Amsterdam Weekly: Vol 5 Issue 44, 13-19 Nov 2008 by Amsterdam Weekly

Volume 5, Issue 44

13 - 19 NOVEMBER 2008 The food & drink issue

The city, pre-chewed

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From liquid lunch to edible perfume How a Jordaan distillery went from ﬁghting scurvy with jenever to spraying odour on your food. Page 8

FEATURE

REPORT

PROFILE

AGENDA

Get your fill of third sex from host/ess Laxminarayan Tripathi.

Fuel up on bio-patat at the healthiest snackbar in (the west side of) town.

Heat up your insides with Mr and Mrs Gupta’s famous Indian cuisine.

The klezmer punk of Geoff Berner, Amsterdam Calling and a river of chocolate.

Page 5

Page 6

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Page 10 and onward...

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

In this issue and...

Attachments

By Arnoud Holleman

It’s very auspicious that our food & drink issue falls with the opening of the Amsterdam India Festival, celebrating a country which boasts one of the great cuisines. At the same time, as we discover in these pages, Amsterdam stands at the vanguard of ‘edible perfume’ production, which backs the work of top Spanish chef Ferrán Adrià of El Bulli fame, who put molecular gastronomy on the map—and thereby reinforced the fundamental role of smell when it comes to taste. (Let’s ignore the fact that Adrià admitted last week to being a fan of the McDonald’s hamburger.) Meanwhile, in other food news, the EU will have voted on 12 November for the return of the bent cucumber and twisted carrot. Yes, in recent years there have been strict guidelines on what a fruit or vegetable should look like and much produce was simply dumped if it did not match up to a certain standard of shape and straightness. Sure, the supermarkets were happy with these easy-to-pack products. But just think of the waste. Now we just need to get the UN to vote on worldwide acceptance of bent and twisted people. Equal rights for vegetables and humans... We can always dream.

Features Inbox Fair Food. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Nature Calls Grass snakes . . . . . . . . 4 Feature Laxmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Amstergraph Ofﬁce empathy . . . . . . 5 A Quick Bike Fix Sinterklaas . . . . . 5 Street Fashion Fashion awards . . . 6 Report Bio-snacking . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 People Versus Rembrandtpark . . . . 6 Proﬁle Mr and Mrs Gupta . . . . . . . . . 7 Main feature De Ooievaar . . . . . . . . 8 3 Questions Geoff Berner . . . . . . . . 14 Film Review Your Father. . . . . . . . . 18

Agenda Short List 10 / Music 11 / Clubs 14 / Gay & Lesbian 14 / Stage 15 / Events 15 / Art 16 / Addresses 17 / Film 18 / Film Times 20

Plus The Mouth Caspian . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Night in the Life Canvas . . . . . . . . . 21 Classiﬁeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Fokke & Sukke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

On the cover Illustration by Chris Lee Check: www.unitedunderwear.com

Next week Food & drink garbage

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Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AROUND TOWN

Inbox

Sustainability of hope Submitted by: Raoul Syrier Function: project leader at Fairfood International By: email Date 10 November 2008, 10.39 Subject: Opinion piece Fairfood The previous Amsterdam Weekly (issue 43), stated that 40 per cent of the Dutch worry about upcoming food shortage and 53 percent worry about upcoming water shortage. These figures mentioned in the ‘Amstergraph’ caught my attention and actually filled me with a good dose of hope. Just one week prior, a rather hopeless report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was released. The findings showed that the Dutch are over-consuming natural resources (such as soy, coffee beans and fish) to such a severe degree that twice the current global supply is needed to meet world demand in case the rest of the world copies our consumption level. The Dutch consume an overwhelming amount of resources whose production harms biodiversity and the general environment in the countries of origin, not to speak of local labour conditions and profits. But at least we realise that the era of abundance will soon end, as the Amstergraph made clear. And that is exactly why I am hopeful. According to the WWF, making our consumption behaviour more sustainable is the solution to solve our problem of overconsumption and its disastrous effects in producing countries. Fairfood International, the Amsterdambased international NGO that I work for, has been very active in prompting the international food and beverage industry to make its production and trade chains more sustainable with regards to social, environmental and economic aspects. But in order to convince brand owners of mainstream supermarket products of the urgent need to do so, Fairfood needs consumers’ support. Many companies seem to be reluctant to increase the sustainability of their hot selling peanut butter or fruit yoghurt if no actual demand from consumers exists. For that reason Fairfood advises consumers on what products to buy. For an overview of products, please check www.fairfood.org or request a free Fairfood Pocket Guide. If more consumers choose for sustainability, companies will follow. Convincing consumers to shop sustainably is not as easy as the Amstergraph figures would suggest though. Most consumers are aware of the general global problems and crises, but are not familiar with particular problems in food chains. For example: your delicious Sunday morning omelette (laid by a Dutch chicken) possibly has a relation to deforestation and forced labour in Brazil. To further explain this, I would need the rest of this column. But in short, most soy used in chicken feed is produced unsustainably with regards to environmental and social conditions in countries like Brazil and Paraguay. The complexity of such issues does not discourage Fairfood from informing consumers. Last month, Fairfood created a stunt to thank companies that use sustainable soy in the production processes of their products. The author of this column, dressed in a ridiculous chicken suit, handed out sustainable eggs of Natuurfarm De Boed and Kwetters at the Museumplein while a team from Fairfood and celebrities phoned several companies. The effort was definitely worth it: Fairfood received positive radio and newspaper coverage. Awareness is the first step. The fact that 40 per cent of the Dutch worry about food shortages is promising. I hope my wish is sustainable and the Amstergraph in November 2009 states that 40 per cent regularly buy sustainable food products. It is about time to act: eat fair, beat hunger! Got an opinion? We want to hear it. inbox@amsterdamweekly.nl

Nature calling By Mark Wedin

Illustration by Nanna Koekoek

Slithering socialists While the world was focussed on the counting of votes in America, some were focussed on the counting of other things. Like snake eggs. Our own city ecologist, Martin Melchers, has been rooting through various compost piles in Amsterdamse Bos, looking for, as he likes to put it, ‘white gold’—small, deflated eggshells that were, only weeks ago, home to the next generation of local grass snakes (AKA ringslangen). He’s been doing this every year for the past 15, counting the number of eggshells, and using them to estimate the snake population in the forest. And the snakes are doing rather well. In total, roughly 15,000 eggs have been found, meaning about a thousand babies every year. (At least, those are the latest figures. No one has called for a recount.) Like the emergence of liberal politicians in America, the success of these snakes is a positive sign for the green movement—except maybe the green frogs and little fish they eat, but that’s part of the cycle. A healthy population of grass snakes is a direct indication of a healthy habitat. Avid swimmers, if the water’s clean and the fish are healthy, then the sensitive grass snakes will thrive.

Knowing of their abundance, however, is no reason to be concerned. Most of them will soon curl up in groups under tree roots or in abandoned rabbit holes to hibernate. And even if you do come into contact with one—which is rare as they’re quite skittish—their mild venom isn’t harmful to humans. Though, they might use their last line of defence: playing dead. This means lying on their back, white belly exposed, mouth open, tongue hanging out and releasing a rotting faecal smell that would make Death himself hold his nose. (Remind you of a certain Republican elephant?) Once you’re gone, the snake will quickly slither off to the tall grasses or cold waters for safety, sleep with his friends in the winter (like a good socialist), and start all over again in spring. Special thanks to Martin Melchers, stadsecoloog. Got nature tips? naturecalls@amsterdamweekly.nl

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

India Festival

AROUND TOWN

By Sharida Mohamedjoesoef

NEITHER MAN. NOR WOMAN. ALL HUMAN Laxmi: once a social outcast, now the face of India’s third-sex community. Laxminarayan Tripathi (28) travels around the globe, going out of her way to fight for the rights of hijras, a sexual minority on the Indian subcontinent with their own traditional infrastructure embedded in Indian history. She has the credit of being the only transgender member of the UN’s Civil Society Task Force on HIV/AIDS. There are no exact numbers on how many hijras there are in India. Some say 50,000; others claim it is closer to two million. When interviewing her, one cannot help being completely mesmerised by her pitch-black eyes. Her sensual lips. Her nasal twang à la Fran Drescher. Her lanky strides. And that’s only the outside. Diving beneath the surface is equally intriguing: she’s witty, well-versed in religion, has an unmistakable flair for the dramatic and is obviously a social butterfly who really cares about issues. Until 30 November, she is hostess of the Mumbai Direct Salon at Lloyd Hotel, where she will address many aspects of

Go sister! Go brother!

Indian culture in India and the diaspora. Between 14 and 19 November, there is also live music played on traditional instruments and dance performances by a ﬁve-member troupe. You are a hijra. What does that mean? There is no exact word to describe the hijra community in India. But it all begins with the soul. One must have a hijra’s soul—in other words, someone who is feminine but not a woman, masculine but not a man. You go beyond the boxes of man and woman and end up with the so-called Third Gender. That is the hijra. Some deﬁne hijras as eunuchs? Oh I know! [She gasps dramatically]. Here, look. [She holds out her passport] ‘You see, it says eunuch. I told them this is a wrong word. You can be a castrated man and still be a man. You can be a noncastrated hijra and still be a hijra. In my passport I have three sexes: female,

Photo by Marc de Clercq

eunuch and transgender. I prefer the latter, because it is the closest English word to the term hijra. Hijras have been part of Indian culture for centuries. How do you explain the stiﬂing social climate nowadays? Hijras are mentioned in various classic works, like the Manu Smriti—an ancient Hindu book of law. We rose to high positions in Mogul times. But when the era of the British Raj—the Victorian Age in particular—began, things took a turn for the worse. Laws were passed in which hijras were described as ‘sodomites’ engaging in ‘homosexual offences’. And we have become more vulnerable ever since. Aren’t you protected by Indian law? The Indian constitution stipulates that one cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, caste, creed, religion, blah, blah, blah. But what is in the books is one thing, what is practiced another. As a hijra you do not have many employment or education possibilities, and usually hardly any support from parents, siblings or friends. All you have is your hijra community to fall back on. There is this notion that since we cannot procreate, we serve no purpose in society. How silly, because we can be productive to society with our art, music, dance and our ethics. How you do survive? We have three possibilities. To begin with, we do blessings at births, weddings and other auspicious ceremonies. We sing, dance and clap. These are intended to bring good luck and fertility. The second possibility is to beg and then there is the third option, sex work. I only danced and clapped. No begging or soliciting for me. The third option in particular poses a problem for our community, as there is a lot of unsafe sex going around. HIV/ AIDS is rampant amongst hijra sex workers. Don’t you ever tire of the discrimination and want to leave India? Oh no, I could never ever think that. There is a huge stigma regarding our hijra community and my parents have always stood by me—and that took guts in such a conservative society. I may leave India after my parents are no more. But even then, there is still so much work to do to empower the hijra community.’ Empowerment? Do tell. I joined Dai Welfare Society, a Mumbaibased NGO, which works for the community, especially in HIV/AIDS awareness. That didn’t do the trick for me, so I started Astitva, an organisation for the support and development of sexual minorities. And before long I was joined by many others. But it doesn’t stop there, since we hijras are also to blame for the stigmas. We have to stop thinking along the lines of ‘Can’t do this. Shouldn’t do that’. If that were the case, I would not be here in the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam. And why shouldn’t I? Am I any less than you?

More info: Mumbai Direct Salon, until 30 November, Lloyd Hotel, www.indiafestival.nl.

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‘purple tomatoes’ Amstergraph

Self-knowledge in corporate employees 66% believe that self-knowledge is necessary to reach their potential / 64% follow intuition often or very often / 50% do not feel a bond with their work / 50% believe that a boss is empathetic whenever they admit to not feeling in good mental form / 33% do not think they know themselves well / 18% believe that all their dimensions can be used for the good of their job. Source: Krauthammer / Graph by Nicole Martens

A quick bike fix By Pete Jordan

Sint On Sunday morning, Sinterklaas will return to Amsterdam—and I’m already very excited! His annual arrival has quickly become my favourite day of the year. Not that I give a hoot about the old coot. Even my three-year-old doesn’t hold him in very high regard. (When I’ve tried to get the boy pumped up for the bearded dude, he replied, ‘Pete, you like Sinterklaas. I like Zwarte Piet!’) But like Sinterklaas or not, it’s his arrival that’s so exhilarating. As Sinterklaas sails down the Amstel on his steamboat, the riverbanks will be lined with revellers waving frantically to Sint and screaming, ‘Piet! Piet!’ to his black-faced buddies/employees/slaves (or whatever we’re supposed to be calling them now). But for me, the thrill really begins after Sint’s steamboat has passed. Hoards of people then run and jump on their bikes to follow the boat’s slow progression to the city centre. A mass of parents ride with children as passengers. Older children ride on their own bikes. A squadron of bakﬁetsen lead the charge. Bike bells ring and cyclists sing. We all ride shoulder to shoulder. So many bikes clog the Weesperzijde, the street is impassable to automobiles. Amazingly, everyone—including this curmudgeon—will have the biggest grin stretching across his or her face. While most smiles will be for the return of Sint, my smile has always been for the beauty of the accompanying bike parade. I can’t wait. React: bikes@amsterdamweekly.nl

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AROUND TOWN

The people versus...

Street fashion

By Floris Dogterom

By Mo Veld

Illustration by Tomas Schats

Fashion Dutchness

The green, green road Sacrificing any remaining nature for yet more traffic-congested roads in this stampsized little nation of ours makes one frown immediately. And cutting up one of the notso-many green spots left in this bustling city seems somewhat close to madness. Yet this is exactly what might happen to Rembrandtpark in Slotervaart—one of the lungs our city so desperately depends on. Already, 200 trees have been chopped down in the southern area of the park, making way for a road that was originally intended to open access to a vast new residential area-to-be around Lelylaan. As it stands now, however, not much more than the Andreas Ensemble—a housing estate where the Andreas Hospital once was— remains of those original plans. Situated in the armpit of Lelylaan and the A10 ring, the accessibility of the estate is already secured, making the new road through the park totally unnecessary, says Janse Schötteln dreier of the Vrienden van het Rembrandtpark [Friends of the Rembrandtpark] action group, who is trying to stop the road. Schöttelndreier: ‘Independent research by the DIVV [municipal bureau for infrastructure, traffic and transport] from 2005, as commissioned by stadsdeel Slotervaart, shows that the road isn’t needed. What’s more, since 1996 Rembrandtpark is part of the Hoofdgroenstructuur [principal green infrastructure] of Amsterdam. It cannot be touched unless there are severe arguments in favour of it. And there aren’t any.’ So why is stadsdeel Slotervaart sticking with this plan? Schöttelndreier claims it has become a matter of, as she calls it, ‘managerial ego’. Ineke Ketelaar, the alderwoman responsible, has been heard saying that she’d lose face with her friends in Oud-Zuid if she lets action groups dictate the policy of the stadsdeel.’ Caspar Itz, spokesperson for Slotervaart, says that Ketelaar doesn’t wish to react. ‘During the course of November, objections lodged by residents will be considered. Ketelaar doesn’t want to hamper the commission that handles the objections. You do know that the road will take up only a quarter per cent of the park?’ Schöttelndreier qualifies that as a nonargument: ‘The whole southern and arguably most beautiful part of the park will be ruined. And the traffic will impact on the quality of life in the area even more.’ Something to report? thepeopleversus@amsterdamweekly.nl

Last Friday night, the second edition of the Mercedes-Benz Dutch Fashion Awards were held in Beurs van Berlage. It’s the most anticipated and glamorous fashion event of the year. initiated by the Dutch Fashion Foundation in their relentless quest to jack up national talent to international levels. There’s a considerable prize to be won, too: €25,000 in cash, courtesy of the title sponsor, plus a valuable additional package prize including fancy software and support from department store Bijenkorf. The jury line-up of influential ‘luxury industry’ decision-makers from leading fashion capitals Milan, New York and Paris, including Dutch hero Paul Helbers, who is creative director at Louis Vuitton menswear, got to choose a socalled ‘young’ Dutch label most likely to succeed on the international fashion market. I got to witness the process as a voiceless copywriter and all I can spill is the harsh bottom line: according to the jury, all nominated designers were shockingly naive, navel-staring and stuck on their marginal creative islands far removed from anything that goes on in the happening fashion epicentres. In the end they chose Monique van Heist, a Rotterdam-based designer with a consistent meta-fashion concept, basically taking her inspiration from the most fashion-oblivious locals lining

up at Dirk van de Broek. In contrast, the designers themselves got to choose the Dutch Fashion Icon Homme and Femme. Next to Carlo Wijnands, fashion consultant and husband of last year’s male winner Ruud van der Peijl—who wore a super-sized red bow tie for the occasion, by the way—the designers chose stylist Aynouk Tan for Fashion Icon Femme. It was a welcome rock ’n’ roll moment for the exhilarated Tan—a bag lady version of the deceased international fashion icon Isabella Blow, but way prettier— who called upon the audience to leave their jeans in the closet and dress up in their ﬁnest high fashion rags just to visit the supermarket. But while overall winner Van Heist received praise from the hotshot jury for her uniquely Dutch creative vision, it remains the same glamour-starved, anti-cosmopolitan Dutchness the fashion pros themselves most desperately wish Photo by Mo Veld to shake off. This ambivalence was reﬂected perfectly in the street, where the red carpet entry to Beurs van Berlage got crammed by the early Christmas circus of touristic Dutch galore with tacky holiday pastry stands and an ice skating ring being set up. React: inandout@amsterdamweekly.nl

Organic grease

By Jaro Renout

ALWAYS EAT YOUR GREENS Ask the Dutch what they miss most when they’re somewhere else in the world and there’s a big chance they’ll talk about patat, kroketten and frikadellen. A dream for some but a nightmare to others, it appears, because for many there will always be a sense of greasy guilt surrounding a visit to the black sheep of the restaurant business: the snackbar. Offering hamburgers of death or bitterballen that actually taste as they sound, the typical snackbar is hardly a fluffy culinary picnic. But there still is hope. At least, when you’re living in Amsterdam. On the border between Bos en Lommer and De Baarsjes, a new kind of snackbar emerged, boasting biokroketten and fresh fruit juice. Say hello to the ﬁrst ever organic snackbar in the Netherlands. Initiator and owner Helen Geul has barely had a moment to relax since Natuurlijk Smullen opened its doors. ‘It’s been busy from day one. Can you imagine some people told me not to start a business like this in Amsterdam-West? They said it wasn’t the right neighbourhood for organic snacks. I’m supposed to be more Oud-Zuid.’

