/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-BRAZIL: Delirious Critique of Corruption

There is no paradise in Brazil that is not be surrounded by hell, corruption often becomes the route to fulfilling modest dreams such as owning a home, justice is glaringly absent, and the only thing left to hope for is divine intervention.

ARGENTINA: Film Industry Booming, Despite Economic Challenges

Actor Nacho Toselli is still scaring people for a living, at the "haunted house" in a Buenos Aires shopping mall.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ASIA: Regional Films Get Top Billing in Fukuoka Festival

Asian films usually play second fiddle to Hollywood in Japan's competitive movie industry, but they enjoyed top billing at a region-wide film festival in Fukuoka, a bustling city in southern Japan.

/ARTS WEEKLY/VENEZUELA: Museum Takes Fine Art to the Streets

The staff of the Arturo Michelena Museum here in the Venezuelan capital got tired of waiting for the public to come in and view the paintings hanging on its walls. So they took the paintings to the public, by displaying them on the walls of the surrounding neighbourhood.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-CHILE: Little Women of the 20th Century

Marcela Serrano, one of Chile's most successful contemporary women writers - and one of the most unpopular with critics as well - is back at the top of bestseller lists in the Spanish-speaking world with her new novel, Hasta siempre, mujercitas (See You, Little Women).

MUSIC-MEXICO: Gloria Trevi Pardoned by Courts – and the Media

After almost five years in prison, Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi has suddenly become a hot commodity once again, with offers pouring in from television networks, publishers and record labels.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CHILE: A Child’s Eye View of the 1973 Military Coup

With the premiere last month of director Andrés Wood's Machuca, it appeared that the Chilean film industry had finally reached adulthood - an unusual accomplishment for a movie that tells its story through the eyes of three children.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-TIBET: Snow Land is also Show Land

With her back to Shigatse's famed Tashilumpu monastery, the scantily clad woman with ample bosom and derriere outlined in a revealing mini-skirt, is training her video camera at a young Tibetan mother and her daughter of about five or six years, both smiling irrepressibly in typical Socialist Realism fashion.

CULTURE-CUBA: Hidden Story of the Daughters of Galicia

They were poor women from the northern Spanish province of Galicia. They came alone to Cuba in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and like so many Latin American women now emigrating to Europe, many of them ended up in poor-paying jobs as domestics or on the fringes of society as prostitutes.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-PALESTINE: Occupation Comes Home

The open-air cinema at Piazza Vittorio is full, but people are still walking in as Saverio Costanzo explains his film 'Private' to the audience.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-THAILAND: The French Master DJ and His Buddhas

It's difficult to describe Claude Challe - the French DJ behind the successful 'Buddha Bar' and 'Nirvana Lounge' chill-out CD series.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-BRAZIL: Life of German Communist Jew Set to Become a Sensation

'Olga', based on the life of a German Jew who was the bodyguard and lover of Brazilian Communist leader Luiz Carlos Prestes, looks set to become this year's movie sensation in Brazil.

MEXICO: Wal-Mart, the Pyramids’ New Neighbour

Less than two km from the heart of the Mexican archaeological zone of Teotihuacan and its awe-inspiring pyramids, the U.S.-based retail giant Wal-Mart is overcoming the resistance of a group of local residents and, to the amazement of UNESCO, is building one of its hypermarkets.

BRAZIL: Culture Ministry Proposal Aimed at Bringing Cinema to All

The Brazilian government is drafting a bill aimed at strengthening the national audiovisual industry and bringing movies to the 90 percent of the population that now lives in areas that have no cinemas.

VENEZUELA: Black Contribution to Local Culture Has Been Largely Ignored

When Berta was a little girl, she met Micaela, "an old black woman, whose back was full of scars." When she asked the adults around her why, she was told "it was the whips and red-hot iron bars, because she was a slave."

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CHILE: The Wall of Shame to be Used as a Screen

Chilean director Miguel Littin plans to complete his film "La última luna" (The Last Moon) in September, aiming to release it in Chile this year and also project it onto the "wall of shame" that the Israeli government is building to close off the Palestinian West Bank.

/ARTS WEEKLY/U.S.: Anti-Bush Musicians Hit the Road

In any other election year, having some of the biggest names in U.S. popular music sign up for a tour to defeat the incumbent president might provoke little more than yawns from all but the headline hungry media and the singers' most loyal fans.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-SRI LANKA: Retelling the People’s History

It has been nearly five centuries but the memories are still hard to erase. The day was Nov 15, 1505 when Dom Lourenco de Almeida landed off the harbour of Colombo with his nine ships, quite by accident after being caught in a storm.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-VENEZUELA: Politics Invades the Silver Screen

As Venezuela's recall referendum on President Hugo Chávez approaches, the battle has hit the screen in two films with an impact that some compare, in local terms, to the controversy raised by films like "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the United States.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CUBA: Exhibit Seeks to Capture the Spirit of the 1960s

A tailored skirt, hand bags and other women's accessories - the latest fashions of the 1960s - are on exhibit in the museum alongside the uniforms of the Cuban government's literacy drive from the period: olive green hats and a grey shirt which could well be that of a sugar-cane cutter.

/ARTS WEEKLY/SCULPTURE-VENEZUELA: Vandals Wreak Havoc and Go Unpunished

Venezuela is facing the risk of losing valuable public sculptures as vandals go unpunished, wrote art expert Axel Stein in a letter to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).