April 22, 2009

The Dutch Cocaine Factory with filmmaker present

Filed under: Film,History by Orangemaster @ 10:11 pm

(Trailer of ‘The Dutch Cocaine Factory’ by Jeanette Groenendaal, 2007)

Screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IFDA) in 2007, ‘The Dutch Cocaine Factory’ by Jeanette Groenendaal is a documentary about the history of cocaine dealing in the Netherlands, claimed to be a fascinating adventure in both theme and form, with a David Lynch-like dream quality to it.

The fact is that for over 50 years, until WWII, the Netherlands was the best and biggest cocaine producing country in the world… and we are not talking about a scheme created by two bit junkies, but an operation created by the Dutch Royal Bank.

The film will be screened in the presence of Jeanette Groenendaal at De Nieuwe Anita in Amsterdam on Monday, April 27, at 8 pm. It’s a small, cozy place and sells out super fast.

A big thanks to Amsterdam-based American film expert Jeffrey Babcock for presenting such marvels and getting me to see good films for a change.

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Annie M.G. Schmidt fairytale collection at DBNL.org

Filed under: Art,Literature by Branko Collin @ 2:34 pm

When I was a wee lad, one of my favourite fairytale books was Heksen en zo (Witches and such) by Annie M.G. Schmidt, and to my great joy and surprise I ran into the whole collection at the DBNL website. DBNL is a sort of Project Gutenberg, but they apparently have a good rapport with authors’ estates, because they manage to present in-copyright works by significant Dutch authors for free to a web audience.

This version of Heksen en zo is illustrated by Charlotte Dematons. The one we had at home was illustrated by the inimitable Carl Hollander, who also graced the works of Paul Biegel and Astrid Lindgren with his drawings.

There once was a king who was so rich that he had oysters for tea and fed real pearls to his pigs every day. When he drove by in his black carriage with golden wheels, the people bowed deep into the dust.

Sometimes a child said: “But he hasn’t got a nice face, mother.” This would startle the mother and she would whisper: “Shush, you are not allowed to say that.”

“Why not?” the child asked. “Can the king hear us?”

“No,” the mother said. “But the king has a marshal who keeps an ear to the ground.”

And this was so. The king had a marshal who could unscrew his left ear. When nobody was watching he would lay the ear between some shrubs near the window of a house. Then he would go away and leave his ear behind.

[…]

(From: De maarschalk die zijn oor te luisteren legde, Heksen en Zo, Annie M.G. Schmidt.)

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Learn to be a prostitute in Amsterdam

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:41 am
Moulin Rouge

If you’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be a window prostitute, now you can actually learn the tricks of the trade from an expert. The course is given by Mariska Majoor who used to work as a prostitute and now runs the Prostitute Information Centre in Amsterdam’s Red Light district. She lets people experience what it’s like to work as a window prostitute. Majoor says that she has been telling her story for ages and that “people still gape in awe and find it exciting, but don’t understand what it’s really like.”

Of all the people in Amsterdam, Mariska Majoor is probably the best ‘teacher’ you’ll ever have. A local expert in prostitution and educating people about it, she apparently provides information to some 22,000 visitors a year.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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April 21, 2009

Open Source car

Filed under: Automobiles,Design,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:14 am

In 2005 the well-known Stichting Natuur en Milieu foundation (Foundation for Nature and Environment) asked students of the three technological universities (Delft, Eindhoven, Twente) to invent the car for the year 2020. This is what they came up with, called the c’mm’n, and the first thing you will notice is that it doesn’t fly. The car that is, not or not necessarily the concept.

So, for the car geeks out there, here are the dirty details (Dutch):

  • Thermoplastic exterior
  • Aerodynamic shape
  • Mega-iPhone-like dashboard that lets you play GTA IV while the auto-pilot drives the car
  • Configurable driver’s seat that makes it impossible for other drivers to seek eye contact
  • Memory foam back seat
  • Active suspension (makes the car stick to the road better)
  • Frame that doubles as a shockabsorber
  • Fully electrical powertrain
  • Optional diesel range extender (the so-called engineering booth makes it possible for you to compose your own car and calculate the effects of your choices)

They seem to have put more thought into the ‘car of the future’ bit than into the ‘open source’ bit—the c’mm’n people still have to decide on the license. I understand that can be a tricky thing but on the other hand even Ford, which isn’t in the business of giving away its products, at least opened up its press photography.

(Link: Springwise.com. Source photo: cmmn.org.)

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April 20, 2009

Somalian piracy explained in short Dutch film

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 8:50 am

Utrecht-based, Benin-born filmmaker Didier Chabi made a simple film interviewing three Dutch guys of Somalian descent trying to explain in laymen’s terms why Somalian pirates keep attacking ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The film (in Dutch) raises some interesting questions: why shoot the pirates after they’ve been arrested? Is that really necessary? “They negotiate with captors of non African countries and don’t kill them when they are caught. But they shoot the Somalians. No one in the film understands why and label it racism.

One guy explains that the Spanish started fishing in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and dumping toxic waste, which resulted in them being attacked, or simply put, the Somalians defending themselves and their rights. Another simple reason for the piracy is that although Somalia has an advantageous geographical position, it hasn’t really led to any economic advantage for Somalians, a very poor African country.