Geul doesn’t come across as a woman who’s easily swayed, and she followed her own instincts. ‘It took me two years of preparation before opening last month. I did an analysis of this neighbourhood and its inhabitants. It turned out there’s a lot of folks around here interested in “green” solutions and healthy food. The newspaper of preference is De Volkskrant and that tells you something. The Albert Heijn across the street sells more organic products than any other supermarket branch in town. Basically, it’s the right time and place for this type of cafeteria.’ ‘The whole thing got started because my daughter is a fully-ﬂedged vegetarian and I’m some kind of a half-veggie. I only eat organic meat. We could never enjoy some good patat or other snacks anywhere, as it’s always compressed potato pulp and kaassoufﬂes. Did you taste our patat yet?’ I must admit I haven’t, although I did try two of their kroketten, one vegetable, the other meat. The latter reminded me greatly of my grandfather’s home cooking, and of a taste pretty much crushed by the wheels of industry. Geul calls out for fries to her two col-

Photo by Jaro Renout

leagues. She’s too damn proud to let me go home without it. And for a very good reason. This is what I call patat. Crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle and made from an honest-to-god potato, freshly cut by the grocer next door. I think I’ve seen the future of snack culture. Can I get a witness? More info: Natuurlijk Smullen, Jan van Galenstraat 78, 779 0245 www.natuurlijksmullen.nl

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

hey came. They saw. They conquered. That pretty much sums up the success story of Mr and Mrs ML Gupta in a nutshell. In the early ’80s they swapped New Delhi for the Dutch capital city, setting up various takeaway restaurants in the Netherlands and creating their own Indian version of the American dream, right here in the heart of Amsterdam. No one would have believed that behind the façade of their shabby-looking takeaway called Indian Express unfolds an unexpected story. The story of Mr and Mrs Gupta. It was, in fact, the much-feared culinary critic Johannes van Dam who, in 2005, shot their tiny little business to stardom. ‘Did you know our cook initially refused Mr van Dam?’ laughs Mrs Gupta when reminiscing of that moment. ‘He didn’t recognise the man.’ Luckily for the Guptas, Van Dam eventually got in, was granted a look in the kitchen and ordered some of the dishes. The result: a glowing review in Het Parool. That was three years ago. The tiny place has not changed much since, it seems. There’s the Indian flag hanging on the wall, and every now and then, when the kitchen door opens, you get to see the chefs at work, while popular Bollywood songs play in the background. And there’s still the bronze elephant-head pegged on the wall, resembling Ganesha, the Hindu god of success. The magic of Ganesha seems to have paid off indeed. Indian Express enjoys an enormous clientele and it’s chop chop for the bustling delivery boys. Yes, the Guptas clearly have what it takes to run a highly successful catering business. In fact, the Indian couple recently landed the order to do the catering for the Amsterdam India Festival. But despite their Midas touch, they’ve remained their humble selves.

P R O F I L E : M R A N D M R S G U P TA

THE MIDAS TOUCH OF MR AND MRS GUPTA The culinary couple behind Indian Express look back and forward through curry-tinted glasses. By Sharida Mohamedjoesoef

Mr and Mrs Gupta Ages 64 and 63 Indian food caterers embassy, other embassies, the Indian Film Festival and so on. But after some ten years, I had enough. I wanted to start my own business. Why? Mr Gupta: I had already made quite a name for myself. So I knew I would have enough customers. I believed it was possible to offer good quality food at reasonable prices. I began various restaurants, in ’s-Hertogenbosch, Hilversum and Amsterdam. We were even a regular supplier for Media Park in Hilversum. Yet due to my declining health, everything came to a standstill. Or so we thought. Then, some five years ago, we came across this appalling rundown place on the Pieter Langedijkstraat. My wife and I decided to fix it up and start a new takeaway. It heralded the birth of Indian Express. No beef on the menu? Mrs Gupta: Correct. We are Hindu, so no beef. We draw the line there. Muslims need not worry either. All our food is halal. Indian cuisine has become quite popular over the years. Why is that? Mrs Gupta: Here in Amsterdam, you have many British people who are used to Indian food. And lots of Dutch people have British colleagues, which is how they were introduced to Indian cuisine in the first place. Then they develop a taste for it.

Congratulations. So what’s on the menu at the festival launch? Mr Gupta: I’m not going to give away everything, but this much I will tell you: we have to cater for roughly 250 guests. They are in for chicken tikka grilled on a tandoor—an Indian clay oven which you heat with charcoal—jazzed up with Indian spices. Lamb curry is also on the menu, as is fresh spinach and paneer—a type of Indian cheese. All of this is served with saffron basmati rice.

What is the secret of Indian Express in particular? Mr Gupta: What can I say? It’s in our blood. We Indians are businessmen. I got myself two of the very best cooks from India and we use original Indian spices, not the imported stuff from countries like Indonesia and Sri Lanka. But our best ingredient is the love and care we have for our cusPhoto by Stefanie Gratz tomers. Mrs Gupta: My parents used to say, ‘Jaisa khaye ann waisa hoye mann,’ which is Hindi for ‘your food inﬂuences your way of thinking’. I do believe that food does have inﬂuence on man’s behaviour. Good food gives vitality, contentment, resulting in relaxation. And last but not least, don’t forget our portions. Ours are much bigger than the competition, while prices are low.

My parents used to say, ‘Jaisa khaye ann waisa hoye mann,’ which is Hindi for ‘your food inﬂuences your way of thinking’.’

Who is doing all the cooking? Mrs Gupta: We have hired help, but the cooking itself is done by our two cooks at the Indian Express. One is our senior cook. The other his assistant. All Indian restaurants, from India to the UK have two cooks. One specialises in tandoor and the other in curries. And don’t forget our helpers. They do the cutting and grinding.

Cutting. Grinding. I thought you were an accountant? Mr Gupta: [Laughing] That’s right, I was working as an accountant in India, but in the catering business. Numbers are my thing, as is food. I guess it was only a matter of time before I would combine the two. And when did that happen? Mr Gupta: Not until 1991. When I ﬁrst came to the Netherlands in 1981, I started working as a manager for one of the biggest Indian restaurants. We catered for KLM, the Indian

Any chance of opening up another branch? Mrs Gupta: Actually, we might. We are thinking of opening another takeaway near Amstelveen, where we have a lot of fans as well.

More info: www.indianexpress.nl

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

F E AT U R E

FROM ‘PAINT STRIPPER’ TO ‘EDIBLE PERFUMES’

A distillery in the Jordaan has been producing the strong stuff for centuries. But now, having just released a line of ‘edible perfumes’, they are updating themselves for the 21st century, while still maintaining the traditions of the Golden Age. By Cecily Layzell Photo by Yan, Kallen

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

F E AT U R E

Someone recently described jenever, the original gin, as paint stripper for old people. And while this statement pretty much sums up the image most people have of the stiff spirit, it fails to take into account the complexity of taste and craftsmanship that can be found in a good-quality version of this typically Dutch spirit. One of the only distilleries left in the Netherlands is A van Wees distilleerderij De Ooievaar, and it’s the only distillery in the centre of Amsterdam. Van Wees produces 17 different jenevers, according to traditional methods, as well as around 60 liqueurs and esprits (see sidebar ‘Edible perfumes—fad or food?’), and paint stripper—or industrial jenever as they more politely refer to it—is anathema to them. The distillery occupies a cluster of seven buildings in the Jordaan and, even during busy periods, employs no more than 12 people. As the name suggests, it comprises two businesses that were merged: the family A van Wees, which dates back to 1883, and De Ooievaar (1782), originally from Den Haag. When ﬁrst starting out, the distillery produced a limited number of jenevers, mostly young, old and very old, and popular liqueurs such as caraway and maternity anise (see sidebar ‘A drink for every occasion’). When Cees van Wees took over the business in 1958, following the unexpected death of his father Ad, he considerably expanded the product range. This is something his daughter Fenny, who became director in 2003, continues to do, while trying to keep the focus on the company’s core expertise, distillation.

wine for the fourth time, together with a particular combination of herbs including angelica and grains of paradise, and jeneverbessen (juniper berries), which give the drink its name. At this point, jenevers such as the Klarenaer, which is named for its clarity and lack of colour, and the spicy Taainagel are ready to drink; others, like Old Mout and Very Old Wees, are put in oak barrels and aged in the company’s cellar for anything from a couple up to 20 years. The final product is bottled onsite, in glass bottles, traditional brown clay jars or white-and-blue pitchers. The labels, Dutch tricolour lints and old-fashioned wax stamps are applied by hand. The age issue The two best-known jenevers are young jenever and old jenever. Confusingly, the terms ‘young’ and ‘old’ do not always relate to the age of the drink. Before 1900 or so, jenever was produced according to the traditional methods described above. Afterwards, a still was developed that was so efficient it could produce a clear drink with a very high alcohol percentage in one distillation— something that the old stills needed two or three distillations to achieve. ‘The result was colourless, odourless and tasteless, but it could be produced quickly and cheaply, increasing profit margins and making the drink affordable for a much larger number of people,’ says Fenny van Wees. ‘The jenever that was produced in this way—an industrial approach to distillation that generally became the norm—was thus called ‘young’, as opposed to ‘old’ jenever made according to the traditional methods.’ The majority of Van Wees’ jenevers are sold to bars, restaurants and liquor shops in the Netherlands but the company also has a small export business to the UK and Japan. And who are the people who eventually buy the drink? Van Wees says that the image of jenever as an elderly person’s drink is to some extent true. ‘Old jenever is predominantly drunk by respectable people over forty and that age is increasing as the population ages,’ she says. ‘But we are also seeing a growing number of students choosing our products. This could be because they’ve heard about us somewhere, or visited our proeflokaal on Herengracht. Whatever the reason, though, our customers consciously opt for our products over different brands and are not held back by price—our production methods mean our prices can be double that of other jenevers.’

It was believed to ward off the Black Death, for example, and in the 17th century, sailors of the Dutch East India Company were given a ration of two glasses a day to prevent them getting scurvy.

Now or jenever Evidence of jenever production dates back to the 16th century. At the time, it was produced for medicinal purposes. It was believed to ward off the Black Death, for example, and in the 17th century, sailors of the Dutch East India Company were given a ration of two glasses a day to prevent them getting scurvy. These days, jenever is consumed for pleasure and would not be the drink it is without containing alcohol (a minimum of 35 per cent is required by law). Jenever production starts with the fermentation of grain. A combination of several grains is usual, or a single grain can be used, such as the rye in Roggenaer jenever. The result of this fermentation is something resembling porridge, with alcohol content of about six to seven per cent. In order to make this ‘porridge’ drinkable, while increasing the alcohol content, it has to be distilled. This is done three times, and each time the volume halves as the alcohol percentage doubles. Grain fermentation is the only part of the process Van Wees does not carry out in house; rather, it buys the fermented product, malt wine, which already has an alcohol percentage of 48 per cent. What ﬁnally becomes jenever is produced by distilling this malt

Edible perfumes—fad or food? It sounds like a new culinary trend, or a clever marketing ploy to get foodies whose kitchens are already full of the latest gadgets to keep on opening their wallets. But edible perfumes or esprits have been around since the end of the 19th century and are used by industry professionals such as pastry chefs or chocolatiers to enhance the aroma of their products. Since the end of 2007, Van Wees has made a range of 62 esprits available to the public in spray bottles. The selection includes cinnamon, lavender, rose, chocolate, mint, dill and basil. ‘An esprit is a distillate from a product that hasn’t been fermented. In other words, it is produced through distillation and so is very much part of our core business,’ explains distillery De Ooeivaar director Fenny van Wees. ‘In simple terms, if you want to make dill esprit, for example, you put brandewijn, alcohol and fresh dill into a copper still and heat them. The alcohol will evaporate at 78 degrees Celsius, carrying the dill aromas with

More info: The esprits can be ordered via the distillery’s website www.de-ooievaar.nl. Wine and liquor shop De Eekhoorn (Kinkerstraat 270-272, 618 0433) also carries all De Ooievaar’s products, including the esprits (€6.95 each). For sit-down tastings of Ooievaar’s products visit De Admiraal, Herengracht 319, 625 4334.

it. This evaporated alcohol and the natural dill aromas are transported out of the still through a pipe and the liquid that is eventually collected is the esprit—the French word for spirit—of the dill.’ Van Wees has been making esprits for 35 years, so why have they only now become available to the public? ‘In the 1970s, when my father was running the business, he was approached by the famous chocolatier Piet Booij,’ explains Van Wees. ‘He couldn’t ﬁnd esprits anywhere and asked my father if he could use the distillates we were already making for our liqueurs to ﬂavour his products. My father agreed. However, there was limited interest from amateur cooks at the time, so we just sold them in professional-sized packaging to the catering industry. The ten millilitre spray bottles were almost an accident. I originally had them made for myself to take to fairs to demonstrate what the esprits smelled like. At some point, consumers also discovered them and were very enthusiastic. So, I decided to continue producing them.’ Despite increasing consumer interest, however, there is still confusion about what the esprits do and how they should be used. Van Wees says that they are

A drink for every occasion Like jenever, liqueurs were originally developed as medicines. Liqueurs started their life as tinctures and elixirs made predominantly by monks. Around the start of the 17th century, soon after the Dutch East India Company was founded, Dutch merchants brought back herbs, spices and sugar from Africa and Asia. The monks’ brews had formerly been quite bitter, but with the addition of sugar, they became increasingly popular as a stimulant. This was the start of commercial liqueur production and a booming Dutch industry. Van Wees produces around 60 liqueurs that contain a mind-boggling array of fresh herbs, spices, fruits, nuts and even ﬂowers. Many of the oftenevocative names of these liqueurs describe the occasion at which they were drunk: Little Hans in the cellar A fragrant mix of Spanish and Sicilian lemon peel, cherries, cardamom, cinnamon and roses, this liqueur was brought out to announce and celebrate a pregnancy. In some Amsterdam families, it was drunk from a special cup containing a puppet, which ﬂoated when the drink was poured, giving rise to the name. Maternity anise Anise was thought to have a calming effect, and so this liqueur was given to new mothers to help them rest after the birth of a child. Parrot soup A light-brown liqueur made from almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts and peanuts, among other nuts. The colour meant that those who did not want to admit they were drinking liqueur could pretend it was something else, like tea or coffee. Hence the pseudonym. Bride’s tears Drunk at weddings, this liqueur is a distillation of oranges, cloves, almonds, nutmeg and cinnamon. It also contains real gold and silver leaves, which symbolise the bride’s tears.

called perfumes because they enhance the smell of food, not the taste, although a large part of a food’s ‘taste’ is experienced through the nose. ‘You can’t spray some dill esprit on a piece of meat instead of using fresh dill and expect to taste a difference. The dish should already contain dill; then it’s a case of spraying a light film of dill esprit over the food just before it’s served. The aroma in the esprit should add something subtle to the food— sometimes so subtle you might not even recognise it— not overpower it.’ Van Wees has put some recipes up on the company website to give customers ideas for how to use the esprits, but says experimentation is part of the fun, particularly with more unusual taste combinations. ‘We were already making orange liqueur, so producing an orange esprit was a small step. Other esprits, such as the lavender, we developed at the request of chocolatiers and we had to source a lavender supplier,’ she says. ‘So we know that the lavender esprit is a good partner to chocolate; but for the adventurous, it can also be used on seafood and white fish or a fresh tomato salad. Or try a spritz of chocolate esprit on poultry or game.’

