The following acts are the warm-up programmes related to the Nincs Lehetetlen festival, taking place before 22 April.

DJ Maestro met the challenge offered by Blue Note record label, a milestone in the history of jazz, when he was requested to present the jazz gods and goddesses from a contemporary perspective.

The Klankspeeltuin, translated as Sound Garden, is unlike any other playground. This is a playground where children, as well as youngsters and adults, can play with sounds. Sound installations and computers especially developed for the Sound Garden make it possible to embody, draw or dance a sound.

Neville Tranter`s combination of down-to-earth humour, deadly seriousness and virtuoso puppetry has already made permanent converts of many who had presumed that for them, puppetry had nothing to offer.

It is the most prolonged bow ever. The six performers in Ivana Müller’s Playing Ensemble Again and Again play six performers who contemplate all sorts of things while saying goodbye to the audience – the performance they have just given, their career, their life.

Since 1994 New Cool Collective has been known for their unique sound: a mix of jazz, dance, latin, and salsa. Their music is massive, energetic, and made for dancing.

It was after World War I that families in the Netherlands and Belgium first invited to their homes Hungarian children who were in an appalling condition. The Faculty of Dutch Studies at the University of Debrecen is dedicating a conference and a richly illustrated exhibition to this aid programme.

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Opening: 7 April, 2009, 7 pm
The exhibition 'Try to make a simple gesture, no matter how small!' focuses on the potential of small gestures and tries to offer examples of small acts and artistic interventions that may have an effect on the systems of the given environment. The artistic concepts behind the works featured at the exhibition have been shaped along the lines of motivation which changes social and human situations (conditions, scenarios, etc.).
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World Press Photo is an independent non-profit organisation that was founded in the Netherlands in 1955 with the aim to support and promote press photographers' work. The photos expose to us the fate of the 700 mountain gorillas still alive today; make us face the reality that there are more than 1.5 billion TV sets in use all over the world and in some places people spend more than five hours a day watching TV; or the fact that the predecessor of bungee jumping, a tradition of the Nagol tribe, originates from a far-off island in the Pacific.
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Opening: 16 April 2009, 6 p.m.
With his photographs, installations, drawings, videos and wall paintings, Marijn van Kreij is a special and promising artist. Even if his techniques and topics are innovative, the playful and bracing impulse of his works truly remains. Texts, so ubiquitous in this artist’s work, often take the form of poetic observations on life, relationships, dreams and wishes, sometimes with fragments of pop lyrics.
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Opening: 19 April 2009, 8 p.m.
Babette Kleijn and Jan Adriaans play with such human desires. By their precisely composed works they suggest new opportunities for ”lush life”. However, when given a closer look, the pictures reveal traits of clumsiness, poverty and misery.
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Merlin Theatre and BAD (Bicycle Art and Design), together with the Netherlands Embassy, has announced a photo contest with bicycle and fashion in focus. The prize-giving evening of the contest, with valuable design packages and winning photo prints – among other items – to be handed over, will be accompanied by a fashion show displaying trendy clothes and accessories designed by six artists of the BAD group. Later in the night the atmosphere is to be further brightened up by Merlin’s resident DJ.
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Jelen, a most hot and hip spot of Budapest’s jazz and nightlife scene, will serve as Nincs Lehetetlen festival centre, and thus host several programmes for its duration, with special focus on music and literature. Beyond the cultural treats, the café is to serve Dutch food and drink specialities every day to set up a suitable culinary context around the festival. The festival will open with powerful melodies from the Balkans, explosive rhythms from Latin America and lyrics straight from dark Neapolitan alleys – welcome to the world of Mala Vita!
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Dries Verhoeven`s exciting theatre, which dares approach the field of visual arts as well, is on display in Moszkva Square on 23, 24 and 25 of April. Starting times: 3, 4, 5 and 6 p.m.

The Large Movement takes place in a small cinema space. The film you are about to see will never be repeated afterwards. You look at the world as it takes place at that same moment outside. And this reality is subtitled. When the text stops and the people start walking backwards, the individual hurrying across the square seems to transform into a collective choreography. From the cinema, you see things that you didn’t notice when you were still part of the reality.