No matter how reprehensible piracy is, it didn’t start in a vacuum, as the media tends to portray, according to the film.

(Link: wereldjournalisten.nl)

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April 19, 2009

Citizen’s Initiative neutered by parliament

Filed under: General,Online by Branko Collin @ 11:46 am

Earlier this year the first digital citizen’s initiative was organized to force parliament to talk about the right of citizens to light fireworks at New Year (the people behind the initiative want that right taken away). Recently however the committee that needs to verify whether citizen’s initiatives are legit, led by former Minister of the Interior Johan Remkes, has shot down the fireworks initiative with the most spurious arguments, reports Geen Commentaar (Dutch):

He states that minister Ter Horst indicated at a committee meeting on January 29, 2008, that she did not wish to outlaw consumer fireworks. According to Remkes, “parliament has implicitly endorsed this point of view by not tabling any motions from which the opposite could be inferred.”

And with that kind of argument he basically killed every future citizen’s initiative.

On a totally unrelated matter, yesterday I heard three politicians on the radio whine, again, that citizens are not interested in politics and that they seem think all politicians are crooks. Hm…

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April 18, 2009

Gorilla-proof glasses

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 2:32 pm

Last year a gorilla called Bokito attacked a woman in the Rotterdam zoo, presumably because she had behaved herself aggressively by staring at the animal and grinning at it. Advertising agency DDB came up with a campaign for insurance company FBTO which resulted in the handing out of 2,000 of these Bokito-proof glasses that lets you look at a gorilla directly while seemingly looking away. Nice case of gorilla marketing (pun intended).

(Image source unknown, presumably one of the two companies mentioned above. Link: BoingBoing.)

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Colourful and perhaps slightly disturbing comic book covers

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 10:25 am

An ad on the back of the latest Zone 5300 brought together these colourful and perhaps slightly disturbing comic book covers by Dutch and Flemish artists (click for a larger version):

zone-5300-ads-thumb

From left to right:

  • I Heart Paris by Maarten vande Wiele and Erika Raven;
  • De Maagd en de Neger 2 (The Virgin and the Negro, part 2) by Judith Vanistendael;
  • Rood Gras – Ik ben een bos en er lopen mensen door mij by Rob van Barneveld (Red Grass – I Am a Forest and People are Walking Through Me);
  • Als Vader Abraham van huis is (When Vader Abraham is Away from Home) by Argibald; and
  • Zachte Dwang (Gentle Coercion) by Kim Duchateau.

They almost make me want to not buy the books, so that I can fantasize about what is in them.

Between the covers of issue 85 of Zone 5300 are stories by Tanxxx and by Wittek & Sven Tauke, excerpts from Typex’ sketch book, a two-pager by Zone editor Sandra de Haan, and also a two-pager by Maaike Hartjes, in which the author goes introspective, but in a funny way.

Zone 5300 also points out that the ultra-Dutch comic Sjef van Oekel is being rereleased in French (where the title character is called Leon-La-Terreur), but not in Dutch. “What’s up with that?” the mag demands to know of the artist, Theo van den Boogaard. “The co-operation between publishers De Bezige Bij and Oog & Blik is still young, but there is a good chance they will publish the Dutch reprint. Wim [Wim T. Schippers] and I always wanted to be published by De Bezige Bij, so this development makes us very happy.”

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April 17, 2009

Dutch Project Gutenberg reader for April 2009

Filed under: Animals,Literature,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:37 pm

What is it with adventurers and gadgets? Do they need the distraction when all there is between them and a 2000-metre drop is an almost negligible amount of tent cloth? Or do they feel they have to be at the frontier of everything, including that of technological advances?

This photo shows an early iPod, 1909, used by Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. As you can see, there’s only one earbud—which is rather large, the idea being that the music might be shared with penguins this way. Shackleton failed his bid but did set a record for going farthest South. When he came back later that year, he wrote an article about his adventures which got translated into Dutch and published in De Aarde en Haar Volken.

My Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader for April (Dutch) dips into a number of translations, among which translations of the chapter Birds of Brehms Tierleben, of Durch das Land der Skipetaren (Karl May), and of Erasmus’ Morias Enkomion (The Praise of Folly).

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Berckheyde’s Golden Bend painting claimed by US bank

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Branko Collin @ 8:26 am

The US bank JPMorgan Chase claims to be the rightful owner of De bocht van de Herengracht (around 1672) by Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde, writes Volkskrant (Dutch). The Rijksmuseum, which currently has the painting, bought the work in October of last year from one Louis Reijtenbagh, who has since gotten into financial troubles. The bank claims Reijtenbagh never should have sold the painting in the first place, as he had been using it as collateral for a loan.

On April 1, JPMorgan Chase claimed the entire art collection of Reijtenbagh which contains Rembrandts, Monets, Picassos and so on. The location of many of these paintings is apparently unknown, but Berckheyde‘s painting of what later was to be known as the Golden Bend, where Amsterdam’s wealthiest citizens used to live, is currently at display at the National Gallery museum in Washington.

Note by the way that Volkskrant and De Telegraaf show two different pictures, and the Rijksmuseum website has a third painting with the same name. For the illustration of this entry I went with the version I liked best, but if you know which picture is the contested one, let us know.

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