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AGENDA: SHORT LIST

SHORT LIST

Okkervil River, Friday, Melkweg.

THURSDAY13 NOVEMBER Festival: Amsterdam India Festival Get ready for a dazzling array of India’s finest, as the Amsterdam India festival kicks off. There’s Bharati, the Indian musical taking you to the deserts of Rajasthan, the sounds of the holy Ganges river and the sophisticated palaces of the Maharajas. Want to know more about gay India? Then don’t miss My Brother Nikhil, the first Bollywood film to openly portray homosexuality. For the sufi mystics amongst us, it is thumbs-up for the superb qawali performance of Ali Khan & Niyazi and Nizami Brothers. Other offerings include the Indian miniatures in the Van Gogh Museum, the glittery Indian fashion show at the Bijenkorf and the photography exhibition of Anita Khemka. Anyway, too many Indian goodies to mention and too few words to do it in, so check out www.indiafestival.nl for more info. (Sharida Mohamedjoesoef) Various locations, times and prices.

Feastival: Choca Because Amsterdam’s harbour is the world’s biggest chocolate trafficking spot and has a long tradition in buying and selling the black gold—the first chocolate milks were served here in 1660—this two-week long festival celebrates all things cacao. Amongst chocolate dinners, workshops and tastings, there’s also the sculptural side of chocolate to behold. A huge chocolate horse, an ‘I amsterdam’ made of chocolate and yes, even a Mona Lisa. And were you one of those kids that always ate the head of their chocolate Easter bunny first, so it wouldn’t suffer? Then you might be interested in the more morbid side of it all like Stephen Shanabrook’s Morgue Chocolates: choco casts of dead people’s body parts, on display in the Lloyd Hotel. But hey, even those will be sweet. See www.choca.nu. (Sarah Gehrke) Various prices, locations and times.

Electro rock: The Presets Taking cues from Depeche Mode, Public Image Ltd and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, hedonistic Aussies The Presets have cut a jagged corner for themselves in the dance-punk revolution. New album Apocalypso—a heady mix of hard dance ﬂoor anthems (‘My People’), chainsaw techno (‘Eucalyptus’) and ethereal new romanticism (‘If I Know You’)—grabbed a swag of Australia’s ARIA Awards last month. Playing Paradiso post Thursday’s London Calling show with Friendly Fires and Wild Beasts, the duo on vocals, synths and live drumming will shake the foundations of the old church like real rock ’n’ rollers should. (Colin Delaney) Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 23.30, €10 + membership.

SUNDAY16 NOVEMBER Pop/Rock: Hospital Bombers, Appie Kim, Vox Von Braun It’s the day after another London Calling run—one of the most intense to date, with gigs stretching across four days. And it’s no coincidence that just as the dust begins to settle, a trio of Holland’s indie elite are emerging for their own celebration of all things indie pop, rock, noise and Dutchness. After all, there’s no need to spend all your cash on Britain’s unknown quantities when there are bargain delights right on the doorstep. So batten down the hatches for that self-proclaimed ‘stadium folk’ from Hospital Bombers—surely Amsterdam’s most charming indie poppers, with their bursts of noise, wailing violin, bouncy pop and youthful zeal. Support from Appie Kim, the noisy pop duo formed from the disbanded Den Haag outﬁt De Nieuwe Vrolijkheid. Then there’s the irrepressible fuzzy power pop of Groningen’s Vox Von Braun. Lap it up. (Steven McCarron) Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.00, €7 + membership.

TUESDAY18 NOVEMBER Festival: Crossing Border

FRIDAY14 NOVEMBER Pop/Rock: Okkervil River Swaggering Texans Okkervil River roll into Melkweg with new album The Stand Ins. Expect a fine blend of wandering Americana, indie twang and lonesome folk that fans of previous record The Stage Names won’t be disappointed with. Will Sheff and his players swing through stories of the stage and the road. When they tread the boards expect the rock songs to be wilder and the slow songs wistful and dusty. While the fluoro-kids dance up a storm to Hot Chip in The Max, find the drunken romantics swaying uneasily in the Oude Zaal. (Colin Delaney) Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.00, €15 + membership.

The 16th Crossing Border festival aims to present literature in the company of other art forms, including the visual arts, performance and music, easing into action this week with a multimedia art exhibition at FAS3, which opens ahead of the weekend madness. Appearances by literary luminaries including recent Booker Prize winner Aravind Adega and the ubiquitous Simon Vinkenoog will be balanced by a wealth of younger writers including Thijs de Boer and Laura Broekhuysen. Must-see musical acts include Van Dyke Parks, Liam Finn and Death Cab For Cutie. In fact, there’s so much going in the ﬁve days, you should check www.crossingborder.nl to try to get your head around it. A hot pick: Stef Kamil Carlens (ex-dEUS) presents his tribute to Bob Dylan on Thursday. And don’t be put off by the two-headed green alien gracing the festival poster-–Hagenaars don’t generally bite. (David Prater) Various locations, times and prices, Den Haag. Until 22 November.

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

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

MUSIC

AGENDA: MUSIC Must see: Jazz

Thursday 13 November Pop/Rock: London Calling Warming Up Setting things up for a hot weekend of faux-Lahndon action, look out for sets from Wild Beasts, Friendly Fires, Electricity in Our Homes and Amazing Baby. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.00, €12.50 + membership Opera: Marco Polo De Nederlandse Opera tackle Chinese composer Tan Dun’s 1996 ‘opera within an opera’, which portrays the Venetian explorer Marco Polo’s journey to the Far East as one of both physical and mental anguish. The premiere is this evening, with performances continuing throughout the month. Dun himself is in town to conduct until 21 November. Het Muziektheater, 20.00, €15-€90 Jazz: Frisell Takes on Keaton, Morrison & Woodring Electric guitarist Bill Frisell presents a cinematic music experience. Joined by Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen of Sex Mob, he’s soundtracking ﬁlm collages by Bill Morrison, colourful animations by graphic novelist Jim Woodring and the classic slapstick of Buster Keaton. Bimhuis, 20.30, €28 Contemporary: Ives Ensemble This programme is teasingly titled ‘Bad Boys’ and what you get are works by composers who simply refuse to follow standard classical etiquette: Antheil, Hindemith, Rolfe, Barry, Hannan and Adriaansz. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €25 Soul: Raphael Saadiq Multi-instrumentalist and singer/producer Raphael Saadiq, formerly of Tony! Toni! Tone! and Lucy Pearl will bring the gospel with his version of Motown soul on latest album The Way I See It. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 20.30, €25 + membership Pop: C:Real Greek pop cheese. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 21.00, €35 + membership Electronica: Pageturner Not traditional world music or electronica, this Argentinean feast features four talented acts mixing up electronics, hiphop, reggaeton and cumbia. OCCII, 21.00, €5 Chanson: Popcast live presents: ‘Filles Fragiles’ Sighing French girls—or ‘zuchtmeisjes’ in the words of Roland Giphart, the host of this evening. Doesn’t that sound sexy? Performances by Peppermoon, Françoiz Breut, Vanessa Contenay-Quinones (with Clive Langer on guitar) and DJ Guuzbourg. Too bad Mrs Sarkozy isn’t on the bill. Sugar Factory, 21.30, €17.50

Friday 14 November Classical: Antonello Paliotti Trio Traditional Italian music meets Arabic and Moorish influences. Istituto Italiano, 19.00, free Pop/Rock: London Calling The bi-annual guitar clash is back, and this time it’s closer to Commonwealth Calling as they pull in a collection of international, as well as British bands. Tonight includes The Courteeners, White Lies, Slow Club, FrYars, The Hot Melts, Late Of The Pier, The Pan I Am and Selfish Cunt. The afterparty from 23.00 isn’t sold out, so you can still enjoy some of the experience. Paradiso, 19.00, sold out Pop/Rock: Okkervil River Texan folk rockers who’ve enjoyed an upsurge in popularity during 2008, promoting recent album The Stand Ins. Support from Lawrence Arabia. See Short List. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.00, €15 + membership Pop/Rock: Subbacultcha! A somewhat delayed November magazine launch party, featuring Daily Bread and DJs. De Nieuwe Anita, 20.00, €5 Pop: Lavalu Nu pop? Jazz pop? Poppin’ J Hawkins? It doesn’t really matter what you call it. Fronted by Marielle Woltring, this bunch are tight, bright and having risen through the ranks in 2008, it’s fairly impressive to see them headlining here so soon. Bimhuis, 20.30, €15 Pop: Hot Chip British synth pop act who’ve enjoyed big dance hits with the likes of ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Ready for the Floor’. It may seem cheap and easy at first glance but entertainment is second nature to them. Melkweg, The Max, 20.45, €15 + membership Experimental: Le Club Suburbia Lo-fi noise and ’60sinfluenced experiments from Sic Alps (US), Tar… Feathers (Sweden) and Spilt Milk. OCCII, 21.00, €6

John Scoﬁeld Pietry Street Band Paradiso, Monday 17 November One of the great living jazz guitarists, improv virtuoso John Scofield has worked with everyone from Miles Davis to Herbie Hancock. With 30 albums under his belt and known to tour 200 days of the year, this is one energetic cat. Jon Cleary on organ and vocals, George Porter of The Meters on bass and Ricky Fataar on drums. Grote Zaal, 20.30, €27.50 + membership

World: Raga Night Ancient or modern, classical, folk or completely new: for Indian music, it’s all about the raga. Within its traditional framework, there’s always plenty of room for improvisation. Tonight a huge cast of musicians from India and the Netherlands explore the form to its full potential. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 22.00, €38 Electro rock: The Presets Australian rock ’n’ roll meets ’90s rave culture. See Short List. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 23.30, €10 + membership

Saturday 15 November Pop/Rock: London Calling Tonight’s bands include Magistrates, Glasvegas, Twisted Wheel, Bombay Bicycle Club, Esser and Bromheads Jacket. Paradiso, 19.00, sold out Classical: Amsterdam Sinfonietta ‘Autumn in Argentina’ is the theme, so violinist and concert master Candida Thompson leads the audience down a sultry South American path of works by Golijov, Piazzolla and Ginastera, and also the Dutch premiere of Carter’s ‘Sound Fields’. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €31 Jazz: John Butcher’s ‘Octet Breakup’ A surprising performance from this Brit sax player, backed by synths, turntables, electronics and percussion, and performing in line-ups from duos to octets. Bimhuis, 20.30, €16 Pop/Rock: MGMT Poppy indie rock with electro pop seasoning. Originating from Brooklyn, they sold out Paradiso’s Kleine Zaal at the beginning of March, just as the hype was beginning to bubble. Now it’s well and truly boiled over, but the tunes are catchy and their ’80s-style videos make for fun watching, too. Melkweg, The Max, 20.30, sold out Reggae: The Aggrolites With their swinging mix of ska, reggae, soul and funk The Aggrolites sound at once fresh and old school. Having toured with Jamaican legends Derrick Morgan and Prince Buster, the latter has said of them: ‘I can’t believe that this young band from America could play my music just as good as the day it was recorded.’ Melkweg, 21.00, €15 + membership Rock: The Ik Jan Cremers Rabid indie guitar rock from the slightly confused but always entertaining Jan Cremers family. Patronaat, Haarlem, 21.00, free Singer-songwriter: Paulusma Sure, we still miss the distinctive guitar pop of Daryll-Ann, but Jelle Paulusma hasn’t relaxed too much since they disbanded. Now he’s back with a new solo album called iRecord and playing live with some of Amsterdam’s top musos. Cafe Pakhuis Wilhelmina, 22.00, €7.50

play Händel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day and Britten’s St Nicholas, marking Sinterklaas’s return to the Netherlands. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 14.15, €26.50-€31 Pop: Love Boat Acoustic pop in the Foyer. De Nieuwe Anita, 16.00, free World: Shaa’ir + Func Indian pop and electronics. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.00, €10 + membership Classical: Carmina Burana Carl Orff’s infamous dramatic choral piece, performed by the choir and orchestra of the State Philharmonic of Romania. As a bonus treat, there’s also Dvorák’s New World Symphony. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €52.50 Blues: Chicago Blues Festival On Tour 2008 Straight from the ‘Home of Blues’, Chicago this yearly changing supergroup has been touring Europe steadily since 1970. Drummer Willie Hayes, who has played with all the Chicago greats from Muddy Waters to Buddy Guy, is the group’s steady backbone. With Russell Jackson on bass, pianist Ken Saydak and DC Bellamy (Curtis Mayﬁeld’s half-brother), Andrew ‘Jr Boy’ Jones and Shakura S’Aida on vocals. Bimhuis, 20.30, €18 Pop/Rock: At the Close of Every Day Beautifully melancholic indie rockers, still celebrating their Troostprijs. Patronaat, Haarlem, 21.30, free Pop/Rock: Hospital Bombers Hello? Is that Amsterdam calling? Local indie poppers take a stand to show great things happen on home soil too. Support from Appie Kim and Vox Von Braun. See Short List. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 22.00, €7 + membership

Monday 17 November Classical: The Magic Flute A fresh chamber adaptation of Mozart’s beloved opera, performed by students from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Bethaniënklooster, 19.30, €12 Rock: Sigur Rós So what effect has the state of Iceland’s ﬁnancial system had on Sigur Rós? Rock ’n’ roll drama was never their thing, so chances are they went and invested all their hard earned cash like good little boys. As such, when they bring their ethereal minimalism and soaring crescendos to town this time, maybe the nonsensical vocals will be replaced by guttural bluesy tones, lamenting the credit crisis. Or maybe not. Heineken Music Hall, 20.00, sold out Roots: The Holmes Brothers Soulful Americana. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.00, €10 + membership Experimental: DNK-Amsterdam Electro acoustic session that sees the DNK Ensemble playing the music of Antoine Beuger. Ashbery Tunings for Ten is a piece for ten musicians in a spatialised set-up. SMART Project Space, 21.30, €5

Sunday 16 November Opera: Marco Polo See Thursday. Het Muziektheater, 13.30, €15-€90 Classical: Saint Nicholas meets Saint Cecilia in Amsterdam Amsterdams Gemengd Koor and others

Tuesday 18 November Singer-songwriter: Luka Bloom An accomplished Irish folk-rock singer-songwriter, the brother of folk singer Christy Moore always goes down a storm in the

Experience a new Argentina at this month’s Pageturner on Thursday. With electronics, hiphop and reggaeton.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

A G E N D A : M U S I C / C L U B S / G AY & L E S B I A N 3 questions:

Geoff Berner Nieuwe Anita, 18 November, 20.00 When it comes to the lone troubadour, personality helps. And the singer/songwriter/accordion-player Geoff ‘The Whiskey Rabbi’ Berner has oodles. Already a respected cult ﬁgure in Scandinavia and his native Canada, his songs have been covered by everyone from ukulele legend Carmaig de Forest to Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis. It turns out that everyone’s a sucker for klezmer-based tunes that drip with politics, sex and drink—no Jewish wedding to be found here, just one ‘Lucky Goddam Jew’ (as another song is called) who knows how to play and sing from his heart. Berner’s motivation is simple: ‘I want to drag klezmer music kicking and screaming back into the bars where it belongs.’ And that sounds goddamn perfect. Music for rocking? ‘The Pogues’ album Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. It’s the perfect expression of how folk music should be—drunk, political, energetic, fun, fucked-up, like humanity is fucked up.’ Music for mellowing? ‘I don’t really do mellow. But for wallowing in sentiment, you can’t beat Leonard Cohen.’ Music for loving? ‘Buckwheat Zydeco’s version of ‘Beast of Burden’. Need I say more?’

