The 2008 Olympics, hosted by China, began on Friday 8th August with a spectacular opening ceremony.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, an acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, the ceremony showed scenes representing triumphs from China’s past, including famous Chinese inventions such as gunpowder, the compass and paper.

Read more in this article from BBC News, and look at fantastic photos posted by The Boston Globe.

Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images (via The Boston Globe)

The Darfur horse festival is a traditional Sudanese event. During the festival people perform songs and dances which date from hundreds of year ago.

Following years of conflict the horse festival has been revived with a special purpose: to provide a common cultural backdrop for discussing peace and reconciliation in the area. Held in the southern Darfuri town of Addu’ayn, the festival was attended by leaders from both nomadic Arab and black African groups, representing the main ethnic groups of the region.

BBC News shows stunning pictures of the festival.

Photo: Darfur horse festival in pictures from the BBC

Russia’s economy is booming, helped partly by its $1bn a day in energy exports.

This economic success is propelling a new revival in Russian film making, subsidised by the government or private investors, with demand supplied by young working Russians with money to spend.

The International Herald Tribune explains that the tastes of the domestic audience are quite different to those of the international markets. Whilst its art house films are more popular on the international stage, Russians at home like patriotic films covering topics like Soviet-era wars or historical events.

The modern day silk road country of Kazakhstan continues to develop a thriving arts scene. But how important is classical music in a society which is busy discovering other advantages of globalisation?

The International Herald Tribune describes some of the challenges faced by young Kazakh musicians. As do musicians all over the world they eschew better-paid careers in other sectors. However they face an additional cultural challenge - learning to take risks after growing up in a regime which encouraged conformity and punished mistakes.

The musicians have faced some difficult decisions in comitting to perform increasingly technically challenging pieces in public:

“Having been raised in a Soviet-style system that taught them to obey orders and, above all, to avoid mistakes, they feared they would fail publicly and spectacularly”

Like many others in the region, they are embarking on an extraordinary journey of cultural transformation.

Image from 5.12 China: The song of miracle by Coco Wang. (Published by Paul Gravett)

Chinese writer and artist Coco Wang was so overwhelmed by the tragedy of China’s recent earthquake that she created a set of incredibly moving comic strips to try and retell some of the stories to the rest of the world.

The stories are all based on accounts of the rescue work collected from newspapers. They highlight the bravery, kindness, tenacity and ability to smile in the face of hardship of the Chinese people following this disaster.

Photo: Pipa by Scott Allen Stevens

There’s loads to discover at Soundroots , which is dedicated to music of the world. SA Stevens, aka dj earball, writes about a huge range of world music from Bollywood soundtracks to Japanese percussion to Balkan brass and Brazilian samba. As with La Onda Tropical latin music blog MP3s are available for a limited time, to listen to the music they are talking about.

Affiliated with ‘Spin the Globe’ world music radio show, it’s an interesting and varied blog, from a writer who clearly knows his music and is also passionate about different cultures of the world.

Tags: world music, global culture

A few weeks ago we wrote about the films from around the world shown on May 10th, Pangea Day. It seems like the event was a great success, with screenings in many diffferent world locations including Cairo, London, Los Angeles and Mumbai.

If you didn’t catch one of the live showings, don’t worry because the programme has now been uploaded onto the Pangea Day website. There are 51 short films from many different places and you can watch them here.

Our purpose here at PocketCultures is to try to bridge differences between people of different nationalities by showing new aspects of different countries and world cultures. It’s an area which in our opinion is not getting enough attention at present, which is why we were delighted to find out about Pangea Day - an innovative event by leading film makers aiming to change the way we think about other countries.

The main screening itself will be held on May 10, at locations all around the world, and also broadcast live on the internet and television. But you can already catch some trailers on YouTube. Among those submitted so far are ‘Japan sings for Turkey’, a traditional Japanese rendition of the Turkish national anthem, ‘France sings for USA’ - elegantly-shot black and white scenes of Paris set to the background of Parisians singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Documentary maker Jehane Noujaim, the inspiration behind the event, explains the reasoning behind the idea of using films to show stories in this article. Learning someone’s story, and coming to see them as a person, rather than a ‘foreigner’ is key to breaking down prejudices.

Update: the films have now been uploaded to the Pangea Day website. Watch them here.

Do you love Latin music but wish you knew your way around it better? La Onda Tropical - an exotic musical revolution, as it calls itself - will surely help.

Covering all kinds of Latin music including bossa nova, cumbia, flamenco, merengue, salsa and reggaeton, most of the articles link to MP3 streams so you can listen to the music as well as read about it.

Rageh inside Iran: Rageh Omaar, a Somalian born former BBC reporter visited Iran over the summer of 2006. While there he filmed this fascinating documentary about what life is really like for the Iranian people of Tehran, whom he describes as “dynamic, energetic and warm”.

This trailer gives an idea of the content if you are short of time. The full length version of the programme lasts for 90 minutes and is unfortunately only available in installments. (there is a full version available on Google Video but the picture quality is quite bad) If you have the patience to load them all it is well worth the watch!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

Link is courtesy of Mr Behi’s Iranian blog. As an Iranian himself he knows what he is talking about when he describes this as “a truly fair report” of his complex country.

Rageh Omaar writes here about his quest to follow the lives of ordinary Iranians.