German silent film musician and composer Pierre Oser is coming to Manila for the 3rd time this year to grace the 9th International Silent Film Festival, until Aug. 30, at the Edsa Shangri-La Plaza, Mandaluyong City. Working with Pierre for this gig is Filipino virtuoso Jaimar Palispis, associate director of the group KontraGaPi, an official ethnic music and dance ensemble of the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

Figures from Germany's culture and language promotion agency, the Goethe Institute, show that people in southern Europe -- where unemployment is high, particularly among the young -- are clamoring to learn German. Other official data show immigration to Germany from Spain, Greece and Portugal is up sharply.

With the opening up of the country and the entry of the icons of global trademarks, Beijing started to realise the importance of so-called “soft power”. While the Americans have a lot of problems in many parts of the world, their way of life and their culture — particularly their popular culture — are attractive to hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

According to Schmachtel who has been nominated as the cluster President for its first year, “EUNIC was formed in 2006 and has a reputation as Europe’s leading cultural relations practitioner to create lasting partnerships between professionals and to forge greater understanding and awareness of various European culture and to encourage language study.

The founding members are the Alliance Française, the British Council and the Goethe-Institut....creating effective partnerships and networks among them in order to improve and promote cultural diversity and understanding between European societies and to strengthen international dialogue and cultural cooperation with Nigeria.