Netherlands. His latest release is titled Eleven Songs, and as always, you can expect a delicate but humorous electro-acoustic performance. Paradiso, Grote Zaal, 19.30, €17.50 + membership

Website: www.geoffberner.com

CLUBS

Singer-songwriter: Geoff Berner Canadian songwriter and accordion terrorist who performs moving Eastern folk and klezmer with a raw punk spirit. See 3 Questions above. De Nieuwe Anita, 20.00, free Opera: Marco Polo See Thursday. Het Muziektheater, 20.00, €15-€90 Pop: Alphabeat Akin to internationals thinking of 2 Unlimited when questioned about Dutch pop, when questioned about Denmark pop, they think of Whigﬁeld. Alphabeat are at least breaking the Danish stereotype with their late ’80s and early ’90s boy-girl pop cheer. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €15 + membership Contemporary: Asko|Schönberg Ensembles Part of the SHIFT Festival programme, which sees collaborations between Canadian and Dutch artists. The contemporary ensembles this evening will perform works by Van Binsbergen, Oesterle Coureurs, Rolfe and Vivier. Conducted by Etienne Siebens, with soprano Barbara Hannigan. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €25

Wednesday 19 November Classical: The Magic Flute See Monday. Bethaniënklooster, 19.30, €12 Folk: Carolina Chocolate Drops North Carolina bluegrass. Paradiso, Kleine Zaal, 20.00, €7.50 + membership World: Bharati Exuberant musical theatre featuring temple dancers, exhilarating music from the deserts of Rajasthan, sounds of the holy Ganges river and the sophisticated echoes of the palaces of the Maharajas. Concertgebouw, Grote Zaal, 20.15, €32.50/€38 Soul: Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The True Loves Twentyfour-year-old soul sensation from Brooklyn who’s not only tapping into the classic sounds of Motown, but also the vivaciousness of James Brown—without coming off as a third-rate pub singer. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 20.30, €15 + membership Contemporary: Quatuor Bozzini Contemporary ensemble from Montreal performing works by Oesterle, Arnold, Voorvelt, Ayres and Kulenty. Part of SHIFT Festival. Muziekgebouw, 20.30, €25 Jazz: Tineke Postma / Ernst Glerum / Han Bennink The Frisian sax player signs up for an exciting collaboration with bassist Ernst Glerum and drummer Han Bennink. Bimhuis, 20.30, €18

GAY&LESBIAN Edited by Willem de Blaauw.

Thursday 13 November

Blue Note Trip Weekly jazz and dance fusion featuring DJ Maestro and guests. This edition features a special set by renowned DJ collective Jazzanova (Berlin), who have just released Of All the Things, with appearances by Dwele, Leon Ware and more. Grooving guaranteed. Melkweg, Oude Zaal, 23.30-late, €8

Party: Lezzie Chill Out The name says it all. Chat, chill, dance and/or flirt. And sip sexy cocktails. Cafe Sappho, 21.00, free

Friday 14 November Hiphopcafe 4 Elementz Hiphop beats provided by the the Dynamite Soul DJ Team. The focus of this party is always on the different elements of hiphop. In this edition the spotlight is on the art of MCing. Fusion, 19.00-23.00, free 730 Days of Problems but Flexbar Ain’t One: 2 Years Flexbar No need to feel bad for them, son: Flexbar celebrates its two-year anniversary—or 730 days in existence if you will—with live acts and house, minimal and techno courtesy of Flex favourites Boris Werner, Drrie, Unders, Frank Haag, Wesdex, Sandrien, Jorn Liefdeshuis and Olene Kadar. Flex Bar, 23.00-05.00, €10 Nice ‘n Fresh Resident night with new DJ team Nice ‘n Fresh (Vanilla Nice and K-Fresh), bringing you an eclectic mix of classics, hiphop, house, reggae and more. Hosted by MC Iceman with dancing by The Hip-Hop Circus. Odeon, 23.00-05.00, €12 Mishi Mashi This new weekly dance night—‘deeper into art and music’—aims to bring the club atmosphere to the Jordaan. Hosted by DJs San Proper, Van Meeteren, Dhr Robijn and DJ Liefde with guests Victor Coral, Angelo D’onorio, Philip Young and more. Tech house and deep house with a monthly changing VJ team. Z'nk, 23.00-till late, €8

Saturday 15 November Skip Intro Bi-monthly club night with DJs Shiny Shady, O.Boogie and Tom Trago spinning dubstep, Detroit, broken beat, electro, techno and beyond. Club 8, 22.00-04.00, €6 (free before 23.00) Live Fingerlickin’ beats brought to you by DJs Danny de Funk and Lil’ Vic, hosted by MC Fit. Bitterzoet, 23.00-04.00, €7.50

Jazz: Hernan Romero & Orlando Miño Latin jazz guitarist and percussionist. Stubnitz, 21.00, €8

Sunday 16 November

Hiphop/R&B: Live on the Low Amsterdam’s legendary open mic night is back to burn. DJs 360 and MBA, hosted by MC Complex and E-Lo. Winston Kingdom, 21.00, €8.50

Zonde!—Zondebril ‘Out with wintertime!’ is the theme and DJs Wannabe a Star, Roger Seventytwo & The Walk, Jack Undercover and Martijn will have you basking in summery tunes. Paradiso, 23.30-05.00, €7.50

Party: Pink = Cover New gay party on the block. Expect raw modern electro with high energy performances. Line up includes: Zubrowka, Mister F, Jimmy Shimmy, F3 and Darcy Peach. Winston Kingdom, 22.00-03.00, €6

Friday 14 November DJ night: Friday Weekend Madness Start the weekend with a bang at this happy homo hang-out. Audio host DJ Danny spins electric beats from today and yesteryear. Getto, 17.00, free

Saturday 15 November Party: Dance Night The name says it all, special dance night at this bar with DJ Albert. Camp it up from the afternoon until late. Amstel 54, 16.00, free Memorial: Transgender Remembrance Day Dutch edition of the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, organised by Transgender Network Netherlands, to honour those who have been murdered or assaulted because of being transgender. Procession, with torches, departs from COC, Rozenstraat 14 at 17.30 to Nieuwmarkt, where Karin Spaink will be one of the guest speakers. Nieuwmarkt, 17.30, free Party: Hookers’ Ball You might get laid, but you won’t get paid, at this fun, freaky and cheeky sexy Hookers’ Ball, hosted by Jennifer Hopelezz. Aimed at gays, straights and anything in between. Sluts and pimps in full working gear get a free glass of bubbles. Church, 22.00-04.00, €12.50 Party: Spellbound Queer underground dance party with DJs Trashling, Martijn and Kaseta, spinning underground house, the darker side of techno & electro, no-wave, plus performance by CAP (electronics from Amsterdam). OCCII, 23.00, €7

Sunday 16 November Party: Poz & Proud T-Dance Afternoon dance party for those who are poz & proud. Church, 16.00-20.00

After your spicy Indian meal on Wednesday, head to the spectacle that is Bharati at Concertgebouw.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

STAGE

A G E N D A : S TA G E / E V E N T S Must see: Procession

Opening Theatre: De Koopman van Venetië Theu Boermans and De Theatercompagnie do what they do best: Shakespeare. And Shakespeare does what he does best: love, greed, hate, tragedy, ambivalence, lightness, blood thirst and women dressing up as men. And Pierre Bokma as Shylock is doing pretty well too. Stadsschouwburg, (Thur-Sat 20.30), €10-€27.50 Theatre: Johanna de Waanzinnige The life of Joanna of Castile, also known as ‘the Mad’, and all the complications and intrigues around it would provide material for at least ten plays, but theatre group De Kern still try to fit it all into one, concentrating on the question of how mad, if at all, she really was. Compagnietheater, (Thur-Sat 20.30), €19.50 Comedy: One-Man Show Bob McLaren A rare chance to catch a solo performance by Bob McLaren, who’s quite a famous comedic Kiwi. His facial expressions have been described as ‘mildly inconsistent’, which sounds promising to say the least. Griffioen, Amstelveen, (Fri 20.30), €13 Dance: Kagemi The popularity of the Japanese butoh dance company Sankai Juku is ever-rising. In their new production, white lotus leaves, white-powdered dancers, white, light garments and androgynous moves make for a highly aesthetic performance. Het Muziektheater, (Fri, Sat 20.15), €15-€35 Music/Theatre: Het #1 Odara play a performance exploring the borders between play and reality, thought up and directed by Marcos Rabello and inspired by Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. De Cameleon, (Fri, Sat 20.30, Sun 14.00), €8 Music/Theatre: Turkey Now: Dilek—Een volksopera over eerwraak Theater Rast tell the tragic story of Dilek, whose family wants to force her into an arranged marriage, though she is in love with another man. When she is seen with that other man, things start getting unpleasant. The music used in this folk opera ranges from Anatolian folk songs to rap. In Turkish with Dutch surtitles. Stadsschouwburg, (Sun 20.30), €10-€27.50 Dance: Wonderworld Now that the MTV generation has come of age so much that they start going to see contemporary dance performances, Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet and their artistic director Ed Wubbe give in to everyone’s attention deficit by making collage-like performances. Montaged together abruptly, the short pieces offer everything from intimate solos to a manystaffed grande finale. Choreographers include Dylan Newcomb, Guy Weizman & Roni Haver and Georg Reischl. Stadsschouwburg, (Mon 20.30), €10-€25

Ongoing Performance: Breakin’ Walls—Into the Black Hole The young mime collective Orange Guinea Pigs invite you to a performance about the infamous post-university depression: The—duh-duh-duh-dummm—quarter-life crisis. De Engelenbak, (Thur 19.30), €8.50 Theatre: The Wall Ulrike Quade’s play brings together puppets, real people and three historical personalities with very different outlooks on life: Ulrike Meinhof, Göring and Medea. Theater Bellevue, (Thur 20.30), €16 Dance: Breakin’ Walls—Horizon Versatility is their second (or third? Fourth? Ah, whatever) name: The Parisian dance troupe Compagnie La 20e Tribu combine styles such as breakdance, capoeira and African dance. De Brakke Grond, (Thur 21.00), €8.50 Theatre: Breakin’ Walls—Mijn naam is Rachel Corrie After hanging with an imaginary Lars von Trier for her last play, Van Dolron apparently isn’t ready to lift spirits. Her newest is about the American student and peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine. Frascati, (Thur 21.00), €8.50 Theatre: Iﬁgeneia in Aulis Timelessness—nobody does it as well as the Ancient Greeks. Set on the brink of the Trojan War, Euripides’ tragedy centres around a war that is justiﬁed with dubious arguments. Stadsschouwburg, (Tues, Wed 20.30), €10-€27.50 Theatre: Goal MC’s (Made in da Shade/Cosmic Theater) trademark mix of theatre, music and visuals tracks the rise and fall of star footballer Garra. No voetbalvrouwen allowed. Westergasfabriek, (Tues, Wed 20.30), €17.50

Sint in Amsterdam Various locations, Sunday 16 November A public notice for big kids—or old grumps evading the horses, Piets and sweets, not to mention, crowds: Sinterklaas is arriving in Amsterdam today. Festivities begin at 10.30 as the boat departs on the Amstel, heading to the Scheepvaartmuseum for 12.00. Afterwards, simply follow the trail of trampled pepernoten to Dam Square then Leidseplein. The city’s Sinterklaas celebrations get in full swing now, so don’t say you weren’t warned. 11.00, free

EVENTS Workshop: Katie’s Cosy Craft Corner The monthly event that is just what the title suggests—with the added bonus of catching up on all the best gossip while ‘tossing tasty cocktails down yer neck’, as Katie likes to say. Bring any crafty bits you want, and all crafters are welcome, including knitters, stitchers, jewellers and weavers of bellybutton fluff. De Nieuwe Anita, (Thur 20.00-23.00), free Lecture: De waarde van privacy Worried about how the Calvinistic no-curtains policy extends too far into many other aspects of your life? This time the Socrateslezing is about the shift in both the public’s and the government’s attitudes towards privacy protection. With Beate Roessler, Socrates professor in Leiden and teacher for philosophy at the UvA and Britta Böhler, Eerste Kamer representative of GroenLinks. Felix Meritis, (Thur 20.00), free Symposium: Building India Architecture Symposium featuring architects from five densely populated Indian cities: Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta. ARCAM, (Daily various times)

Paper: GrafischPapierHier An annual ‘manifestation’ for everyone with a passion for paper and printing, be they graphic design geeks or copy shop clerks. And as this year’s theme is ‘Covers by Artists’, focussing on designs for LPs and CDs, the target group extends to music nerds as well! Contributors to the event include Peter Saville, Storm Thorgerson, Eike König, Stefan Sagmeister and Anton Corbijn. Pakhuis de Zwijger, (Sat 11.30 -18.30), free; register at www.grafischpapierhier.nl Multidisciplinary: Indomania 3 A Bombay mix of Indian art, debate, song, dance, audio, video and tasty snacks. See www.indomania.nl. Serieuze Zaken Studioos, (Sat 16.00-00.00), €10 Sport: Panna Knock Out The annual Dutch street football championship offers a large side programme with clinics, live music and the everpopular ‘Panna with the stars’, but the tricks those boys can pull with a football are worth going for alone. Gashouder, (Sun 14.00-18.00), €5 Performance: Marco Polo in Amsterdam A side project of the Marco Polo opera, today you’ll find special musical and theatrical performances all over Zeedijk, with students unleashing original works inspired by the people of the area. See www.marcopoloinamsterdam.nl. Zeedijk, (Sun 14.00-18.00), free

Festival: Black Magic Woman Festival 2008 Weekend-long celebration of all things black, magic and female. The fest includes grassroots music, theatre, literature, spoken word, film, fine art and new media.See www.blackmagicwomanfestival.nl. Various locations and times, (Fri-Sun), various prices

Theatre/Lecture: De Brakke Zondag: Het multireligieuze drama in Nederland Anyone remember a country with a population of only one faith and one colour? Exactly. Neither do the people of De Brakke Zondag, so this multidisciplinary performance aims to give us a crash course in cohabitating today’s Europe. De Brakke Grond, (Sun 16.00), €7

Event: Mumbai Direct Salon During the India Festival, the Lloyd Hotel has invited Laxmi Narayan Tripathi to host a salon where she’ll explain various aspects of Indian culture, including how to wear a Sari. The evenings will also include performances by a hijra dance group with live music. See feature on p. 5. Lloyd Hotel, (Fri-Wed 20.00), free

Festival: Shift Although the main focus of this Canadian-Dutch double festival lies on contemporary music, presenting works by contemporary composers from the two countries, film and literature are also on offer. Until 22 November. Muziekgebouw, (Tues, Wed various times), €87 for festival pass

So you have a secret paper fetish? Saturday’s pulp special at Pakhuis de Zwijger will get you moist.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AGENDA: ART

