Arts and Entertainment Archives

CULTURE: Haiku, Or the Essence of Being Japanese

The popularity of the haiku, the traditional Japanese poem, in a nation where shows by pop star Michael Jackson are booked-up almost a year before the scheduled dates, offers a rare look at the stark contrasts that mark Japanese modern life.

CULTURE-USA: Roy DeCarava’s Photos Shed Light on Black Life

By Farhan Haq

Visitors to New York's Museum of Modern Art may be puzzled at a new photography retrospective that offers pictures almost entirely composed of grey and black forms.

CULTURE-NIGERIA: Showcase on Hair is Culmination of a Dream

By IPS Correspondents

Photographs of the hairstyles of African women - on display for the past two weeks at the Goethe Institute in Germany - tell in black and white prints a story much broader than the elaborate way in which Nigerian women styled their hair.

MUSIC-USA: Nobel Laureate Turns to Song

By Farhan Haq

Would you believe the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature could write lyrics for a leading opera diva? You better, because Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and soprano Kathleen Battle have teamed up to produce just such an album with 'Honey and Rue'.

SPORT-PHILIPPINES: Football Scores in Basketball-Crazy Country

By IPS Correspondents

Early on Saturday mornings, the green fields of a local university are dotted with eager youngsters kicking, dribbling and heading footballs.

CULTURE-IRELAND: Focus on Latin America

By IPS Correspondents

For many of the school kids, it may have been a welcome break from ordinary lessons more than anything else.

BUSINESS-CHILDREN: Jamaican Kids Swap Toys for Boardroom

By IPS Correspondents

Business firms around the world might well ponder the same question that faced a Jamaican soft drinks company: if our market is heavily weighted toward children to whom should we look for help in increasing sales?

CULTURE-PERU: Spanish Robbing Voices of Indigenous Languages

By IPS Correspondents

"Almost two centuries after the Spanish conquistadors were expelled, Spanish continues to be a colonizing language", says Tercila Rivera, and one that is snuffing out more and more indigenous languages.

ARTS-AFRICA: Desert Wanderers Showcase their Art

By IPS Correspondents

Tuaregs, driven from their home by war in the deserts of Mali, are attempting to keep their culture alive by producing traditional artefacts - and earning some money in the process.

CINEMA-BRAZIL: Women Take Over

By Mario Osava

More and more women enter the world Brazilian cinema, which until recently was almost entirely controlled by men.

THEATRE-USA: ‘Bring in da Noise’ Brings Back the History of Tap

By Farhan Haq

When most audiences think of tap dance, they might think of Fred Astaire softly stepping up and down walls in his movies with Ginger Rogers, or the big Broadway productions now typified by Tommy Tune.

TRAVEL-NEPAL: Ballooning Hottest New Fad in the Himalaya

By IPS Correspondents

The red, yellow and blue balloon with its big Buddha eyes lifts off silently from the valley floor, rising rapidly over the blanket of fog into the crisp Himalayan sky.

CULTURE-BOSNIA: Rock Turns Blues

By IPS Correspondents

In the last few years, they were both soldiers and musicians: the members of the Bosnian-Serb rock band 'Sarajevo Assassin'.

ARTS-CONGO: Women Tell it All on Canvas

By IPS Correspondents

For now they're only a handful, but Congo's women painters have been slowly changing the face of an art which, in this Central African nation, has long been an all- male preserve.

ZIMBABWE-CULTURE: Fashion Industry Propels Social Consciousness

By IPS Correspondents

Fashion may be fickle, but it can have some enduring values: two Zimbabwean design houses have demonstrated how.

CULTURE-USA: Hollywood Apocalypse

By Jim Lobe

With the approach of the millennium -- and the intensification of anxieties afflicting the shrinking middle class -- the spectre of an apocalyptic end to human life, or at least the "American Way of Life", is haunting the world's last remaining superpower.