The Large Movement offers subtitles in Hungarian and English. The English version takes place on 23 April at 6 p.m. and on 25 April at 4 p.m. We kindly ask our guests to gather in the Castle bus (Várbusz) stop 10 minutes before the performance.
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Control is the biography of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, taking his story from his schoolboy days in 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980. During these years we see Curtis grow from a David Bowie-infatuated teen to a Sex Pistols-inspired punk, and eventually to a rising new wave star.
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This evening pays hommage to the legendary band Joy Division. After the screening of Anton Corbijn's film 'Control' about the life of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, the evening continues with a discussion with the director, and concerts of Closer to Curtis, De Staat and J.D. Isolated, to recreate that well-known, gloomy yet elevating atmosphere.
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Lee’n’gum is a well-known voice on Tilos Radio. A tireless worker of the Budapest music scene, he has made thousands dance at numerous venues and with various partners. He is a regular guest at the increasingly popular Rewind series, but the easiest to come across his music is still on Tilos.
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Opening Night portrays a theatre company during the hectic run-up to the opening night of a new play entitled The Second Wife. During the day, the actors rehearse some of the more difficult scenes, and in the evenings they perform previews. Opening Night offers a unique look behind the scenes of a theatre company. But it is more than that. Myrtle Gordon, the company’s leading actress, has a problem. She is finding it hard to identify with the role she is playing; that of a woman past her prime desperately trying to hang on to her youth.
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Opening ceremony
24 April 2009, 8 p.m.
Uránia Film Theatre

The Dutch Film Weekend lasts from 25 to 27 April.

Five feature films and four documentaries will be presented at the Dutch Film Weekend, hosted by the newly refurbished KINO cinema. Most of the films, made in the past year, have won prizes and gained international success.
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Wotienke: "I am a singer-songwriter from Amsterdam with strong ties to the Moravian countryside in the Czech Republic. As long as I can remember I have been making music and I am sure I will continue to do so the rest of my life."
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Gondolat Publishers has recently launched its series dedicated to Dutch-language literature. They are now to present the newest releases at the International Book Festival at Millenáris and at Jelen, with the participation of the authors: Thomas Rosenboom, Jaap Scholten and Tibor Bérczes.
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How would we, inhabitants of the Earth, present ourselves if we were to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence? Would they see us as an enemy? Or can E.T. teach us how to interact with one another? All over the world there are people seriously concerned with these questions. Their daily life is spent looking for signals from extraterrestrial civilisations and devising ways to present ourselves during the encounter. A penetrating insight into human fears and longings.
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In 1972, a dart on a map of Europe changes the life of Congolese–Belgian musician Jack Roskam: he moves to Yugoslavia. After a successful career as a guitar player in a well-known local band, Galija, he is confronted with the Balkan war. While his colleagues starts to sing pro-Serbian songs, Jack exchanges his Fender guitar for a Kalashnikov and joins the Croatian army. In 2008, Jack returns to Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia to meet the former members of Galija for the first time since the war. Will the shared past win over the memories of war?
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Striking images of a hard-edged brilliance are the reason to see Winter Silence, video artist Sonja Wyss's feature debut, composed in an isolated Swiss village suspended in time. Wyss tells the story of a widow and her four daughters locked in a hermetic web of intense Catholic faith and local superstition, all tied to the snow-bound landscape. It is an archaic story of sexual awakening and religious mysticism in the director’s Swiss homeland.
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Gondolat Publishers has recently launched its series dedicated to Dutch-language literature. They are now to present the newest releases at the International Book Festival at Millenáris and at Jelen, with the participation of the authors Jaap Scholten and Tibor Bérczes.
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The Amsterdam collective Lefties Soul Connection gives a new meaning to raw funk & soul with their new album Skimming the Skum. The Qualitons are the freshest summer discovery conceivable, stunning hungaro-retrofunk wrapped in dance craze until the morning hours.
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Jacob’s, the bookkeeper’s new client is the talented and flamboyant actress, Anne. Jacob soon discovers that Anne has made a mess of her personal finances and has a lot of debt. She may even have to sell her houseboat. During the evening of the auction, Anne organises a big good-bye dinner and invites all her colleagues and friends on the boat. When Jacob is about to tell Anne how he wants to save her houseboat (he has bought it himself for her), she comes up with a totally different plan.
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He was only six when he got his first guitar, and at the age of eleven he got a rundown and untunable piano. His first solo album entitled Szívzörejek (Heart Murmur) was released in late 2006. Although as a drummer he joined bands like Quimby, Kispál és a Borz, Balaton and others, he seems to have got rid of his drumsticks for good. Having left Hiperkarma, he now focuses exclusively on his own music and lyrics.
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Just imagine having an incurable kidney disease, being in constant pain and calling hospital your second home. You’ll always be small and ugly. What do you do then? Instead of turning into a victim, Bart de Graaff went on stage, became a media star and set up the most popular Dutch TV channel. He died in 2002 at the age of 35, after single-handedly turning the entire world of Dutch television upside down. A moving story about a small man and his desperate struggle for a great life.
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In his entertaining and witty book now published in Hungarian by Nyitott Könyvműhely, Matthijs Boxsel collected the basics of stupidity and of comicality and nonsense omnipresent in history. In the author’s opinion, our present-day culture is the result of failed efforts to understand stupidity, the trait he considers to be the basis of intelligence and civilisation.
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A fascinating look at the world of the incredibly popular online game Warcraft, the “thinker's game” in the cyberworld. The film follows the world’s best players in the run-up to the World Cybergame Championship, Sky (Chinese) and Grubby (Dutch), the current and the former world champion. The story of these two top players on the way to their final duel makes a hypermodern western.
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Anna lives quietly with her husband and her 3-year-old son in the suburbs of a major city. She regularly travels to developing countries where she works as a consultant in irrigation projects. During a visit to Egypt, one of her colleagues commits suicide and it is Anna who discovers the body. Even though Anna didn't know her well, this sudden death makes a big impression on her. She realises for the first time that you can remain unknown even to those who are the closest to you.
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The first stair got loose: the three dramas read out last year were launched, and are now orbiting the theatre world on their own; their fate now depends on celestial constellations. We continue to stream ahead in the drama aether – who knows where we will land? One thing is certain: the landscape we are going to arrive at looks familiar and we painfully but surely know our way around, although we have never been here before. We may wonder again how familiar these unfamiliar details are, and how come this world is so Dutch in a Hungarian way.