Must see: Photography

ART

Opening Stefan Zweig, weerbaar tegen fanatisme An international travelling exhibition designed by Austrian artists to help you discover the literary skills and philosophies of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide with his wife in 1942, despairing at the future of war-torn Europe. OBA (Daily 10.0022.00), opens Thursday, until 5 January 2009 Bollywoodaffiches Classic Bollywood film posters. Filmmuseum (Daily), opens Friday, until 14 December Eerbetoon aan Klaas Sans Paying tribute to their departing photography teacher with a series of works by former Fotogram students. Fotogram (Mon-Thur 09.30-21.00, Fri, Sat 09.30-17.00), opens Friday, until 10 December Steampunk Time Machine: Futuristic Impressions of the Past Works by a group of renowned and upcoming artists who have taken the world of art, technique and retro-futurism as a source of inspiration. Expect nostalgic reinterpretations of Victorian romance novels, imperialist adventures and Voyages Extraordinaires. artKitchen (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), opens Friday, until 14 December

Stephan J Englisch Galerie Bart, opens Saturday, until 20 December This German artist specialises in night photography, with this aesthetically pleasing series focussing on Amsterdam at night. (Thur, Fri 11.00-18.00, Sat 12.00-17.00)

Building India An exhibition presenting the architecture and urbanism of contemporary India, as seen through the eyes of five young Indian architects. ARCAM (Tues-Sat 13.00-17.00), opens Saturday, until 24 January 2009 Mitsy Groenendijk: Time Is On My Side ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ sculptures. Witzenhausen Gallery (Thur-Sat 12.00 -18.00), opens Saturday, until 20 December Speaking Out Loud A multimedia exhibition dealing with the act of speaking, reading and writing. Includes diverse works by Tim Etchells (UK) and Vlatka Horvat (CRO), Mukul Patel (UK) and Manu Luksch (AT), Christoph Keller (DE), Jaromil (IT) and Jodi (NL), and many more. Montevideo/Time Based Arts (Tues-Sat 13.00-18.00), opens Saturday, until 17 January 2009 Subodh Kerkar An exhibition of installations, boat sculptures and photographs by the renowned Indian artist, who works with a range of mostly natural materials such as shells, palm leaves and used wooden ﬁshing boats. He then photographs his ﬁnished works to create a secondary piece of art. Canvas International Art (Thur-Sat 14.00-18.00), Amstelveen, opens Saturday, until 6 December

Museums 24-hour Indonesia Glimpse the daily life of contemporary Indonesia. Eight different crews across Indonesia filmed during a 24-hour period. Tropenmuseum (Daily 10.00-17.00), closing Sunday Grafisch Gezelschap De Luis Retrospective of works by artist group De Luis, which caused a furore with their often poetic and bizarre output between 1960 and 1980. Rembrandthuis (Mon-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 11.00-17.00), closing Sunday Miyako Ishiuchi: Photographs 1975-2005 The first European retrospective of Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi. While the artist brought attention to herself at Biennial 2005 in Venice with her collection Mother’s, the remainder of her work had not yet been presented collectively in Europe. Exhibited in Foam are ninety photographs from the series Yokosuka Story, Apartment, Endless Night, 1.9.4.7, 1906 to the Skin and Mother’s. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00-18.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), closing Sunday 100 Jaar Academie van Bouwkunst Showcasing graduation photos and maquettes from graduation projects over the past 100 years. Zuiderkerk (Mon 11.00-16.00, Tues-Fri 09.00-16.00, Sat 12.00-16.00), until 28 November Art of the State Photographs and video works by sixteen artists from Israel. Through their works they reflect upon their country: the community in which they live, the numerous cultural and religious differences among Israel’s population and the current political situation. Joods Historisch Museum (Daily 11.0017.00), until 30 November

Hendrik Werkman: The Blue Barge Exhibition containing Werkman’s preparatory studies for the suites of prints he made as an act of resistance for The Blue Barge during WWII. The most famous of these is Chassidische Legenden. Joods Historisch Museum (Daily 11.00-17.00), until 30 November Als Casablanca Photos of Detroit by Marco Bakker, taking inspiration from Christine Otten’s recent novel Als Casablanca. OBA (Daily 10.00-22.00), until 7 December Diorama’s van Suriname The Rijksmuseum has acquired ﬁve dioramas by the Surinamese artist Gerrit Schouten (1779-1839). These works show painted scenes from daily life in 19th Century Suriname. Rijksmuseum (Daily 09.00-18.00), until 8 December Erik van der Weijde: Siedlung Siedlung, German for ‘settlement’, features 220 black-and-white photos of detached houses. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the National Socialist Party set up a huge construction programme to provide these Seidlung houses for workers who agreed to become party members. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00 -18.00, Thur, Fri 10.00-21.00), until 10 December NL28 Olympic Fire An exhibition in which scale models, ﬁlm, debate and theatre help visitors to imagine that the Netherlands is organising the Olympic Games in 2028, a century after the Games in Amsterdam. Zuiderkerk (Tues-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 11.00-17.00), until 13 December Damien Hirst: For the Love of God It’s Indiana Jones and the diamond-encrusted skull. Or something. With this Amsterdam premiere of Hirst’s latest attentiongrabber, it’s a good time to ponder whether, like Indy, Hirst’s past his best. Still, this is as cutting edge as the Rijksmuseum gets. To accompany the exhibition, he’s also chosen a personal selection from the museum’s collection of 17th-century art. Rijksmuseum (Daily 09.00-18.00), until 15 December Helen Levitt: In the Street A retrospective of work by the renowned American street photographer Helen Levitt, famed for portraying the dynamics of New York street life from 1930 onwards, paying special attention to the innocent and adventurous world of children at play. Foam (Sat-Wed 10.00-18.00, Thur, Fri 10.0021.00), until 18 January 2009 Vodou A grand exhibition about voodoo on Haiti, featuring more than 250 spectacular objects from one of the most important collections in the country: the Lehmann collection. The exhibition aims to show how these objects and their accompanying rituals are a part of the daily life. Tropenmuseum (Daily 10.0017.00), until 10 May 2009

Galleries The Gospel According to Brian O’Blivion Art by Laser 3.14 and soundscapes by Pieter van Nooten. Chiellerie (Daily 14.00-18.00) Peter Tijhuis The Groningen-born artist presents a series of photos exploring construction sites. Lux Photo Gallery (Thur, Fri 11.00-17.00), closing Friday Miguel Ybáñez: The Anonymous Glance Contemporary cave paintings that aren’t in caves. Technically just contemporary paintings, really. Grimm Fine Art (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00), closing Saturday Geert Bartelink: Het rijk der fabelen Colourful and artistic tales of the rich. AYACS (Fri, Sat 13.00-17.30), closing Saturday High Five Five weeks, five screens and five audiovisual remixes. High Five transports you into the tripped-out headspace of audio-visual sampling gurus Addictive TV, inviting you to become absorbed into the artists domain of what you see is what you hear. Concrete Image (Thur 12.00-21.00, Mon-Wed, Sat 19.00, Sun 13.00-18.00), closing Saturday Baby Bunnies PLANETART presents Katinka Simonse’s installation, which poses the idea that pets are no longer chosen as a loyal friend, but purely for aesthetic values and consumption. A mere toy, in fact. Volkskrantgebouw (Mon-Fri 12.00-17.00, Sat 14.0017.00), closing Saturday Pierre Paulin—Artifort’s Artist Chic furniture designer Paulin worked for Dutch label Artifort in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s creating such memorably sleek and cushy chairs as the Ribbon, Tongue, Mushroom, Orange Slice and Tulip. This exhibition shows not only his work, but also a rare glimpse at the man everyone heard about but rarely saw. ANNO (Fri-Sun 12.0017.00), closing Sunday Artur Zmijewski: The Social Studio Solo exhibition in which Polish artist Artur Zmijewski presents a

Even the art world turns Indian this week. Exhibitions all over town.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

selection of his recent works, including videos ‘Them’ (2007) and ‘Repetition’ (2005), which can be described as social experiments documented on film. bak (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00, Sun 13.00-18.00), Utrecht, closing Sunday Régine de Festes: Creation & Mythology Paintings and sculpture by the French artist. Paule Carre (Mon 13.00-18.00; Tue, Wed, Fri 10.00-18.00; Thur 10.0020.00; Sat 10.00-17.00), closing Thursday Het Oog van de Flat An opportunity to look through the eyes of the ‘Egeldonk’, an apartment building in Zuidoost that is due to be demolished. You can also take in panoramic 3-D photos taken from its windows. Informatiecentrum Stadsdeel Zuidoost (Daily), closing Thursday Artists’ Biopic Cinema The first Dutch solo exhibition by French artist Matthieu Laurette. Transforming six gallery spaces into mini-cinemas, Laurette succinctly presents the mythologised life of world famous artists by screening 18 specifically chosen feature films each day. SMART Project Space (Mon-Sat 12.00-22.00, Sun 14.00-22.00), closing Thursday Aquil Copier: I Haven’t Sent You Any Air Mail Beautiful painted landscapes (diverse techniques) as seen from the air. 2x2projects (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 29 November Ontferm U Translated as ‘Have Mercy Upon Us’, this is a multidisciplinary project by Elena Beelaerts in cooperation with Floris Tilanus and Henk Jan Bouwmeester. It deals with the rituals associated with the transportation of works from the artist’s workspace into the public eye. W139 (Daily 11.00-19.00), until 30 November The Mona Lisa Project Showcasing 100 takes on the Mona Lisa by Florentijn Bruning, created with materials such as spray paint and lacquer. GO Gallery (Wed-Sat 12.00-18.00, Sun 13.00-17.00), until 6 December David Goldblatt Works by the renowned South African photographer. Galerie Paul Andriesse (Tues-Fri 11.00-18.00, Sat 14.00-18.00), until 6 December Structures Group exhibition that examines the structure of the art world from the perspective of the artist. Souterrain (Thur-Sun 12.00-17.00), until 7 December

AGENDA: ART/ADDRESSES Puking Roses for.../Romance Stills from a dramatic video performance by Marieke Coppens. De Kijkkasten (daily), until 12 December La Fiesta De Los Muertos Works by Mexican artists Emilio Sánchez Diaz, Alejandra Nettel, Anna Kurtycz and Verónica Elizondo. Galerie Wies Willemsen (Fri-Sun 10.00-18.00), until 14 December Ies Schute An installation of mixed techniques. Consisting of walls of paper, built up from small creations, the separate drawings, texts and photographs work to form a uniform view. Ververs Gallery (Thur, Fri 13.0017.30, Sat 14.00-17.30), until 19 December Nicky Hoberman: Girls Series Big-headed, largeeyed gals populate the paintings of this English artist, who presents her ﬁrst solo show in the Netherlands. Galerie Hof & Huyser (Wed-Sat 13.00-18.00), until 19 December Nisja Architectural paintings by a young Polish artist. Radar Gallery (Fri-Sun 13.00-17.00), until 20 December Helgi Thorsson: Garry and Berry Go Ga-Ga Icelandic artist Thorsson presents a solo exhibition of life-sized gnomes (he calls them ‘elvur’), monsters and ﬁgurines from a forgotten pop world. Fantastical music, video, drawings and paintings are also on show. Galerie van Gelder (Tues-Sat 13.00-17.30), until 20 December Bart van Leeuwen Marking forty years of distinctive and atmospheric fashion photography by the Dutch artist (b.1950). Blow Up Gallery (Thur, Fri 14.00-18.00, Sat 13.00-18.00), until 27 December This Side of the Globe Travel photography from the Middle East and Asia by Kurt van Aert. Mezrab (ThurSun 15.00-20.30, Fri, Sat 15.00-22.30), until 31 December Up Close & Personal Twenty artists present new works. Walls Gallery (Wed-Sat 12.00-17.00), until 9 January 2009 The Touch of Dick Evers Action and body painting. Aromatique (Fri-Sun 12.30-17.30), until 16 January 2009 Theo de Feyter: Beelden uit Syrië Paintings. Galerie de Rietlanden Exposities (Wed-Sun 13.00-17.00), until 18 January 2009

ADDRESSES 2x2projects Veemkade 350, 489 7471 ABC Treehouse Voetboogstraat 11, 423 0967 Amstel 54 Amstel 54, 623 4254 ARCAM Prins Hendrikkade 600, 620 4878 artKitchen Joris van den Berghweg 101, 622 3422 AYACS Keizersgracht 166, 622 8579 bak Lange Nieuwstraat 4, Utrecht, 030 231 6125 Bethaniënklooster Barndesteeg 6, 625 0078 Beurs van Berlage Damrak 277, 530 4141 Bimhuis Piet Heinkade 3, 788 2150 Bitterzoet Spuistraat 2, 521 3001 De Brakke Grond Nes 45, 626 6866 Cafe Pakhuis Wilhelmina Veemkade 576, 419 3368 Cafe Sappho Vijzelstraat 103, 423 1509 De Cameleon 3e Kostverlorenkade 35, 489 4656 Canvas International Art Fokkerlaan 46, Amstelveen, 428 6040 Chiellerie Raamgracht 58, 320 9448 Church Kerkstraat 50-52 Club 8 Admiraal de Ruyterweg 56B, 685 1703 CoBrA Museum Sandbergplein 1-3, Amstelveen, 547 5050 Compagnietheater Kloveniersburgwal 50, 520 5320 Concertgebouw Concertgebouwplein 2-6, 671 8345 Concrete Image Spuistraat 250, 625 2225 Consortium Veemkade 570, 06 2611 8950 De Engelenbak Nes 71, 626 3644 Felix Meritis Keizersgracht 324, 626 2321 Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400 Flex Bar Pazzanistraat 1, 486 2123 Foam Keizersgracht 609, 551 6546 Fotogram Korte Prinsengracht 33, 624 9994 Frascati Nes 63, 626 6866 Fusion Marnixstraat 285, 020-6221171 Galerie Bart Bloemgracht 2, 320 6208 Galerie Gabriel Rolt Elandsgracht 34, 785 5146 Gallery WM Elandsgracht 35, 421 1113 Getto Warmoesstraat 51 GO Gallery Prinsengracht 64, 422 9580 Grifﬁoen Uilenstede 106, Amstelveen, 598 5033 Grimm Fine Art Hazenstraat 24, 422 7227 Heineken Music Hall ArenA Boulevard 590, 0900 300 1250 Hotel Arena ’s-Gravesandestraat 51, 850 2400 Huis Marseille Keizersgracht 401, 531 8989 Hup Gallery Tesselschadestraat 15, 515 8589 Joods Historisch Museum Jonas Daniel Meijerplein 2-4, 531 0310

Arty treats. Where to go and what to see. Find more art listings at www.amsterdamweekly.nl.

De Kijkkasten Sint Nicolaasstraat KIT Tropentheater Mauritskade 63, 568 8711 Kortsluiting 1e Schinkelstraat 16 Lloyd Hotel Oostelijke Handelskade 34, 419 1840 Lux Photo Gallery Meervaart Meer en Vaart 300, 410 7777 Melkweg Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 531 8181 Melkweg Galerie Marnixstraat 409, 531 8181 Montevideo/Time Based Arts Keizersgracht 264, 623 7101 Motive Gallery Elandsgracht 10, 330 3668 Muziekgebouw Piet Heinkade 1, 788 2010 Het Muziektheater Amstel 3, 625 5455 De Nieuwe Anita Frederik Hendrikstraat 111, 06 4150 3512 Noorderkerk Noordermarkt 44, 626 6436 OBA Oosterdokskade 143, 0900-2425468 OCCII Amstelveenseweg 134, 671 7778 Odeon Singel 460, 624 9711 P/////AKT Zeeburgerpad 53, 06 5427 0879 Pakhuis de Zwijger Piet Heinkade 179-181, 788 4444 Paradiso Weteringschans 6-8, 626 4521 Patronaat Zijlsingel 2, Haarlem, 023 517 5858 Paule Carre Cornelis Schuytstraat 44, 675 6800 PRIK Spuistraat 109, 06 4544 2321 Rembrandthuis Jodenbreestraat 4, 520 0400 Rijksmuseum Jan Luykenstraat 1, 674 7000 Ronmandos Prinsengracht 282, 320 7036 Rozentheater Rozengracht 117, 620 7953 Serieuze Zaken Studioos Bilderdijkstraat 66-hs, 427 5770 SMART Project Space Arie Biemondstraat 105-113, 427 5953 Soledad Senlle Gallery Sloterkade 171, 615 1395 Souterrain Messinastraat 38 Stadsarchief Amsterdam Vijzelstraat 32 Stadsschouwburg Leidseplein 26, 624 2311 De Stoker Witte de Withstraat 124, 612 3293 Stubnitz Odinakade, NDSM-werf Studio 80 Rembrandtplein 17, 521 8333 Sugar Factory Lijnbaansgracht 238, 627 0008 Theater Bellevue Leidsekade 90, 530 5301 Tropenmuseum Linnaeusstraat 2, 568 8200 Van Gogh Museum Paulus Potterstraat 7, 570 5200 Volkskrantgebouw Wibautstraat 150 W139 Warmoesstraat 139, 622 9434 Westergasfabriek Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 586 0710 Wetering Galerie Lijnbaansgracht 288, 623 6189 Winston Kingdom Warmoesstraat 129, 623 1380 Witzenhausen Gallery Hazenstraat 60, 644 9898 Z'nk Marnixplein 1

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AGENDA: FILM

Film review

By Kate Eaton

And When Did You Last See Your Father Opens Thursday at Cinecenter

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON No parents live forever. And simple relationships are the proverbial exception to the rule.

