Design Federation

As Munich nurses its hangover and counts the Oktoberfest tourist dollars earned in the last month, the artistic community in the city carries on with a fascinating, postmodern exhibition showing Walt Disney’s European inspirations.

By now it’s not really a new topic with Walt Disney being the subject of books (Dorothy Clark’s Walt Disney and Europe: European Influences on the Animated Feature Films of Walt Disney for example) and documentaries that are in much the same vein, but the curators of Germany’s Exhibition Gallery of the Hypo Cultural Foundation in Munich were right to decide the theme has not yet been exhausted. Showing until January 25th 2009, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World and its Roots in European Art is a visually compelling multimedia showcase drawing on archives from the early period of Walt Disney Studio (between 1928 and 1967) when Walt Disney was still building his empire and mass commercialization of Mickey Mouse was still a vague dream.

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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is an off-beat, cabaret-style piece currently showing at the Opera House. An entertaining performance blending genres, periods and mediums to titillate the eager audience, the play is the brainchild of new, UK performance group 1927 Cabaret which was born of the creative collaborations between designer/film-maker Paul Bill Barritt and writer, Suzanne Andrade.

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