Turkey
KumaFriday, 16 August 2013
It’s the women who keep things together in Umut Dağ’s debut feature Kuma, and you can see the weight of the burden that matriarch Fatma (Nihal G Koldas) has been carrying etched on her face. Fatma’s latest endeavour to preserve balance in her Vienna... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Istanbul: Art pours out of Gezi ParkSunday, 16 June 2013
I can’t wait to check out Istanbul’s galleries in a couple of years. Already endowed with an exploding arts and design scene, with Istanbul Modern in its unique location hanging over the Bosphorus, the retrospectively-looking Santral half integrated... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Istanbul: City on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown?Sunday, 21 April 2013
Late on a spring Friday evening, İstiklal Caddesi, the main shopping thoroughfare in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, exudes all the delicious traditional Turkish aromas: roasting chestnuts, fierce black coffee, döner grills and simit, İstanbul’s bagel... Read more... |
Midnight Express, Peter Schaufuss Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 11 April 2013
Yok is a fine Turkish word meaning “there isn’t any”. You use it for “no”, as in, say - is Midnight Express any good? Yok.The hot news surrounding this production was all in the scarpering of its two stars a week before opening, both exceptional... Read more... |
Mare Rider, Arcola TheatreMonday, 28 January 2013
It’s like waiting for a number 19 bus. You hang around for half an hour then two come along at once. So it is just now with plays either written by women or featuring women’s lives. While Amelia Bullimore’s sparky three-hander Di and Viv and Rose is... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Konya: Into the MysticSunday, 18 November 2012
Next month, as has been the case for centuries, lovers of the poet and mystic Jalaluludin Rumi (known simply as Mevlana - The Master - in Turkey, Iran and Persia) will come together to celebrate the day of his passing, on the 17th of December... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Istanbul: East meets West at the Istanbul Music FestivalSunday, 08 July 2012
There’s a peculiarly boundless quality to Istanbul – a city where private domestic life sprawls publicly out across pavements and parks, the bustle of the city seeps out beyond land onto the commercial waterways of the Bosphorous, and cats stroll... Read more... |
DVD: Once Upon a Time in AnatoliaFriday, 06 July 2012
It's over an hour before we see a woman in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. And even then, she arrives slowly, appearing at first more of a heavenly human smudge than a fully formed figure. But moments later she is filling the... Read more... |
Nefés, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsMonday, 25 June 2012
Istanbul, even more than Rome, is the point in the world where tectonic plates of civilisations collide: Europe, Arabia and Asia, Muslim Istanbul and Christian Constantinople, fundamentalists and secularists, 21st-century women and 15th-century men... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's GlobeWednesday, 30 May 2012
As soon as the two leads entered you were left in no doubt that you were in the presence of stars, at least in their native Turkey: thunderous applause, cheers and whistles greeted Haluk Bilginer as Antony and Zerrin Tekindor as Cleopatra, as they... Read more... |
theASHtray: Arafat/Peres, Orhan Pamuk and Zombie Ass: Toilet of the DeadSaturday, 21 April 2012
Next week sees the release of Shimon Peres, the second instalment in Spirit Level Film’s The Price of Kings series. A president of Israel who refers to leadership as “not a very happy engagement,” a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who says he has never... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Istanbul: Borusan boosts the ArtsSunday, 08 April 2012
The workers at the smart Borusan Holdings head office are expected to be tidy, especially on a Friday. That’s because their office doubles up as an art gallery, the Borusan Contemporary, at weekends. There are some paintings, like the attractive... Read more... |