FILM Amsterdam Weekly recommends.

Festivals Anna Magnani Retrospective A touring retrospective of some of the most famous titles in Anna Magnani’s ﬁlmography, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of this Italian star. A very strong presence on (and off) screen, Magnani is most famous for her complete ease with comedy and drama, and for being one of the earliest foreign actresses to ever win the Oscar (she got the nod for The Rose Tattoo in 1956). Het Ketelhuis Cinepremieres This festival, previewing nearly two dozen recent French ﬁlms in a variety of genres, hits the Uitkijk and Filmmuseum, where each night a different unreleased feature will be screened. Films are subtitled in Dutch or English. See www.cinepremieres.nl for more. Filmmuseum, De Uitkijk India Express While the tenth India Festival takes place in Amsterdam, you can head to De Balie to watch a series of documentaries that deal with the topic in many different ways, from travelogues to biographies (like In Search of Gandhi). De Balie Polska Animacja A festival devoted to Polish animation, including in its compilations both classic shorts and recent productions. Also showing as a side programme are the erotic classics of Walerian Borowicz, like La Bete (1975) and The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Lady Osbourne (1981). Melkweg Cinema

New this week Boy A Adapted from a novel by Jonathan Trigell, this wrenching drama fictionalises the notorious 1993 murder of toddler James Bulger by a couple of tenyear-old truants in Merseyside, England, and the

public outcry over the killers’ release in 2001. A rehabilitated murderer (Andrew Garfield), trembling with hope, is given a new identity and quietly paroled, but his heartfelt desire to start over is immediately threatened by the British tabloids, whose screaming headlines demand to know where the monster is hiding. The movie is taut with suspense but culminates in wise resignation as the hero comes to understand he’s running from a part of himself. (JJ) 100 min. The Movies, Pathé Tuschinski And When Did You Last See Your Father Father and son bonding by a death bed. See review above. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People British everyman Simon Pegg plays Sidney Young, a cocksure London satirist who is inexplicably offered a job on New York’s fashion-defining Sharps magazine. Determined to forge a career on his own terms, he soon realises that integrity plays second fiddle in the world of American celebrities. Kirsten Dunst plays the colleague he eventually clicks with, and Megan Fox plays, err... a babe (what else?). Based on the real-life memoir of Brithack Toby Young. 110 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt Jar City Based on the award-winning novel Myrin (released internationally under the title Tainted Love), Baltasar Kormakur’s stark drama features a quietly commanding performance from Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson as a veteran inspector who must expose many skeletons in his pursuit of the truth. This Icelandic crime mystery connecting the murder of a reclusive lowlife to the natural death of a young girl 30 years earlier was a smash box office hit in its country of origin. In Icelandic with Dutch subtitles. 94 min. Het Ketelhuis Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Great, more animated talking animals and goofy antics! While the sequel to Madagascar is unlikely to change this cynical perspective, it s not all bad. While the animation itself is not as dazzling as your average Pixar flick and the overall feel of the film is quite bland, the voice cast (including the last performance by the late Bernie Mac) is quite good, even though Sascha Baron Cohen as the Lemur King is becoming grating. While there’s not much to recommend besides the hilarious penguins, there’s not too much to fault here either. (LvH) 89 min. Cinema Amstelveen, The Movies, Pathé ArenA, Pathé De Munt

India and animation combined in the wonderful Sita Sings the Blues.

One comment from the UK, where this movie was released a year ago, states, ‘If you have a father, go and see this film.’ Too true. And When Did You Last See Your Father is a beautiful and tasteful film on the universal theme of dealing with the loss of a parent and the relationship that went before it. No parent lives forever and simple relationships are the proverbial exception to the rule. Death gives us reason to come to a full stop and contemplate things past, present and future. The ﬁlm does all that, but it leaves the raw pain of loss untouched. A son in his forties, the author Blake Morrison (Colin Firth), looks back on his relationship with his well-intentioned but selfishly boisterous and overbearing dad (Jim Broadbent) at the time of the father’s fatal illness and subsequent death. Covering four decades, the story traverses the hero-worshipping of a little boy, the resentment and embarrassment of a teenager and the adult son’s acceptance of his dad as a person with as many strengths as annoying faults. Circumstances and objects inspire flashbacks that provide insight into the mechanisms and contradictions in the relationship between father and son. ‘Stupid really, you spend a lifetime trying to avoid talking to someone, and, suddenly, it’s too late,’ Morrison muses as he gets his dad’s car out of the garage to run some errands while the old man lies dying. The car is the one in which Dr Arthur Morrison taught young Blake how

Nights in Rodanthe A doctor (Richard Gere) estranged from his grown son and an innkeeper (Diane Lane) reeling from a failed marriage enjoy a weekend of passion, but can they ﬁnd lasting happiness? This romantic stinker, based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook), is one of those ﬁlms in which every plot development becomes a life lesson and every gesture is weighted with significance. The tragedy in the last act is so clumsily handled you can almost hear the air hissing out of the story. George C Wolfe supplied the innocuous direction, and the groaner of a screenplay is by Ann Peacock and John Romano. (JK) 97 min. Pathé ArenA, Pathé Tuschinski

to drive on the beach, that they would wash together on Sunday afternoons, and in which they went on a camping trip in an effort for father and teenage son to bond. For the latter they ended up floating in their sleeping bags in a tent that turns out to have been erected on the river’s flood plain. The film is based on the sensitive and open memoir that Morrison wrote in 1993 and which, in turn, was based on the diary entries that he had kept during his father’s illness and subsequent death. Director Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) and writer David Nichols (Cold Feet) adapted the highly successful memoir for the big screen. Shot mainly in the countryside of Sussex, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, the film shows off England at its best—at least as far as scenery and talent are concerned. The great cast includes Broad- bent (acclaimed for his work with director Mike Leigh) as doctor Arthur Morrison, Matthew Beard as the adolescent Blake, Firth as the adult, and Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply) in the role of Blake’s mother Kim. There is one serious flaw, though. Broadbent makes a very convincing dad, both as a doctor in his prime and as a patient in old age. Stevenson, however much a splendid actress in her own right, simply will not do as a credible mother to Firth’s grown up Blake. No grey wig and no amount of make up can conceal the fact that the two are separated by a mere four years in age. __

proletarian suburb of Ghent called Moscou (Moscow). Matty (Barbara Sarafian) is somewhat unhappily married to Werner (Johan Heldenbergh), and they have three children. One day she bumps, literally, into truck driver Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet), and she has to start making choices which might affect the other members of her family. A funny, poignant debut by director Christophe van Rompaey, based on a script by Pat van Beirs and Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem. 102 min. Het Ketelhuis, Rialto

Sita Sings the Blues Nina Paley’s animated ﬁlm

The Black Balloon This teenage drama from Down Under scooped up the Crystal Bear for best teen-aimed flick at the latest Berlinale. It’s the story of Thomas (Rhys Wakefield), a teenager moving to a new neighborhood with his family, which includes an autistic brother, and their problems trying to fit in. Yarn is all here, but it’s definitely well made. Featuring the onscreen debut of wide-eyed Aussie supermodel Gemma Ward. 97 min. Studio K

Stranded This documentary looks at one of the

Bride Flight To escape personal drama and the suffocating environment of post-WWII Netherlands, three young families decide to emigrate to New Zealand. The husbands leave ﬁrst to look for work and accomodation, and their brides meet on a fateful 1953 trip from London to Christchurch. Directed by Ben Sombogaart from a script by Marieke van der Pol, with Karina Smulders, Anna Drijver and Elise Schaap as the three young women, and a special appearance by Rutger Hauer. 130 min. The Movies, PathéArenA, PathéDe Munt, PathéTuschinski

won the award of Best Feature at the prestigious Annecy Animation Festival and was the opening film at the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival. A sort of autobiographical tale inspired by the director’s real life break-up with her husband, her reading of The Ramayana, the famous epic Hindu poem about the doomed love of King Rama and Sita, and a mix of old jazz songs and cartoons. It’s a highly entertaining film. 82 min. SMART Cinema most astonishing survival tales of all time. On 13 October 1972, a rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, boarded a plane for a match in Chile, which crashed on the way. Sixteen of the 45 passengers resurfaced, after surviving for 72 days on a remote Andean glacier. Thirty-five years later, the survivors returned to the crash site to recount their harrowing story. Previously documented in the 1973 worldwide bestseller Alive (and the 1993 movie of the same name), this shocking true story receives the definitive cinematic treatment, crafted with riveting detail by documentary film-maker Gonzalo Arijon and featuring a masterful combination of on-location interviews, archival footage and reenactments. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. 130 min. Het Ketelhuis, Kriterion

Still playing Aanrijding in Moscou A recent hit from Belgium at the last Cannes Film Festival, this Flemish romantic comedy (sounds strange, eh?) is set in the

Burn After Reading The latest offering of the Coen brothers is many things at once: it s a spy ﬁlm spoof, a comedy of errors, a great metaphor for the paranoia brought about by the war on terror and a clever deconstruction of narrative ﬁlm-making itself. But it’s the stellar cast including Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Frances McDormand, who all get to behave like knuckleheaded dumbasses, pompous nerds and slick sleazeballs, that will probably draw the bulk of the crowd, and rightfully so. If you don’t mind being subjected to a little cinematic horseplay by those rascally Coens, you’re in for a treat. (LvH) 96 min. Cinecenter, The Movies, PathéArenA, PathéDe Munt, PathéTuschinski Cloud 9 This German entry at the latest Cannes Film Festival presents the classic love triangle we’ve seen

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AGENDA: FILM

contemplative treatment of a poor Brahman family in a Bengali village, made on a small budget and accompanied by the mesmerising music of Ravi Shankar, is a triumph of mood and character rather than an exercise in brisk Western storytelling. In Bengali with Dutch subtitles. (JR) 115 min. Filmmuseum

Special screenings 1000 Journals A thousand blank journals are passed from hand to hand throughout the world, collecting stories, pictures and collages—slices of the lives they touch. It all started with 1000 blank books, released into the world in the summer of 2000 by Someguy, a San Franciscan artist. Someguy’s instructions, stamped inside each journal, were simple: ‘This is an experiment and you are part of it. Add anything you like, then pass it on.’ One came back, ﬁlled. But where are the other 999? 1000 Journals investigates their worldwide journeys, and chronicles the self-governed collaboration of thousands of random people who added to this global ‘message in a bottle’. Directed by Andrea Kreuzhage. 88 min. SMART Cinema

8 Femmes A factory owner is found dead, and

the finger of guilt passes from one occupant of his glamorous home to another: his coolly fashionable wife (Catherine Deneuve), his willful daughters (Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier), his morally loose sister (Fanny Ardant), his miserly mother-in-law (Danielle Darrieux), his neurotic sister-in-law (Isabelle Huppert) and the home’s two domestics (Firmine Richard and Emmanuelle Beart). The French screen royalty assembled by Ozon and the film’s sheer exuberance in its own artifice make this a delight from beginning to end. In French with Dutch subtitles. (JJ) 113 min. Rialto Aparajito The second part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, fully comprehensible on its own terms, suffers at times from its episodic plot, which follows Apu from the age of ten in the holy city of Benares to his early adulthood in Calcutta. But this is my favourite film in the trilogy, and the reported favourite of Ray’s fellow Bengali directors Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen. Its treatment of death—of Apu’s father toward the beginning of the film and of his mother near the end —is among the most beautiful, mystical and precise handlings of that subject in all of cinema. In Bengali with Dutch subtitles. (JR) 113 min. Filmmuseum

Apur Sansar The final and weakest part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy (begun with Pather Panchali and continued with Aparajito), this 1959 feature follows Apu through an arranged marriage that unexpectedly blossoms and then ends tragically, followed by a dark period and eventual spiritual regeneration. Though the rhythm of the storytelling is choppy and Apu himself seems incompletely realised, the first appearance of the remarkable Sharmila Tagore as his well-to-do bride upgrades the film’s middle section, and the final scene between the title hero and the son he’s never known certainly carries a charge. In Bengali with Dutch subtitles. (JR) 103 min. Filmmuseum

Black Narcissus A 1947 film about damaged faith and rising sexual hysteria, set among a group of nuns in India who are working to convert a sultan’s palace into a convent. Films on this subject are generally solemn and naive, but director Michael Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger bring wit and intelligence to it—the title, for example, refers not to some campy romantic theme but to a cheap men’s cologne worn by the local princeling. The ﬁlm’s lush, mountainous India, full of sensual challenges and metaphorical chasms, was created entirely in the so often in other ﬁlms, only this time we get to see old folks get down and dirty. Dressmaker Inge (Ursula Werner) has been married with Werner (Horst Rehberg) for more than 30 years. However, she falls for Karl (Horst Westphal), a 76-year-old customer. It’s a very touching and realistic portrayal of love and sex, that can apparently take you to ‘Cloud Nine’, no matter the age. It can also make a good double-header companion with recent documentary release Young @ Heart. In German with Dutch subtitles. 98 min. PathéTuschinski, De Uitkijk

Hunger The directorial feature debut from artist

Steve McQueen tells the story of IRA member Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) who led the 1981 Irish hunger strike in the Maze prison. But the history lesson is all in the opening titles. What follows next is an incredible filmic tour de force, both for the film-makers and the audience, as we’re taken into the hell of Sands and his inmates. Imagery and events portrayed here are definitely not for the squemish. As far as we know this is fiction, while, by contrast, the Abu Ghraib images were not, yet we can’t help but being profoundly disturbed by McQueen’s work. 96 min. Cinecenter

Into the Wild Moving, if somewhat overlong, account of the life of Christopher McCandless, with

Planet B-Boy Set in the International world of B-Boying, the urban dance more commonly known as breakdancing, this documentary by Benson Lee follows three separate storylines: an American dancer in Vegas looks for his big break, a Korean son seeks his father’s approval and a 12-year-old boy in France confronts his family’s racism. All the b-boys’ lives collide in Germany where their skills are put to the ultimate test, the ‘Battle of the Year’ finals, where representatives from 18 nations ﬁght for the title of World Champion. 95 min. SMART Cinema

Must see:

Aparajito Filmmuseum, Friday, Sunday, Monday, 21.30

studio, with the help of matte artist Peter Ellenshaw. Powell’s equally extravagant visual style transforms it into a landscape of the mind—grand and terrible in its thorough abstraction. With Deborah Kerr. (DK) 100 min. Filmhuis Grifﬁoen

