The 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival is taking a trip to the other Great White North — Sweden. The Scandinavian cinema powerhouse will be the focus of the festival's fifth Passport program, the film festival announced Tuesday.

A multi-media promotional campaign for international cultural exchange along the ancient Silk Road was launched on Sunday at the Xinjiang Pavilion Square of Tianshan Tianchi scenic spot in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. [...] Historically, Xinjiang is an important passage of interflow between Asian and European civilizations, which has played a unique role in exchanges between the East and West.

“We must be crazy to make kosher wine in Tuscany,” laughed Pellegrini, who, according to Jewish law, cannot touch the wine because she is not Jewish. Other non-kosher Tuscan wineries have occasionally produced a run of kosher wine, but since it began producing bottles eight years ago, Terra di Seta has been the only fully kosher winery in central Italy’s Chianti region

Music is a language that everyone understands, and music is above politics,” says Claudia Frenzel of Wanted! International, a German company organizing the musical exchange. [...] Today, Israel and Germany have doffed their starched formality and emerged as true partners. 

The kimono, a garment that dates back to the 5th century A.D. and worn by westerners for at least 150 years, inhabits the slippery gray area between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. [...] For a long time, the kimono as a fashion statement – both contemporary remakes and authentic vintage garments – largely avoided being called out for cultural appropriation.

This was clearly what Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun meant when he said the aim of having SIFF was not really to select the best performing country but more towards promoting peace and making new friends. “The Sabah International Folklore Festival is a symbol of peace in the world. The 16 participating countries are symbolically showcasing this message,” he said when launching the event.

This month’s concerts have been made possible thanks to organizer Morten Traavik, a trusted figure in the area of cultural exchange as far as Pyongyang is concerned. He told local news agency Yonhap that the band can draw on the division of their homeland Yugoslavia in understanding sentiment towards the separation of the Koreas at the close of Tokyo’s colonial rule.