The Power of Culture

Music has been banned in Iran since 1979. Sounds of Silence (2006), a documentary by Amir Hamz (Germany), shows that, despite this ban or perhaps because of it, the country has a vibrant music scene. Musicians circumvent the censor's regulations in inventive ways.

Girls from a Nairobi slum stand economically and socially firm by participating in football tournaments in their own country and elsewhere.

Those who believe that the Indians in Latin America still believe that a photo will steal their soul or flee to escape video cameras are wrong. Since the first anthropological and artistic experiments in the 1970s and 1980s, this continent has developed its own film and video production sector.

Development organization Hivos has established a cinema award: the Hivos Cinema Unlimited Award.

Thanks to lobbying by a local organization, the Angolan government has finally promised that it will develop policy to protect the San, the first inhabitants of southern Africa. Their extremely poor living conditions will be discussed during a conference in Lubango in early April 2007.

Alternative music is having a hard time on Cuba: no record label will sign on rock, punk, rap or reggae. "Not Cuban" is their verdict.

PEN clubs are spreading across the Arabic world. Cooperation between Scandinavian and Arab partners plays a special part in this.

The University of Leyden recently initiated a new history of art. Because isn’t the history of art as we understand it coloured by the rest of our history of dominance?

More than one hundred professionals gathered on 31 March and 1 April for the symposium Art comtemporain et sociétés post-coloniales in the renovated Petit Palais. The topic of discussion originated in the period in which this Parisian art temple was being constructed: what is the position of contemporary art in the post-colonial era?