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? (JR) 90 min. OT301 Der Krieger und die Kaiserin A grim reminder of what commercial success can do to a talented director. I don’t want to overrate Tom Tykwer, the writer-director of Run Lola Run (1999), but that film showed a certain flair for expanding on some of the tricks and conceits of music videos, and it seemed an improvement on Tykwer’s heavier, more querulous Winter Sleepers (1997). Krieger tries to combine the racy appeal of Lola with the more mystical ambitions of Winter Sleepers, and to my taste it fails. An obscure tale about a psychiatric nurse (Franka Potente) trying to track down a failed robber who saved her life, it lasts 130 minutes, most of them relatively forgettable. In German with English subtitles. (JR) 130 min. Cavia L’onorevole Angelina One of Anna Magnani’s most celebrated early film parts, which won her a bestactress prize at the Venice Film Festival, was as a working-class woman who organises her neighbours in Rome to fight for their rights in postwar Italy. Luigi Zampa directed this 1947 neorealist comedy-drama;

a bravura performance from Emile Hirsch. At the age of 22, McCandless left his wealthy, dysfunctional family, gave his college cash to Oxfam and took off into the breathtaking beauty of the American wilderness. What starts as a run-of-the-mill road movie twists into an American Odyssey as, after two years away from it all, McCandless meets an untimely death in the wilds of Alaska. The usual Characters Met Along the Way include Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn and Hal Holbrook. McCandless won’t stick with any of them, and gradually begins to unravel in his determined solitude. The ﬁlm becomes a meditation on the human need for human company, framed against some of the most glorious scenery the world has to offer. A triumph for Sean Penn as a director, backed by a custom soundtrack from Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. (AD) 140 min. Kriterion, PathéTuschinski Lake Tahoe A teenager crashes his family car and desperately looks for a way to ﬁx it before going home. On his way, he meets a bizarre parade of characters who provide some mild, dry comedy bits. Borrowing heavily from the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and Aki Kaurismaki, Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke is able to bring in a laugh or two, but ultimately his Lake Tahoe lacks the concrete sense of humor to be a successful comedy, while it doesn’t have enough depth for a

Nando Bruno and Ave Ninchi also star. In Italian with English subtitles. (JR) 90 min. Het Ketelhuis

Lynch: One During the course of two years, which

approximately coincide with the making of Inland Empire, David Lynch agreed to be filmed in his everyday life as an artist, painter, sound engineer, ambassador for trascendental meditation and yes, director of strange, obscure, experimental films. The end result is this documentary simply titled Lynch, of which the title is pretty much the only thing that’s obvious about it. But, as with films directed by, not just starring, David Lynch, the best way to appreciate them is to just let them take you to strange places, like weird dreams after a heavy dinner, there will always be a way out, if only a sweaty awakening. (MB) 84 min. SMART Cinema L Emploi Du Temps This powerful feature by Laurent Cantet probably generated more buzz in 2001—all of it deserved—than any other European feature shown at Venice and Toronto. With uncanny precision and concentration, it follows the progress of a middle-class, middle-aged French businessman (Aurelien Recoing) who gets fired and hides the truth from his family, pretending to be away on business trips while spending much of his time in or near Switzerland. Written by Cantet and Robin Campillo and based very loosely on a true story, it manages to register as a resonant contemporary fable while sustaining narrative interest. In French with Dutch subtitles. (JR) 132 min. Filmmuseum

Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind Inspired by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, this beautiful documentary by John Gianvito documents not only graves and memorials across the US for people—both famous and unknown—who died in political struggles but also the surrounding landscapes that nestle and sometimes hide these largely unmarked sites. The casual way Gianvito introduces us to these settings via sound and image, the varying cinematic means employed, and the powerful maximal effects he achieves from his supposedly minimalist agenda are all essential elements of the ﬁlm’s haunting poetry. (JR) 58 min. SMART Cinema Putney Swope Robert Downey Sr’s low-budget,

hit-or-miss dadaist (or gagaist) 1969 satire, about a group of blacks taking over a Madison Avenue ad agency, is a bit of a relic now, though a decidedly offbeat one. Only a fraction of the jokes ever worked, but the determined goofiness of some of the conceits and the interspersed parodic TV commercials (all of them in colour, though the rest of the movie is in black and white) give one a better idea of the jaunty excesses of the late ’60s than Hollywood movies of the same period. If you’re in a silly enough mood, you might have a good time. With Arnold Johnson, Stanley Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, Antonio Fargas and a fleeting bit by Mel Brooks. (JR) 84 min. De Nieuwe Anita White Lies Black Sheep Urgent and immediate as a punk anthem and built as a rockumentary starring New York City’s legendary underground club scene, this is one of those films where soundtrack and location are as important as the story itself. Directed by James Spooner, author of the award-winning documentary Afro-Punk, White Lies Black Sheep continues Spooner’s exploration of the role played by race on the NY indie scene, telling the story of a young AfricanAmerican man who discovers that the underground music world he’s immersed in isn’t as colourblind as he had believed. 84 min. SMART Cinema

Pather Panchali In 1955, the year Satyajit Ray’s beautiful ﬁrst feature won the Grand Prix at Cannes, no less a humanist than Francois Truffaut walked out of a screening, declaring, ‘I don’t want to see a ﬁlm about Indian peasants.’ Time and critical opinion have been much kinder to this family melodrama — derived, like its successors in the Apu trilogy, from a ’30s novel by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee —than to Truffaut’s remark. Yet there’s no question that Ray’s

Wild Combination—A portrait of Arthur Russel An absorbing portrait of seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his death from AIDS in 1992, Russell created music that spanned pop and art. In this documentary, director Matt Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur’s family, friends and closest collaborators—including Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg. 70 min. SMART Cinema

strong social observation on Mexican youth. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. 85 min. Filmmuseum

5 word movie review

The Mourning Forest This 2007 Japanese film directed by Naomi Kawase won the Grand Prix of Jury at the Cannes Film Festival last year. A nurse (Machiko Ono), grieving for the death of her young son, grows close to an elderly man (Shigeki Uda), one of her patients who suffers from dementia, and who takes her on a mystical quest into the forest in the mountainous region west of Nara. In Japanese with Dutch subtitles. 97 min. Filmmuseum El Olvido New documentary by director Heddy Honigmann (The Underground Orchestra, Forever) focuses on old waiters and bartenders working in Peru, telling stories from their lives and their country. We all know bartenders know a lot of jokes, but they are also masters in the art of surviving with style, dignity and poetry in a world which is out of control. Honigmann makes them talk about the gigantic inﬂation in Peru, the fall of the middle class, the corruption, the violence of Shining Path and that of the local Army. You’ll deﬁnitely feel like having a cocktail afterwards. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. 92 min. Rialto, De Uitkijk

Quantum of Solace The second instalment of the rebooted Bond franchise is chock-full of action, stunts

It’s Easier Than You Think How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Cinecenter

and wanton destruction of elaborately designed luxurious sets. The ubiquitous product placement is somewhat negated by said wholesale destruction of it, and while the narrative is nothing to write home about, it moves the ﬁlm along quite nicely. The selling point of the ﬁlm is Daniel Craig in his incredible portrayal of James Bond and the understated, yet crucial connection with M, played by Dame Dench. It might be a blockbuster for the masses, but it was made by master

Avoiding the easy route of recommending a wholesome dining film for our Food Issue we instead suggest the unforgettable, gruesome prison flick Hunger.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

AGENDA: FILM

ﬁlm craftsmen with wit, style and intelligence. (LvH) 106 min. PathéArenA, PathéDe Munt, PathéTuschinski Rocknrolla Guy Ritchie probably thinks of himself as the British Quentin Tarantino. His latest is simply another revisit of the gangster picture genre, filled with somewhat sharp dialogue, funky characters and unbridled violence. One Two (300’s Gerard Butler) is a London scam artist learning the ropes from shark Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson). The underworld gallery around them is populated with all kinds of colourful peeps providing, if not plot, at least overacting and expensive costume design. The best is crooked accountant Stella (Thandie Newton at her sexiest), the rest is rather forgettable, even if not as bad as Mr Ritchie s most recent oeuvre. I know you re all waiting for a Madge joke, but I am not going to give you one. (MB) 114 min. Kriterion, PathéArenA, PathéDe Munt Shanghai Trance The feature debut of Dutch ﬁlmmaker David Verbeek is made up of three separate love stories edited together, all taking place in contemporary Shanghai. Poor boy Xu Yu watches his love interest leave when her suddenly rich family moves to a chic new district. Popular nightclub DJ Calvin and his girlfriend realize that their party lifestyle must come to an end. And Dutch architect Jochem (Tygo Gernandt) relocates to Shanghai and falls for the beautiful Zhang Yi. In Chinese with Dutch subtitles. 100 min. Filmmuseum Le Silence de Lorna Lorna is a young Albanian woman who just moved to Lieges. In order for her to obtain the EU citizenship, local criminal Fabio makes her marry Claudy, a junkie. Lorna’s dream is to open a bar along with her boyfrend Sokol, but in order to free herself from Fabio, she must get rid of fake husband Claudy and use her ‘European’ status to pass on her Belgian citizenship to a Russian mafioso. The Dardenne brothers move away from their minimalistic, 16mm handheld-style, with this grim contemporary drama that won them a welldeserved Best Screenplay award in Cannes this year. (MB) 105 min. Rialto

FILM TIMES Thursday 13 November until Wednesday 19 November. Times are provided by cinemas and are subject to lastminute changes. De Balie Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, 553 5151 India Express Fri-Wed. Cavia Van Hallstraat 52-I, 681 1419 Der Krieger und die Kaiserin Thur, Fri 20.30. Cinecenter Lijnbaansgracht 236, 623 6615 And When Did You Last See Your Father? daily 16.15, 19.15, 21.45, Sun also 11.15, 14.00 Brideshead Revisited daily 16.00, 19.00, 21.45, Sun also 11.15 Burn After Reading daily 16.00, 19.15, 21.45, Sun also 11.00, 13.30 Hunger daily 22.00 Il y a longtemps que je t'aime daily 19.00 Young@Heart daily 16.00, Sun also 11.00, 13.45 Cinema Amstelveen Plein 1960 2, Amstelveen, 547 5175 Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis Sun 15.45, Tues, Wed 20.30 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Wed 13.30 Sinterklaas en het Geheim van het Grote Boek Sat 13.30, Sun 11.30, Wanted Thur, Fri, Sat 20.30 De Zeven van Daran: De Strijd om Pareo Rots Sat 15.45, Sun 13.45. Filmhuis Grifﬁoen Uilenstede 106, Amstelveen, 444 5100 Black Narcissus Fri 19.30 Savage Grace Thur, Tues 19.30. Filmmuseum Vondelpark 3, 589 1400 Aparajito Fri, Sun, Mon 21.30 Apur Sansar Sat, Wed 21.30 Cinepremieres Thur-Tues 19.15 The Darjeeling Limited Thur-Sat, Mon, Wed 17.00 Entre Les Murs Sat 19.15 Fietsmug en Dansmug Sun, Wed 13.45 Hoppet Sun, Wed 14.00 Lake Tahoe Sun, Mon 21.45, Wed 22.00 L’Emploi Du Temps Sun, Mon 19.15 Makdee: The Web of the Witch Sat 14.00 The Mourning Forest Thur, Fri, Tues 21.15, Sun, Mon, Wed 17.15, Sat 14.15, 21.45 Pather Panchali Fri-Mon, Wed 19.00, Tues 19.30 Ressources Humaines Thur, Fri, Tues 19.15 Shanghai Trance Sat 16.00, Sun 15.30 Tejut Fri 17.15, Tues 17.30. Het Ketelhuis Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 684 0090 Aanrijding in Moscou daily 17.15 Anna Magnani Retrospective daily 19.30 De brief voor de koning Sat, Sun, Wed 14.45 Fietsmug & Dansmug Sun, Wed 13.15, Sun also 11.30 Il y a longtemps que je t'aime Thur-Mon, Wed 17.00, Sun also 12.15 Jar City Thur-Mon, Wed 17.45, 19.45, 21.45, Tues 17.45 , 21.45 Het kleine spookje Laban Sun, Wed 15.15

Tejut If you think the films of Hungarian film-maker Bela Tarr are way too slow and cerebral for your taste, wait until you see the latest work from his country fellow Benedek Fliegauf. Tejut is simply a series of seven tableaux vivants—vignettes with a still camera and actors that walk freely in and out of the frame. Might have actually worked better as an art installation in a gallery—watching it in a movie theatre might be stretching it a bit too much. In Hungarian with Dutch subtitles. 82 min. Filmmuseum Vox Populi The latest film from Eddy Terstall (Simon) deals with an ambitious and flamboyant leftwing politician in a midlife crisis, Jos Fransen (Tom Jansen). Some weeks before the election, his daughter, young actress ZoÎ (Tara Elders) becomes involved with the simple and straightforward military policeman Sjef (Johnny de Mol). Not only is Tom whole-heartedly welcomed by his daughter’s new in-laws, he also becomes influenced by their outspoken ideas on immigrants and demagogic political views. Due to Fransen’s refusal to take a position in these matters he is losing votes, so he realises that uttering the opinions of the common man could be a guarantee to political success. A satire on the current Dutch political scene. 100 min. Het Ketelhuis, Kriterion, PathéTuschinski W Oliver Stone strives for Greek tragedy, but his take on Dubya’s life story and his first term owes more to Freudian psychoanalysis than to Sophocles. According to Stone’s overly sympathetic account, George W became president and invaded Iraq because of his troubled relationship with his daddy. While the fragmented narrative and the psychobabble don’t do the film any favors, the outstanding performances by the cast are a sight to behold. Josh Brolin’s performance in the title role, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice and Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell manage to save the film from the dustbin its subject is destined for. (LvH) 131 min. Kriterion, PathéDe Munt

tion to deal with adult, political and contemporary themes—in this case the 1982 Lebanon war. Director Ari Folman attempts to share his personal experience of the war by interviewing friends and witnesses, whom he turns into animated ﬁgures, thus creating a visual hybrid of documentary and ﬁction. In Hebrew and German with Dutch subtitles. 90 min. The Movies, Rialto

as ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’, ‘Forever Young’ and ‘Fix You’ take on new meaning when sung by people on the brink of death. The choristers’ humour, lust for life and determination are infectious, and the standing ovations at each show well deserved. Perhaps it’s not so bad, being old. (KE) 109 min. Cinecenter, Rialto

Wanted The first foray into Hollywood by Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov feels very much like a bullet ploughing its way through a brainpan, but in a good way. This hyperkinetic action flick defies conventional morality and the rules of nature to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable rollercoaster ride with a surprising sadomasochistic subtext. James McAvoy is excellent as the pencil pusher turned psycho-killer, Morgan Freeman once again easily oozes gravitas, but Angelina Jolie steals the show as the deadly assassin who is appropriately named Fox. Suffice to say, she belongs to the stone cold variety. (LvH) 110 min. Cinema Amstelveen, PathéDe Munt

three petty thieves trying to stage a robbery. Two are killed by the locals, while the third gets trapped inside La Zona and can’t escape. Moral and logistical dilemmas hit the community, as they try to cover up the events from the State Police to keep their status quo. Amazing feature film debut by Mexican film-maker Rodrigo Pla, definitely a name to watch. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles. (MB) 97 min. Studio K

Young @ Heart This documentary by British director Stephen Walker about a Massachusetts rock choir where the choristers average age is 81 could easily have become tacky and sappy, but instead Young @ Heart is surprisingly humane and upbeat. Songs such

La Zona A Mexican gated community is entered by

Edited by Massimo Benvegnù. This week's films reviewed by Jennifer Lyon Bell (JLB), Massimo Benvegnù (MB), Angela Dress (AD), Kate Eaton (KE), Andrea Gronvall (AG), Luuk van Huët (LvH), JR Jones (JJ), Joshua Katzman (JK), Dave Kehr (DK), Steven McCarron (SM), Mike Peek (MP), Gusta Reijnders (GR), Jonathan Rosenbaum (JR) and Bregtje Schudel (BS). All ﬁlms are screened in English with Dutch subtitles unless otherwise noted.

