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Reviving and Reclaiming Culture

How culture from the Aboriginal to the Shakespearean and from the 1950s to the 1960s is being revisited and remixed in 2016.

With Tina Daheley.

To mark 6 months of the new government in Argentina, writer Pola Oloixarac considers the Mauricio Macri administration鈥檚 attitude towards the arts. She finds that, not for the first time, the Argentine government is championing the art of the past, in order to influence the future.

In Iran a new, independent online drama has been transporting viewers back to the 1950s. Set in the time of the military coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddeq and bolstered the rule of the Shah, it depicts scenes that might be considered shocking by Iranian standards. Cultural critic & 大象传媒 Persian producer Maghsood Salehi tells us what sets Shahrzad apart from the competition, amid a fashion for nostalgia on Iran鈥檚 TV- & computer- screens.

In a new commission for the Royal Shakespeare Company, British Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams has written a prequel to the Shakespeare鈥檚 The Tempest. For The Cultural Frontline, Inua sets out his case for righting- and re-writing- the wrongs of the original play and describes how his version reinvents the character of Caliban.

The possum skin cloak in Aboriginal culture was both a garment and a canvas, on which the stories of the land and its people were inscribed. In an interview produced for The Cultural Frontline by Jarni Blakkarly, the Aboriginal artist Tiriki Onus shares his determination to revive the custom and the craft of traditional possum skin cloak-making in Australia.

(Photo: The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires Credit: Juan Mabromata/ AFP/ Getty)

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27 minutes

Last on

Sun 15 May 2016 04:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Sat 14 May 2016 08:32GMT
  • Sat 14 May 2016 11:32GMT
  • Sat 14 May 2016 19:06GMT
  • Sat 14 May 2016 21:06GMT
  • Sun 15 May 2016 04:32GMT

Podcast