/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-VENEZUELA: One Million Quixotes

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have been lining up around the country for a free copy of what is considered the all-time greatest work of literature in the Spanish language, "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, on the 400th anniversary of its first publication.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-VIETNAM: Writers Becoming State Puppets?

The long absence of good literary works from Vietnam has set off some soul-searching questions among authors here, with many asking whether government grants given to members of the Vietnamese Writers' Association (VWA) have been put to good use.

ARGENTINA: Whistleblower’s Film Delves into Tragic Plane Crash

A film by a pilot-turned-filmmaker that seeks to shed light on a tragic plane crash has won eight national and international prizes as well as strong reviews by critics, while having a major impact on the public.

FILM-VENEZUELA: Documentary Revolution

For Venezuelan documentary maker Angel Palacios, truth is not impartial, but it is possible for the media to be independent, as long as they do not try to be "independent of the world."

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-ARGENTINA: Relocated Town Searches for Its Roots – Underwater

When the water level is low, what is normally a lake becomes a vast expanse of rubble, where the residents of Federación, in eastern Argentina, search for traces of the town submerged almost three decades ago to build the Salto Grande dam, on the border with Uruguay.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOK-NEPAL: Mourning for Democracy

''The last thing the world needs is another failed state in South Asia, but that is what threatens to emerge in Nepal, where a spiralling conflict between the army and insurgents has taken a turn for the worse,'' said a 'New York Times' editorial recently.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-INDIA: A Reel Tribute To a Real Life Hero

He was one Indian independence leader whose life was the stuff crazy adventure stories are made of. In fact only art can imitate the life of a national hero like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

CULTURE: Class, Not Race, War Grips Zimbabwe

Blamed, along with the opposition party, for a lot that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe, many among the white minority have packed their bags and left.

/UPDATE*/ARTS WEEKLY/ UAE: Dubai Evolves As ‘City of Cities’

Fast becoming the commercial hub of the Middle East, Dubai has in the past few years launched several projects to encourage investors and tourists alike. One noteworthy initiative has been the setting up of 'cities' for institutions with special interests to foster work environments with common ideologies, thereby opening up possibilities for collaboration.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LATIN AMERICA: Indigenous Filmmakers Give Glimpse into Their World

A painter's search in the Peruvian jungle for plants that would reproduce the colour blue served as the inspiration for the grand-prize winner at the latest Anaconda Awards, a regional competition for videos made in South America's tropical rainforests.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ UAE: Dubai Evolves As ‘City of Cities’

Fast becoming the commercial hub of the Middle East, Dubai has in the past few years launched several projects to encourage investors and tourists alike. One noteworthy initiative has been the setting up of 'cities' for institutions with special interests to foster work environments with common ideologies, thereby opening up possibilities for collaboration.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ RUSSIA: Opera Faces Pornography Charges

Russian parliamentarians have rallied to impose a ban on the increasingly publicised opera 'The Children of Rosenthal' at the Bolshoi Theatre, a work fresh from the pens of composer Leonid Desyatnikov and prolific writer Vladimir Sorokin.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-US: Can International Law Save Civil Liberties?

A new book edited by noted civil rights attorney Ann Fagan Ginger suggests that the U.S. left should focus on using international law to stem the rights violations that are increasingly common side effects of Washington's "war on terror".

/ARTS WEEKLY/CHILE: Prize-Winning Author Fights Book Piracy

This year is the 500th anniversary of Don Quixote, and a prize-winning Chilean author feels like he is tilting at windmills - though not at all imaginary - in his fight against book piracy and the government's indifference to the illegal industry.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-MEXICO: Indigenous Youngsters Conquer Audiences Everywhere

They learned to play music while playing children's games in the hilly scrubland of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and although they are still just youngsters, they can read sheet music and execute works by Beethoven and Latin American popular music standards with equal ease.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ROMANIA: Paintings Bring Back Communist Visions

Daniel Vasilescu was only nine years old when the communist regime was overthrown in Romania in December 1989, following a bloody popular revolt that ousted former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.

/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Bold Film ‘Busts’ Female Beauty Stereotypes

Tollywood, the eponymous Bengali film industry based in the ill-equipped Tollygunge studios of this eastern Indian metropolis, often rushes where perhaps Hollywood fears to tread.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CHILE: Military Cooperates Closely in Film on Beagle Channel

In an unprecedented show of cooperation with civil society, aimed at leaving behind the animosity fed by human rights abuses under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military offered its support for the filming of a new movie on the 1978 dispute with Argentina over control of the Beagle Channel.

/ARTS WEEKLY/SRI LANKA: Where Pavement Artists Still Rule

The Sri Lankan capital's weekly open-air art market comes alive amidst an odd set of neighbours. It's not unusual to see a mahout tend to a tusker about 10 meters from where artists sell their work.

/ARTS WEEKLY/VENEZUELA: Promoting Art by the Community, for the Community

A multicoloured cluster of small, rundown houses on the westside of the Venezuelan capital serves as both the backdrop to and the inspiration for a project aimed at involving the community in artistic creation and appreciation.

ARGENTINA: Local Non-Actors in No-Budget Films

"I was already old when I started out, but it's my whole life," says Nélida Agustoni, 71, who has appeared in several films whose casts are made up of local residents of a small city in Argentina, and which are currently being presented at the Latin American film festival in Toulouse, France.