Esther Gerritsen
The hangover / The following day of the day, the night and the death - 19 April, 7 p.m.

Judith Herzberg
Wound - 26 April, 7 p.m.


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Couple-like is a journey of two people searching to be 'as one', of two strangers who are trying to meet over and over again, and of Ugo and Keren facing each other, observing in the other what each of them is not.
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The story is set in the early 1960s. Sixteen-year-old Simon befriends the immensely wealthy brothers Arnout and Victor. On the estate where the brothers live, the boys spend their days playing tennis, listening to music and hanging out with Arnout’s beautiful girlfriend. Hidden in the attic, without the brothers’ parents knowing it, the boys keep their friend Ronnie, a petty criminal on the run from the police. However, after a time Ronnie becomes a burden and starts to blackmail them. The boys try to make him leave but when this fails, they come up with an unthinkable way to resolve the situation.
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Jelen, a highly frequented bar with a friendly atmosphere located in downtown Budapest, has long been hosting quality jazz acts. This time a unique constellation is to provide ambient music experience, involving renowned musicians.
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The publishing house organises a thematic afternoon dedicated to the issue Boxsel examines at Jelen, revealing the author’s private collection of photographs and reproductions which represent stupidity in the cultural history of the Netherlands and Europe, screening Betty Boop cartoons, and with a load of suitable music fragments (e.g. Lou Reed, Frank Zappa) interpreted by Frenk.

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SPACE Theatre will perform Worldwideheroshow at Trafó on 27 and 28 April, at 8 p.m., 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. each day.