Web tip:

Food on a stick www.youtube.com/watch? v=l-5Lr2IhB_o

Waltz With Bashir The opening ﬁlm of the Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht, Waltz With Bashir follows in the steps of Persepolis with its use of anima-

L'onorevole Angelina Tues 19.30 Sommer vorm Balkon Tues 19.30 Stranded daily 21.30 Ver van familie Sat, Tues, Wed 14.30, Sun 11.00 Vox Populi Thur-Mon, Wed 19.30, 22.00. Kriterion Roetersstraat 170, 623 1708 All God's Children Can Dance daily 17.30 Cidade dos homens daily 17.15 The Darjeeling Limited daily 17.45, Fri, Sat also 0.00 Fietsmug & Dansmug Sat, Sun, Wed 14.45 The French Connection Mon 22.00 Into the Wild Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 21.45 Het kleine spookje Laban Sat, Wed 15.00, Sun 13.15 Rocknrolla daily 22.15, Fri, Sat also 0,30 Sneak Preview Tues 22.15 Stranded Thur-Tues 19.30 Vox Populi daily 20.00, Thur-Mon, Wed also 22.00 W daily 19.45 Wall-E (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 15.15, Sun also 13.00. Melkweg Cinema Lijnbaansgracht 234A, 624 1777 Polska Animacja daily 19.00, Mon also 21.00, Tues also 21.30. The Movies Haarlemmerdijk 159-165, 638 6016 Anubis en het pad der 7 zonden Sat, Wed 15.00, Sun also 13.00 Boy A daily 17.15, 19.30, 21.30, Sat, Sun 15.15 Bride Flight Thur-Tues 16.45, 19.15, 21.45, Sat, Sun also 14.15 Burn After Reading daily 20.00, 22.00, Thur, Fri also 17.00, SatWed also 16.00, 18.00, Sat, Sun also 14.00, Sun also 12.00 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Sat, Sun 15.00 Waltz With Bashir daily 17.00, 19.45, 21.45. De Nieuwe Anita Frederik Hendrikstraat 111, 06 4150 3512 Putney Swope Mon 20.30. OT301 Overtoom 301, 779 4913 Female Trouble Sun 22.15 Pink Flamingos Sun 20.30. Pathé ArenA ArenA Boulevard 600, 0900 1458 Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging Thur, Mon 13.20, 15.40, Tues 16.00 Anubis en het pad der 7 zonden Fri-Sun, Wed 13.40, 15.40, 17.45, Fri, Sat, Sun also 12.20, 14.40, Sat, Sun also 10.10, 11.20, 16.50, Fri also 17.25 Atonement Tues 13.30 Avanak Kuzenler daily 20.40, Thur, Sat-Tues also 15.15, Sat also 23.10 Baby Mama Thur, Mon-Wed 18.10, Fri 18.15, Sat, Sun 9.50 Bride Flight daily 17.40, Thur, Mon, Tues also 12.30 Burn After Reading Thur, Sat-Wed 19.20, 21.40, Thur, Mon-Wed also 16.50, Thur, Mon, Tues also 12.20, 14.40, Fri 19.30, 21.50, Sat 0.00 Eagle Eye Thur, Sat-Tues 17.20, Thur, Mon, Tues also 12.10 14.45 Evenement Fri 22.00 How To Lose Friends And Alienate People daily 19.10, 21.30, Thur-Sat, Mon-Wed also 11.45, 14.10, 16.40, Sun 10.30, 13.00, Sat 0.00 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Wed 12.45, 15.00, 17.10, 19.20, 21.30 Max Payne daily 19.45

A very adult documentary: the animation film Waltz with Bashir.

Mirrors daily 21.55, Sat also 0.25 My Best Friend's Girl Thur, Sat-Tues 20.00, Thur, Sat, Tues also 22.10, Sat also 0.30 Nights in Rodanthe daily 11.40, 13.50, 16.20, 18.40, 21.00, Sat also 23.30 Quantum of Solace daily 12.00, 13.30, 14.00, 14.30, 15.30, 16.00, 16.30, 17.00, 18.00, 18.30, 19.30, 20.30, 21.15, 21.45, 22.00, Thur, Sat-Wed also 11.30, Thur-Tues also 19.00, Thur, Sat Mon-Wed also 13.00, Sat also 10.30, 11.00, 23.00, 23.45, Sun also 11.00, 12.45, Sat al Radeloos Fri-Sun 11.50, 14.20, 17.10 Rocknrolla daily 20.20, Thur, Mon, Tues also 11.50, 14.20, 17.10, Sat 23.00 Sex Drive Sat 23.50 Sinterklaas en het Geheim van het Grote Boek Fri-Sun, Wed 13.15, 15.50, Sat, Sun also 10.40 Sneak Preview Tues 21.00 Space Chimps (NL) Fri, Wed 11.50, 13.45, 15.45, Sat, Sun 11.10, 13.10 Wall-E (NL) Fri-Sun 12.20, 14.45, Sat, Sun also 10.00. Pathé De Munt Vijzelstraat 15, 0900 1458 Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging Sat12.10, 14.50, Sun 10.15, 12.25, Wed 12.20 Anubis en het pad der 7 zonden Sat 10.30, 13.15, 16.10, 18.30, Sun, Wed 12.50, 15.10, 17.20, Sun also 10.40 Baby Mama Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 19.20, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.10, 14.20, Sat 20.40 The Bank Job Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed 21.40, Sat 23.15, Tues 21.50 Bride Flight Thur, fri, Sun-Wed 12.15, 15.00, 18.10, 21.00, Sat 11.45, 14.45, 17.50, 20.50 De brief voor de koning Sat 15.30, Sun, Wed 14.45 Burn After Reading Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 14.15, 17.00, 19.30, 22.00, Thur, Fri, Mon-Wed also 12.00, Sat 12.15, 15.00, 17.45, 20.30, 23.00 Eagle Eye Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon-Wed 18.15, Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed also 21.10, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.45, Thur, Mon, Tues also 15.30, Sat 18.45, 21.30, Tues also 21.40 How To Lose Friends And Alienate People Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 13.45, 16.30, 19.15, 21.50, Sat 11.30, 14.15, 17.00, 19.45, 22.30 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Wed 12.20, 14.45, 17.00, 19.15, 21.30, Sat 23.45 Max Payne Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed 22.10, Sat 23.40 My Best Friend's Girl daily 20.15, Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon-Wed 14.50, 17.45, Thur, fri, Mon, Tues 12.20, Sat 17.30, 22.50 Quantum of Solace daily 14.30, 15.15, 17.15, 18.00, 19.00, 20.00, 20.45, 21.45, Thur-Sat, Mon-Wed also 12.00, 12,30, Thur-Sat, Sun-Tues also 13.30, 16.15,Thur, Fri, Sun-Tues also 15,45, 21.15, Sat also 10.45, 14.00, 16.45, 19.30, 22.15, 22.45, 23.30, Sun also 11.00, 11.45, Radeloos Fri, Sun, Wed 16.00, Sat 11.00, 13.45, 16.30, Sun 10.45, 13.15 Rocknrolla Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 18.45, 21.30, Thur, Fri, Mon-Wed also 13.15, Thur, Mon, Tues 16.00, Sat 19.15, 22.00 Sex Drive Thur, Fri, Sun-Tues 16.50, Sat 18.10, Wed 16.45 Sinterklaas en het Geheim van het Grote Boek Fri, Sun, Wed 15.30, Sun, Wed also 12.45, Sun 10.15, Sat also 10.20, 13.00, 15.45 Sneak Preview Tues 21.30 Space Chimps (NL) Sun, Wed 12.25, 14.40, Sat 11.20, 13.40, 16.00, Sun also 10.15 Tropic Thunder Thur, Fri, Sun, Mon, Wed 19.40, Thur, Fri, Mon

also 14.00, 16.45, Sat 21.00, Tues 14.00, 16.45, 19.10 W Thur, Fri, Sun-Wed 17.30, 20.30, Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues also 12.00, Thur, Mon, Tues also 14.45, Sat 18.15, 21.15 Wall-E (NL) Fri, 14.45, Sat 10.15, 12.45, Sun, Wed 12.15, Wanted Thur, Fri, Mon, Tues 13.00, 18.30, Sat 11.15, Sun 10.15. Pathé Tuschinski Reguliersbreestraat 34, 0900 1458 Alles is liefde Thur, Tues 13.30 Anubis en het pad der 7 zonden Sat, Sun, Wed 12.00, 14.30 Boy A daily 12.45, 19.00, 21.45 Bride Flight Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed 18.00, 21.30 Brideshead Revisited Sun, Tues 21.00 Burn After Reading daily 12.30, 15.00, Thur-Sun, Tues also 17.30, 20.30, Mon also 21.00, Wed also 17.30, 21.00 Cloud 9 daily 15.15 Into the Wild Thur-Sat 21.00 Mamma Mia! The Movie Fri-Mon, Wed 15.30 Nights in Rodanthe daily 12.15, 15.15, 18.30, Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed also 21.00 Quantum of Solace daily 21.15,Thur-Tues also 18.15, Fri, Sat, Mon, Wed also 12.00, 14.45, Thur, Sun, Tues also 15.30, Wed also 17.30 Two Women Sun 10.30 Vox Populi daily 12.15, Thur-Sun, Tues, Wed also 18.30. Rialto Ceintuurbaan 338, 676 8700 8 Femmes Sun 11.00, Wed 19.30 Aanrijding in Moscou Thur-Sat, Mon-Wed 17.45 Caos calmo daily 17.15, Sat 12.45 El Olvido Thur-Tues 19.30, Fri-Wed also 21.30, Fri, Sat, Sun, Wed also 15.15, Sun also 12.45 Le Silence de Lorna daily 17.00, 21.20, Fri, Sat, Sun, Wed also 14.45 Waltz With Bashir daily 20.00, 22.00, Fri, Sat, Wed also 15.30, Sat, Sun also 13.15. Young@Heart daily 19.15, Sat also 12.30, Sun also 12.15. SMART Cinema Eerste Constantijn Huijgensstraat 20, 427 5951 1000 Journals Mon 20.00 Lynch: One Tues, Wed 22.15 Planet B-Boy Thur, Fri 20.00, Sat, Sun 22.15 Proﬁt Motive And The Whispering Wind Mon 22.00 Sita Sings The Blues Sat, Sun, Tues, Wed 20.15 Unknown White Male Thur, Sat, Sun 22.00 White Lies Black Sheep Tues, Wed 22.00 Wild Combination - A portrait of Arthur Russel Thur 20.15, Fri 22.00, Sat, Sun, Tues, Wed 20.00. Studio K Timorplein 62, 692 0422 Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis Thur, Fri, Sun-Tues 19.45, 22.00, Sat, Wed 19.45 The Black Balloon daily 17.15 Brideshead Revisited Thur, Sat 17.00, Fri, Sun-Wed 17.00, 19.30 Fucking Åmål Thur 20.30 Het kleine spookje Laban Sat, Sun, Wed 15.30 Wall-E (NL) Sat, Sun, Wed 15.00 La Zona daily 22.15. De Uitkijk Prinsengracht 452, 623 7460 Cinepremieres daily 21.15 Cloud 9 daily 19.15, Sat-Wed 17.00, Sun also 13.00 El Olvido Thur-Sun 17.00 Wall-E (NL) Sat, Sun 15.00.

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

FOOD & DRINK

The Mouth

By Nanci Tangeman

It’s all Farsi to me Restaurant Caspian Marnixstraat 198, 620 5566 Open daily 17.00-23.00 Cash only I cannot read my own handwriting. It’s one of the hazards of writing about restaurants. I try to jot notes surreptitiously, under the table or when the waiter’s back is turned, but usually when I reread my comments I can’t tell a stealthily written ‘tasty soup’ from ‘tastes like soap’. Add a couple of glasses of wine, there really is no hope. Some food writers get around this by sneaking off to the lavatory stall with their pads and pencils. Others rely on their memories. I’m usually lucky if I remember where my table is after I visit the loo, so neither of these methods works for me. I sense I’m in trouble as soon as we enter Restaurant Caspian. Our host is Iranian, speaking in Dutch. I’m American, listening in Dutch, remembering in English. I don’t recognise a single dish on the menu. When Partner-in-all-things-investigative begins to pour the wine, I know I’m toast (one of the few legible foodstuffs I can make out in my notes later—even though I don’t remember being served any). What I do remember is that all ﬁve people at our table loved Caspian’s food. One of the few scribbles I can read says: feta, mint, radish, basil, parsley, anise, walnut on traditional Iranian bread (€3.50). Suddenly I recall the Iranian toftoon, a bread plumper than lavash, but thinner than Indian naan. The next indecipherable scrawls

turn out to be mirza ghasemi (€5), a dish from the shores of the Caspian in Northern Iran made from roasted aubergine, tomatoes, garlic, eggs and onions; then kashk bademjan (€4.50), another grilled aubergine dish, this time with mint. Somewhere in my notes I learn that ‘sabzi’ means green and it all begins to make sense: koekoe sabzi (€4) is a sort of egg soufﬂe with roasted leek, parsley, spinach and dill; koekoe sibzamini (€4) has potato and eggs; salad olwiese (€5) is a sort of Iranian huzaren salad. A plate of naan with the Iranian cheese pannier sabzi (€3.50), along with plates of spicy pickles, rounds out our starters. I’m certain I’ve jotted down that the Caspian is turning out to be a vegetarian’s paradise. (I just can’t read it.) Then comes the parade of kebabs. In my notes I can decipher dish #24 (€30 for two people). Its name on the menu begins with a G, but I seem to have written the rest in Farsi. The combo includes kebab koebideh (minced meat) and kebab barg, a common kebab pairing in Iranian cuisine called soltani. The meat is served off the stick on a bed of saffron rice. Other combos include the Persian favourite kebab djeoedje: chicken marinated in onion, saffron and lemon juice. The kebabs are accompanied by mounds of rice with saffron and sumac strips and a fragrant plate of grilled onions and lemons. The last sentence in my notebook claims that Caspian serves a ‘completely cat-free side dish of fava beans and lemon.’ Maybe I’m just being lazy, but I decide to leave that line as it stands. My guess is, it’s probably true. __

What I do remember is that all ﬁve people at our table loved Caspian’s food.

A night in the life...

By Sarah Gehrke

Hard to get Canvas Wibautstraat 150 (Volkskrantgebouw) Open Sun-Thur 12.00-01.00, Fri, Sat 12.00-03.00 Cash, PIN ‘I think you are a marvellous woman,’ says the guy behind us to his companion. ‘Just marvellous. I mean in the sense that you have integrity—you are very honest; not in the sense that I’m trying to ﬂirt with you. I just think that you really have a lot of integrity.’ The marvellous integrity woman smiles, but her answer is drowned in the general noise of the room. We will never know if she smiled because she’s happy about the fact that she has so much integrity, or that the guy is ‘not trying to ﬂirt’. But at our end of the table, the conversation has been enough to spark a lively discussion about compliments that are worse than insults. While not the ultimate place for delivering chat-up lines, Canvas is a good place for chatting about them. Also, there’s the seventh floor view: Oost is all lights and streets and beauty. If we get tired of watching the view, we can watch everyone else. The people that we watch are hard to classify. One would expect an arty pack, since Canvas is located in the former Volkskrant building, now a

Beer price: €2 for a (funny-looking) glass (Heineken). Emergency food: The longish menu of snacks with fancy names concludes with an entry that shouts heartily and contentedly: ‘Portie bitterballen’. Special interior feature: Art, some cool, some not. Predominant shoe type: Trainers, the feminine sort: Gola and Onitsuka Tiger. Typically ordered drink: Glasses of wine, glasses of beer. Smoking situation: Round the corner in the hallway. That feels cool, because it reminds us of school parties and of hiding in a back corner to smoke. And the black burn marks make a funny dotted pattern on the linoleum floor. Tune of the night: ‘Numb’ by Portishead, remixed in some way by the DJs. Mingling factor: Medium-low. State of toilets near closing time: They are highly reminiscent of school. It must be the linoleum.

broedplaats filled with designers and artists. The bar itself is large, white and stylish in a slightly messy way. But the crowd here is quite mixed. There’s a borrel of international students, who are talking about the difference of cafeteria food in Valencia and Amsterdam. There are couples twice their age who are talking about their colleagues at what is obviously a civil service job. There’s the non-flirty guy, who doesn’t look particularly arty either (but you never know). All in all, it’s an interesting mixture. There’s one thing, though, that everyone here has in common—their seat on the sofa is well-deserved, as it has not been easy to acquire. Firstly, of course, there’s the way to Wibautstraat, which is a trial for every Amsterdammer who doesn’t actually live in Oost. This town is too small for people to be willing to cover distances that take them longer than 10 minutes, so coming here takes stamina. Secondly, the way inside isn’t easy. You have to walk around the building, find a side entrance, ring a mysterious bell and then spend a few minutes crammed in a neon-lift that seemingly hasn’t been checked since the 1970s. Not your usual bruin cafe entrance. But it’s well worth it. As we leave, we pass by a girl looking outside the window in the hall. She turns around, saying to her friend: ‘Look. From up here, Amsterdam looks almost like a real city.’ __

Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

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Amsterdam Weekly_13-19 November 2008

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