A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
It’s a strong piece of observational public service documentary, Greek/French director Marco Gastine has made. “Public Service” reminding us about, what legendary Scottish John Grierson thought should be the role of documentaries: to make the audience, the civil society understand…
… her 65 minutes long documentary has its premiere in Karlovy Vary tonight. The play- and colourful Latvian director is very busy on Facebook, where she for a long time has posted great photos, the last couple of days also…
This film that I first got to watch yesterday having heard and read about it, only positive words… Here is the annotation from IDFA’s Docs for Sale: “Benedetta (Barrese) wants to disappear. An iconic fashion model in the 1960s, she…
“The film screen is not a window through which you look at the world, it is a world in itself.” DAFilms.com presents yet another documentary film classic, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Recall his works from the golden collection of European cinema.…
The BFI Doc Society publishes a very good newsletter. In the one I received yesterday, there was a text about the presence of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose last film ”The Rest” was screened at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. He…
At the first session of the Ex Oriente the directors taking part were asked to write a text “I am your character” in a couple of hours. I used the two hours before meeting the directors with their texts to…
… with the subtitle ”Find Your Way – Vision – Space and Storytelling” here in Banská Stiavnoca in Slovakia – is going to its end. Two more program points, exiting both of them, and then a summing up tomorrow. First…
It was a very entertaining afternoon experience yesterday in Banská Stiavnica attending the screening of the 2015 documentary by Robert Kirchhoff and Filip Remunda (they call each other Robo and Filo!) followed by a masterclass with the two that gave…
I am in Banská Stiavnica in Slovakia, where the first session of the Ex Oriente workshop takes place. I have been invited as a substitute for Iikka Vehkalahti and I am happy to attend at the workshop of which I…
På Grønlands Nationaldag på fredag den 21. juni fylder Grønlands Selvstyre 10 år. I den anledning sender DR2 dokumentarfilmen Håbets Ø – en film af Sidse Torstholm Larsen og Sturla Pilskog, som allerede nu kan streames på DR TV. Her…
Readers of filmkommentaren will know that I am very happy with Syrian Orwa Nyrabia being the artistic director of IDFA. Step by step he is changing the festiwal together with his competent Staff. This post aims at making you read…
With the Austrian title: «Gehört, Gesehen – Ein RadioFilm“… 5 years after maestro Nicolas Philibert made his „Maison de la Radio », here is another equally fascinating visit to a radio broadcasting channel: Ö1, part of the ORF in Austria,…
I have met Valentin, the projectionist, on screen, at several workshops and presentations, and I have seen how fragments, all these clips, of his life slowly have become a film that now – bravo – is to have its premiere…
”Me No Worry, Me No Care, Me Go Marry a Millionaire, If He Dies Me No Cry, Me Go Marry Another Guy”… are the words Pomm uses to wake up Elisabeth, who reacts with a smile. Pomm calls Elisabeth mother…
The Halny? Shocking film! Says someone coming from a flat country after having watched a film about the power of the wind in a mountain area. I had never heard about the halny before so I made a visit to…
… the new film by Asif Kapadia („Amy“ and „Senna”), one of the masters in archive based documentaries, „The movie melds personal recordings with omnipresent reportage to portray the turbulent years of a gifted footballer burning brightly in late 1980’s…
– a copy paste from the festival’s FB page: Having watched all the competitive films the International Documentary Jury of the 59th Krakow Film Festival consisting of: Jacek Petrycki – chairman (Poland), Talal Derki (Germany), Marja Pallassalo (Finland), Shane Smith…
I was not in Krakow for the festival this year, but I saw the films in the main international competition and gave my points together with other film journalists – and made 4 texts for the Daily Newspaper, which is…
A lot of awards were distributed last night in Tel Aviv at the 21st edition of DocAviv. Let me mention the two main awards and give you the link – below – to the festival website. Winner of Israeli Competition…
He said many clever things, Audrius Stonys, at DocsBarcelona, where his film ”Bridges of Time”, directed with Latvian Kristine Briede, at two screenings had a good audience as had the masterclass with the Lithuanian director. Festival director Joan Gonzalez, whose…
Fernando Botero… all art interested people know him from his paintings and sculptures. I have been reminded of him again and again when arriving to the airport in Barcelona, where his horse sculpture is a meeting point. Don Millar, the…
Cecilia Lidin, member of EDN and former director of the association from 2009-2011, now film consultant at the Danish Film Institute writes today on FB : Calling all EDN Members! Tomorrow the EDN office will be moved from Copenhagen to Amsterdam.…
Let me remind you that when DocsBarcelona started 22 years ago all pitching sessions were public. When the EDN launched the workshops in The South of Europe, with the support of the EU Media Programme, the first one took place…
DocsBarcelona is making a political statement. The festival showed “Avec un Sourire, la Revolution” by Canadian Alexandre Chartrand, on the 19th to an audience of around 700 people, who gave the film and its message a standing ovation. AND the…
I have made a copy paste of the fine text from the DocsBarcelona website, presenting the presence of Lithuanian documentary master director Audrius Stonys: 7 SHOTS 7 is the annual proposal of DocsBarcelona to a personality in the audiovisual world.…
