fri 29/11/2024

festivals

Les Antliaclastes, Institute of Contemporary Arts/ A Guide to Puppetry

The puppets appearing in LIMF this year are by no means all child-friendly - after the mild kiddy-horror of Teatro Corsario and their hand-manipulated Bunraku creatures, the return of the much more disturbing imagination of Patrick Sims, founder and...

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LIMF: La Maldición De Poe, Purcell Room/ Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, Barbican Pit

The up - which I’m sorry not to have reported on before it ended last night - was the Spanish puppetry troupe Teatro Corsario, who made their hour’s strut and fret upon the stage in the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room a pleasingly diverting wee...

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theartsdesk in Rennes: 32nd Trans Musicales Festival

The Breton capital Rennes is an attractive city. Move north from the train station, pass through a covered market with tripe and saucisse sellers, cross a canal and there's a series of Italianate squares and arcades. Further along is the quaint...

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Festivals Britannia, BBC Four

An infestation of human beings, temporarily invading a sizeable stretch of southwest England

A startling one in 10 British adults apparently went to a music festival this year. Given that I’m a music journalist and I didn’t, maybe I’m some kind of astronomically unlikely anomaly. I’d like to think so. But those familiar aerial shots of...

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theartsdesk in Tallinn: 23rd European Film Awards

Ghost at the party: Roman Polanski, director of Best Film 'The Ghost', looks on at the European Film Awards

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost won five of the seven European Film Awards it was nominated for last night. It was a display of the sort of sentimental herd mentality familiar from the Oscars which the European Film Academy’s voters like to feel they...

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theartsdesk in Luxembourg: The Sonic Visions Festival

Luxembourg's musical landscape has few claims to represent the Grand Duchy itself. Most of Luxembourg's Eurovision entries weren't actually from the Duchy, as there was little local music to draw on. So Belgium's cod punk-gone-blando Plastic...

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Hereford Photography Festival

Paul Shambroom's 'Alpharetta Military Helicopter - Suburban Street Furniture'

Cider, bulls and a beautifully restored cathedral which hosts the annual Three Choirs Festival are probably the key elements used to brand Hereford. But for 20 years, the city has also been home to the UK’s first photography festival. This month,...

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theartsdesk in Brooklyn: The CMJ Festival

Nobody really knows what CMJ stands for, but then few of New York’s residents know of the five-day music festival’s existence either. Involving more than 1200 bands and 75 cross-borough venues, CMJ is for the real music fans - dare I say, geeks even...

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Éthiopiques: Mulatu Astatke and the Story of Ethiopian Jazz

As the London Jazz Festival approaches, it's an unlikely fact worth noting that some of the bestselling instrumental jazz records of the last few years have been from Ethiopia. Ethiopian jazz composer Mulatu Astatke, now 66, is the best-known...

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theartsdesk in Belfast: Scenes from the 48th Belfast Festival

'New circus' troupe Circa 'howl in the face of gravity'

In National Anthem, the debut play by bestselling novelist Colin Bateman, a composer lies prostrate on the floor. Half hungover, half waiting for inspiration, he has been commissioned to co-write an anthem for Northern Ireland with a poet and has...

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theartsdesk in Tampere, Finland: At the Lost in Music Festival 2010

The music of Sibelius might speak of Finland, its unpopulated spaces, vast inland lakes, semi-Arctic climate and long, dark nights, but the annual Lost in Music festival brings together a bewildering array of Finnish bands and singers that range...

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South Asian Literature 1: Romesh Gunesekera Q&A

Romesh Gunesekera, the Sri Lankan-born British novelist: 'Usually we don’t have to identify ourselves in 15 words'

The inaugural South Asian Literature Festival takes place in London over 10 days. It has drawn authors such as Amit Chaudhuri, Fatima Bhutto, Kenan Malik and Mohamed Hanif, as well as publishers, translators and artists (performance and graphic)...

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