/ARTS WEEKLY/ CULTURE-LATIN AMERICA: Voice for the Voiceless

It's the antithesis of contests that manufacture musical stars to feed the commercial entertainment circuit - it couldn't be any other way if the idea comes from Argentine pianist Miguel Angel Estrella, UNESCO goodwill ambassador.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-BRAZIL: A Hidden Side of Rio Revealed

"Brazil doesn't know Brazil," says a song by Mauricio Tapajos and Aldir Blanc that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. The recent boom of documentary films seems to indicate that the country has overcome what some said was an unhealthy national syndrome.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-MIDEAST: Traditional Arab Instrument Struggles to Be Heard

It closely resembles the guitar, yet the oud's distinct musical notes give it a unique identity of its own.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ BOOKS-ARGENTINA: Señor Borges and the Maid

The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges may well have laughed to learn that a woman who never read his work has published a critically acclaimed book about his life. "El señor Borges" is the testimony of the housekeeper who looked after him for more than 35 years.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-HAITI: Scientist Transformed Radio Into Weapon Against Abuses

"I have no weapon other than my journalist's profession, my microphone and my unshakable faith as a militant for change," said famed Haitian radio personality and human rights advocate, Jean Dominique, who was assassinated four years ago.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-MEXICO: Revolutionary Zapata Reinvented

The film "Zapata, el sueño del héroe" (Zapata: The Hero's Dream) premiered in Mexico in the wake of a major advertising campaign and under harsh criticism for pulling the revolutionary hero out of historic context and putting him in a landscape of fantasy.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-MEXICO: Dolores del Rio – Diva and Film Star

Mexico's Dolores del Río, who in the 1920s and 1930s achieved diva status in Hollywood and a place among the artistic saints of her own country, is being remembered in a series of conferences, film festivals and expositions 100 years after her birth.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CUBA: Washington Blocks Dialogue in Visa Denial

"Suite Habana" and other films by Cuban director Fernando Pérez are headlining a Latin American exhibition included in the fifth Havana Film Festival, held in New York Apr. 23-28. But the director could not be there for the screenings.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ MUSIC-CHILE: ‘King of Twist’ Resurfaces with Retro Wave

Venerated and vilified in equal parts, icon and "old man" of Chile's New Wave movement of the 1960s, Luis Dimas, the contradictory "King of Twist", is celebrating his 45-year career this month.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-US: ‘The Gatekeeper’ Shows Plight of Mexican Migrants

"Welcome to California," says an undocumented Mexican lab worker after showing how to make the drug methamphetamine by mixing toxic chemicals over a burner in a dim, windowless shack.

/ARTS WEEKLY/EAST TIMOR: Art under Reconstruction Too

Art is being revived in the reconstruction of East Timor, thanks to the efforts of a Swiss painter who started the fledgling country's first art school in what was formerly the United Nations field military hospital.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ BRAZIL: Books Battle to Find Readers

The 18th International Book Biennial is under way in Sao Paulo, aiming to draw more than 600,000 people in 11 days - and to foment reading in a country where per capita book "consumption" remains very low.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-CHILE: Revival of a Legendary Murderer

"La vida privada de Emile Dubois", the latest work by Chilean author, historian, singer-songwriter and playwright Patricio Manns, "is a novel for devotion and for devouring," says Jorge Coulon, director of the internationally famous music group Inti Illimani, about this tale based on the real-life story of a serial killer who shocked Chile in the early 20th century.

/ARTS WEEKLY/VIETNAM: Illegal Traders in Antiques Beware, Officials Say

Illegal traders in antiques beware - that seems to be the message the ministry in charge of cultural heritage is sending by instructing genuine collectors to register their collections at local departments of culture and information.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ARGENTINA: Award-Winning Film Industry Seeks Audiences

Encouraged by an abundant harvest of international awards, the Argentine film industry will premiere twice as many titles in 2004 than in 1951, the most productive year until now.

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-VENEZUELA: Curtains Go Up, Politics Sent Backstage

Colourful banners, torches and searchlights illuminated a swath of the Venezuelan capital's night sky with the play "Arca", by Poland's Teatr Ósmego Dnia (Theatre of the Eighth Day), in a preamble to the 15th International Theatre Festival of Caracas.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CUBA: Socialism’s Rastas

Long dreadlocks stuffed into trademark red, black, green and yellow tams (knitted caps), which sometimes carry a symbol of an Afro-Cuban religion or even a U.S. flag, Bob Marley t-shirts and camouflage pants - that is the typical look of Cuba's young Rastafarians, a growing urban presence.

/ARTS WEEKLY/COLOMBIA: Flamenco-Symphonic Premiere a Flop

The international premiere of a ''symphonic flamenco'' concert on the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, billed as the feature attraction of the ninth Ibero-American Theatre Festival in the Colombian capital, ended up a flop due to technical problems and discrepancies between the Spanish and Colombian composers and musicians.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-BRAZIL: A True Believer in Documentaries

The ninth international "It's All True" festival is under way in Brazil until mid-April, celebrating the success of films that "creatively deal with reality," and honouring their main proponent in this Latin American country, Amir Labaki.

/ARTS WEEKLY/RELIGION-LATAM: Yes to Gibson, No to Da Vinci

The Catholic Church hierarchy in Latin America is riding the success of Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' to promote a conservative religious agenda, while it scorns 'The Da Vinci Code', a best-seller based on a fictional storyline involving centuries- old plots by the Vatican.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS: Sweatshop Martyrs Gone But Never Forgotten

Just before quitting time on a pleasant Saturday in late March 1911, someone at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City shouted, "Fire!"