On 2008 Funchal city is celebrating 500 years of existence. This way Funchal City Hall is developing a programme of culture and entertainment to celebrate the fifth centenary anniversary of Funchal.

Despite all other events which Funchal city hosts every year, like New Years festivities, Carnival, Easter, Flowers Festival, Wine Festival, Funchal Jazz between others, some interesting events will also take place here. The edition or re-edition of some books related to Funchal history and geography, the inauguration of a sculpture built to celebrate "Funchal 500 anos" (Funchal 500 years) on the 21st of August and a Tall Ships race in early October are a few examples of the upcomig celebrations.

New Year's eve...

This is a busy day specially for women who need to get their dresses out of the closet and get everything prepared for the ball dance tomorrow night.

Despite it is new year's eve tonight many people go out at night like on a training for next night. It is usually the farewell celebration for the year that is ending. It is also a good opportunity to get some invitations for the New Years parties that will happen in almost all pubs and bars in Funchal city.

The 29th of December in Madeira is usually a normal day though this year, as it was on a Saturday, there was the San Sylvester Sailing Race. This sailing competition is usually the one where more boats compete and so Funchal bay gets colored by their sails.

Madeira Dig 2007 - the Digital Arts Festival of Madeira, is being held at Casa das Mudas Arts Centre, in Calheta from today to the 9th of December.

This fourth edition is going to have important names on the music and experimental multimedia world, such as the group “Boiar”, composed by Paulo Camacho and José Soares, “Alog”, a Norwegian duet, “NNY” the key project of a Madeira artist - Jerome Faria, a duet with Vítor Joaquim and Laetittia Morais, the Finnish artist Mika Vainio and last but not least Ran Slavin from Israel.

This year, the video exhibition is a special tribute to the famous video artist Nam June Paik, showing some of this artist’s most important video works each day, namely "A tribute to John Cage", "Merce by Merce", "Global Groove", "Mediashuttle: Moscow / New York" and "Bye bye kipling"

Here is the programme for this long and special weekend:

Friday, 7th December

At 9,30 pm - BOIAR

At 10,30 pm - ALOG

Saturday, 8th December

At 10,30 pm - VITOR JOAQUIM + LAETITIA MORAIS

At 11,30 pm - MIKKA VAINIO

Sunday, 9th December

At 5,30 pm - RAN SLAVIN

In Estalagem Quinta da Rochinha, in Ponta do Sol there will be afterhours performances by Hugo Olim, Jerome, Ran Slavin, Joao Ricardo and other artists at the festival

Source: Madeiradig.net

As the monthly Madeira cultural agenda published by MadeiraHelp.com until May 2007 is now unavailable due to difficulties of gathering information, MadeiraHelp.com Team has launched now the Madeira Orchestra Agenda for November and December 2007.

We hope to get more information about cultural events on Madeira and Porto Santo Islands.