At the DocsBarcelona today, at a special session the first episode of a new Netflix original documentary series will be screened. Normally I would say, all right and so what, but as the director is León Siminiani I am interested.…
Joan Gonzalez, director of the festival this morning, in Catalan: Bon dia! Ahir amb mes de 2100 espectadors va ser el dia amb mes afluència de públic de totes les edicions del @DocsBarcelona No podem començar millor la segona setmana del…
Towards the end of the film, Martìn Perino is in a school class with his friend, the dancer Solé. He talks to the students: ”Solé and I would like you to write down, what you feel or think, when you…
The wonderful photo above from the opening of DocsBarcelona some days ago does not represent the whole truth. Green should have been more dominant. At least according to my experience yesterday, where I was in the cinema for 6 hours…
Indeed, that was a lovely Friday at the cinema – in Barcelona on the second day of full program. As one of the programmers of the DocsBarcelona festival, it is a pleasure to sit with the audience to see how…
… and when that is the case, like last night at DocsBarcelona, the participants get a memorable treat at a masterclass from a master, who has a lot to say about filmmaking. And who is a performer, who knows how…
Full house, of course, for the opening screening of “Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky, who was there on stage answering a few questions, asking his first assistant director and editor on the film, Ainara Vera, to come to the stage and…
First there was this one – – “EDN Bylaws Violated…” Then there was a letter from the (self-appointed) interim director Flore Deroose sent to EDN members via EDN Admin System, if you did not get it, ask her on flore@edn.network…
Yes, it is tonight that DocsBarcelona opens with the screening of “Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky, a dear friend of the festival and a true master of cinema. The festival runs until the 25th with films in the CCCB, cultural centre,…
International Competition Best Film –The Disappearance of My Mother (Photo) – by Beniamino Barrese Jury statement – “This film openly talks about respect, dignity, beauty and honesty. The film makes us think about how we treat privacy and who has…
Csilla Kato, member of the Caucasus Jury at Cinédoc Tbilisi wrote this longer version of motivation for the winner: Earthquake shakes our basic security feeling and the basic assumption, belief, that we can accommodate comfortable life on a supporting and…
10 projects were part of the Civil Pitch in Tbilisi, one of the activities of the Industry section of Cinédoc Tbilisi festival in the capital of Georgia. After a couple of days of training led by Daniel Abma and Brigid…
After the screening of a beautiful 2018 restored copy of “Etre et Avoir”, the film by Nicolas Philibert, that he made in 2001 to be premiered in 2002, to be an amazing audience success in cinemas in France, 2 mio.…
Calling all EDN members!!It has come to our attention that dramatic changes have happened within the EDN organization – and as the members have not been notified, we hereby take it upon ourselves to point out a number of actions…
… in the Capital of Georgia. It was an unpretentious presentation with two skilled presenters and – unlike many international festivals – it happened in both Georgian and English language. With clips from all competitive sections (for the young, the…
DocsBarcelona starts in 10 days. I have written about the upcoming festival, link below. But DocsBarcelona has many other rooms. One of them is the Documentary of the Month that includes one film being shown at 75 venues in Spain…
So well deserved an honour – Latvian Laila Pakalnina has a big retrospective of her mostly short documentaries at Centre Pompidou in Paris, to be more precise, organised by La Cinématheque du Documentaire at the Bibliothéque Publique d’Information. 20 films…
… ”goes tailor-made, expands cross-media Market for 2019”, the festival announced yesterday, April 30, talking about pitch setups needed in a ”rapidly changing documentary industry”. In the text, click below and read it all in details, it is stressed that…
Der er baltisk film på programmet i Cinemateket i København fra den 7. til den 19. maj. Under overskriften ”Baltic Frames” vises fem spillefilm og fire dokumentarer fra de baltiske lande. Arrangør er Det Danske Kulturinstitut i Estland, Letland og…
… is the title of the wonderful film by Ksenia Elyan, who won the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Doker Festival in Moscow. I have seen it pitched on several occasions and the promises planted on these occasions were…
Let me leave the floor to this very inviting and good festival itself with this quote from the website: KFF is one of the oldest events in Europe dedicated to documentary, animated and short feature films. Its core consists of…
In terms of number of films DocsBarcelona is a small festival. 30. Where other documentary festivals invite the audience to choose between 100 or even more films, we make it easier, as we have already made a strong selection among…
May 8 – 13 in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, the seventh edition of the documentary festival that I visited the first time at the opening edition as a juror , where the main awards were given to Lithuanian Lina Luzyte for…
The documentary festival in Belgrade with more than 100 films, and a full-bodied industry program starts in 17 days. The website is not totally up and running – ”coming soon” it says many places – and a lot is in…
Gosh, it’s big, the upcoming festival in Toronto. This is what is said on the website: “Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, offers an outstanding selection of over 200 films from Canada and around the world to Toronto audiences…