VOA News / March 13, 2018: On March 11, 2001, Taliban insurgents destroyed two Buddha statues that stood 180 and 124 feet tall in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province. Activists commemorated the 17th anniversary of the loss by holding art and cultural events under the feet of one of the tallest Buddha statues known as Salsal.
Tolo News: Afghan Filmmaker Roya Sadat received an alternative Oscar award by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday for her outstanding film ‘A Letter to the President’. The movie is about the miseries suffered by women in Afghanistan as well as about discrimination and violence against women in the country. Click here to read more
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 14, 2018 The Afghan National Institute of Music (ANIM) and its founder have won the 2018 Polar Music Prize, a Swedish award, in recognition of “how this inspirational organization has used the power of music to transform young people’s lives.” The award panel said on February 14 that the music
BBC News: Bright, busy and colourful, newly digitised pages of Zhvandun magazine – Life, in English – reveal the aspirations of Afghanistan’s elite during decades of political and social change. It rolled off presses through most of the second half of the 20th Century, mixing articles on global affairs, society and history with fun stuff on
Tolo News: Yunus started his career in the 1980s and is known as one of the founders of folk music in Afghanistan. One of his songs which made him famous during the 1980s in Afghanistan, was titled Bewafawee. Click here to read more (external link).
Gulf News: It is a chilly Friday morning — the Afghan weekend — but Salim Shaheen, Afghanistan’s “Sultan of Cinema”, has graciously agreed to meet for a chat in his middle-class downtown Kabul neighbourhood. In the face of perpetual threat, the director, producer and actor extraordinaire has carried Afghanistan’s film industry for more than two decades almost
Newsweek: Researchers are using drones to identify archaeological sites across Afghanistan that external forces like the Taliban have made impossible to safely visit in person. They’ve more than tripled Afghanistan’s catalog of known archaeological features, according to Science, bringing the number above 4,500. These span roughly two millennia and include everything from massive shelters for caravan
The Washington Post: “Music has always been in the blood of Afghans, but it was silenced for a long time,” said Massood Sanjer, program manager for Tolo Television and a founder of the show, in its 13th season. “ ‘Afghan Star’ has created a revolution in music at the same time the country has moved to democracy.” But not
VICE: Having left Afghanistan as a refugee in 1983, Tarique Qayumi worked on a secret project when he returned to Kabul from 2011 to 2015. While working for a TV station there, he and his wife Tajana Prka collaborated on the feature film Black Kite, a family drama about a kite maker who risks everything to
PBS: Murals are popping up in and around Kabul, aimed at getting people to think about what’s possible. ArtLords, based in the Afghan capital, grew from a small group of artists and volunteers who wanted to share — in vivid color — the community’s desire to move from war to peace. Click here for more (external