Category
Culture
Arts, entertainment, ideas, and the way we live.
7 stories published
Culture
Nicolas Winding Refn Says Heart Surgery Rebirth Inspired His New Sci-Fi Horror
Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director behind Drive and The Neon Demon, has revealed that a 2023 open-heart operation that nearly killed him triggered the creative rebirth behind his new sci-fi horror film Her Private Hell, which reaches cinemas on September 25. Refn was diagnosed with a broken heart valve filling his lungs with blood while working on a Prada campaign in Italy, and was saved through telescopic surgery by what he calls the Tom Cruise of surgeons in Copenhagen. He had lost the passion for film-making before the operation, telling the Guardian that his creative flame had vanished like tears in the rain when he was 50 years old. The new film stars Sophie Thatcher as an actor making her own Barberella-style movie, with Charles Melton as an American GI in postwar Japan hunting the mythical Leatherman. Refn describes the result as a movie AI could never make and the enemy of the algorithm.
Culture
Tate Britain Hands Edward Enninful the Reins for New Exhibition on the 1990s
Tate Britain will open The 90s: Art and Fashion this autumn, a new exhibition curated by Edward Enninful that captures the decade when Britain's creative industries collided in clubs, squats and cheap flats to redefine who got to be seen in British culture. Running from October 8 to February 14, the show brings together Juergen Teller's 1998 portrait of a pink-haired Kate Moss, Sarah Lucas's 1997 Pauline Bunny, Sam Taylor-Johnson's 1993 text work, Sean Ellis's 1998 Alexander McQueen shoot styled by Isabella Blow, and Vinca Petersen's documentation of the illegal rave scene that followed the 1994 Criminal Justice Act. Enninful, who worked at i-D magazine during the decade, says the 90s were about a shared energy in which fashion, art and music occupied the same spaces. Senior curator Dominique Heyse-Moore frames the works as explorations of girlhood, womanhood and the experience of photographing and being photographed, with the exhibition arriving as the youngest subjects of those photographs reach their fifties.
Culture
New York's First Immigrant Cultural Center Opens in Inwood With Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mino Lora
Upper Manhattan's Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods, home to generations of immigrant New Yorkers, finally have a theater of their own. The People's Theatre: Centro Cultural Inmigrante, a $40 million arts center at 419 West 206th Street, held its formal ribbon-cutting on September 15 with Broadway icon Lin-Manuel Miranda and co-founder Mino Lora in attendance, and will welcome the public at a free open house on Saturday, September 19. The 19,000-square-foot center features a main-stage theater with retractable seating for 99 to 208 people, a studio theater seating up to 45, rehearsal space, a soundproof practice room, a gallery and a lobby café. Now in its 18th season, the organization says the venue is New York's first immigrant cultural center and the state's largest Latino theater, opening its first permanent home during Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month.
Culture
New York Film Festival Unveils 34-Film Main Slate Spanning 31 Countries
Film at Lincoln Center has announced the 34 films comprising the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival, running 25 September through 12 October 2026, with the lineup spanning 31 countries and including four world premieres, nine North American premieres and 12 US premieres. James Gray's 1980s-set crime drama Paper Tiger, starring Miles Teller, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, opens the festival, Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! with Pedro Pascal is the Centerpiece, and Ava DuVernay's documentary 14th closes it. The slate also gathers multiple prizewinners from this year's Cannes, including Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, which took the Grand Prix. Artistic Director Dennis Lim said it is hard to recall a prior Main Slate in which the state of the world has been so urgently reflected. Single tickets went on sale Tuesday at noon.
Culture
Charli XCX All Things Go Festival and Top DC-Area Concerts in September
Charli XCX headlines the All Things Go music festival in September 2026, one of the top cultural events in the Washington DC area this month. The festival features a diverse lineup of artists spanning pop, electronic, and indie genres. September also brings a range of concerts and cultural performances to the DC metropolitan area including shows at the Kennedy Center and the Anthem. The Washington Post has curated a list of the essential songs and performances to see this month. The fall arts season is shaping up to be one of the most active in recent years with venues reporting strong ticket sales across multiple genres.
Culture
Louvre Museum Opens Largest Digital Art Wing Featuring Immersive AI-Generated Installations
The Louvre Museum in Paris inaugurated its new 8,000 square meter digital art wing on September 2, 2026, featuring 47 immersive installations created by artificial intelligence in collaboration with renowned contemporary artists. The wing, designed by architect Kengo Kuma, cost 320 million euros and represents the most significant expansion of the Louvre since I.M. Pei glass pyramid opened in 1989. Museum Director Laurence des Cars stated that the digital wing attracted 42,000 visitors on its opening day, more than triple the Louvre typical daily attendance. The inaugural exhibition includes a collaboration between AI system Midjourney and Japanese artist teamLab, creating a 1,200 square meter room where AI-generated landscapes respond to visitor movement.
Culture
Venice Film Festival Awards Top Prize to South Korean Director for Climate Drama
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival awarded its Golden Lion for Best Film to South Korean director Bong Joon-ho for his climate-themed drama The Last Glacier on September 1. The film depicts the evacuation of a Himalayan village as glacial melt threatens to create catastrophic flooding downstream. Jury president Cate Blanchett called the film a masterwork that combines intimate human storytelling with global environmental urgency. The win marks Bong second major European festival prize after the Palme dOr at Cannes in 2019 for Parasite.