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

WORKSHOPS De Helende Kracht van de Ziel: 26 April, 31 Mei, 28 Juni, Centrum de Roos, 19.00-21.30 uur. Ervaar de kracht van je ziel tot in je cellenviaenergiewerkenmeer!

Voertaal nederlands en/of engels. Voor info/inschrijving: MUSICIANS www.soul-healer.info or www.

GUITAR/BASS PLAYER roos.nl of bel naar Katharina: needed for band in A’dam. 023 844 0371.

Influences incl U2, Radio- BOOKCLUB Interested in head, Coldplay, etc. More info joining a bookclub? We meet on myspace.com/kkeettzz, once a month in central A’dam kkeettzz@yahoo.com or and read both fiction and phone 06 4107 2024. nonfiction. We are a mixed

PERSONALS WASTELANDS APRIL!I am coming to the Dam on 20 April for a weekend culminating at Wastelands. I would like to offer my services as a male slave in return for accommodation. Me English, tall, cute and hard-working! Email promisingboy@hotmail.com.

20.00-23.00atSugarFactoryfor Globalwarming.org. A diverse new platform for dance/theatre/music. A chance to bring nightlife and theatre closer to each other. Visit www.sugarfactory.nl or check out www.debeterewereld.nl.

LIVING WITH DIABETES An anthropology UvA Masters student is conducting research about the experience of diabetes in everyday life. If you are young and have type 1 diabetes, I’m interested in what you have to say. www.adrianadiazdelcastillo.com/diabetes or email group of all ages and nation- young.diabetes@ gmail.com. alities, but discussions are WHITEST BOY ALIVE Do in English. If you are interyou have 2 tickets to The ested, drop me a mail: susanWhitest Boy Alive concert in newintrich@hotmail.com.

Paradiso and don’t wanna SEXUALITY RESEARCH go? I’ll buy your tickets then!

University student in Gen- Tel 06 1616 5936 or email der Studies conducting giu@badtemperdesign.com. research on personal & social TEMP HOME FOR CATideas about female masturGood temporary home needbation in the Netherlands. If ed for healthy, 11 y.o. cat. Very you are a woman and a Dutch sweet, neutered male (Eurocitizen and want to partici- pean short hair) in need of pate in this research, fill out loving temporary home for the anonymous online sur- several weeks. Proof of all vey at http://masturbate. vaccinations. Great mouser.

2truth.com Can provide litter box if need-

DATE WANTED Charming, well-educated, athletic man, living and working in central A’dam, super social skills, enjoys practicing many sports, music and traveling is looking for good-looking, VREEMD VOORAFJE PRE- ed as well as cat food! If you slim girlfriend, with g.s.o.h. SENTS: Move-Me-Nt’s Dance can help call Gary: 06 3380 and similar interests. Email and Theatre Marathon, 3 May, 1786 after 18.00. amsterick@hotmail.com.

FRIENDS WANTED Several positions have opened for friends. All ages, sizes, male, female str8, gay, whatever!

Must be energetic, fun & easygoing. No snobs but dog owners welcome. Anyone who wants to have walks, chats, nights out or in. To learn & teach, share & discover. Whatever! Email benl.nl@easy.com.

Thanx. X.