The playful theatrical hero contest of SPACE is to fulfill Andy Warhol’s prophecy that in the future everyone will have 15 minutes of world fame. The visitors, aided by the players, may test themselves in tailor-made hero’s roles, and, if they meet the challenge, can enjoy celebration for a few minutes, standing in the spotlight, confetti shower and rivers of champagne.
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A romantic comedy about the problems in the lives of six couples who find that love is everywhere. They all want to have it, but love is like Santa Claus, you have to believe in it, otherwise it will not work.
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The József Balázs Quintet was formed in 2005. He was given the Dezső Lakatos Ablakos jazz scholarship in 2007. Beyond his successes in the jazz world, he is considered a renowned musical arranger and composer in other fields (pop, soundtracks) as well.
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Natwerk is a unique form of mediating, culture-transporting art. A garbage truck converted into a mobile stage is to take to the streets twice a day, carrying renowned Hungarian music acts. The route includes Moszkva Square, Nyugati Square, Liszt Ferenc Square, Deák Ferenc Square, Blaha Lujza Square, Móricz Zsigmond Square and MOM Park, among others. A must-see!
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Opening: 28 April 2009, 8 p.m.
The exhibition will provide an original overview of the artist’s work over the past three decades, showing all stages of his creative development, from the early musical shots to the recent celebrity portraits. Although Corbijn has been experimenting in various areas of modern visual culture – short films, music videos, live show decoration and design – his main medium of expression has always been photography. The exhibition will present over 200 photo-portraits, some of them to be reckoned among the most significant works in contemporary portrait photography.
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Voicst are a three-piece indie rock band hailing from Amsterdam. "Voicst" is South African slang, meaning "manic energy". Support from influential Dutch media outlet 3Voor12 and The Dutch Pop Institute led the band to Lowlands, the huge Dutch festival, and also netted Voicst their first appearance at the New York CMJ Music Conference. For three consecutive years they toured Benelux with the likes of Bettie Serveert, Nada Surf and Tenacious D.
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A special line-up will bring joy to the lovers of jazz this evening. The chance of an exciting jam session can be taken for granted, as the members (Mihály Borbély and Gergő Kováts on saxophone, Albert Márkos on violoncello, Balázs Horváth on double bass, Zsolt Sárvári-Kovács on drums) are well-known figures of the Budapest jazz scene.
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Opening: 23 April 2009, 7 p.m.
Studio Gallery will host ENTER1646 (The Hague), a collective of visual artists, for two weeks, and offer an insight into the working methods, mentality and profiles of the two institutions. The gallery will screen selected films of the Vast-Forward programme, organise informal meetings for Dutch and Hungarian artists, and put on display the works developed during their stay.
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Environment-conscious rock’n’roll till the morning! The band made up of Benedek Darvas, Zsombor Dudás, Gábor Horváth and Tibor Perecsényi invites the lovers of thought-provoking concerts in a unique manner.
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Opening: 30 April 2009, 11 a.m.
“Saint Peter's Denial” was painted by Rembrandt van Rijn, the greatest genius of the Dutch Golden Age and one of the most outstanding representatives of European visual arts. Some of Rembrandt's etchings and engravings, closely related to the topic of the painting, are also on display, each selected from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts. Rembrandt's dramatic and monumental painting forms the centerpiece of the exhibition, accompanied by the more intimate etchings that invite contemplation.
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The development of the highly ambitious Városháza Forum project will start soon in the Heart of Budapest. Combining the restoration of the existing, but never completed 18th-century baroque building with new, futuristic wings is bound to create a contemporary Forum with respect to the heritage and true spirit of Budapest. Once completed, the City Hall complex will act as a micro-city, offering virtually every city function and revitalizing the Városháza of Budapest for the benefit and enjoyment of all, inhabitants and visitors alike.
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The closing night of the festival takes place on the Dutch national holiday celebrating the Queen`s birthday. We will give a party aboard A38, with exciting pop acts like Zuco 103, Vive La Fête, Aux Raus and Popbitch (Kollektíva).
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Aux Raus is the Dutch emperor of gabberpunk. Based in Amsterdam, it features jazz legend Luuk Bouwman and speed addict Bastiaan Bosma as the super explosive human reverse magnets composing together on two cheap drummachines.
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