A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
I have mentioned so many times the old masters like Herz Frank, Ivars Seleckis, Mark Soosaar, Henrikas Sablevicius, Uldis Brauns and their younger students like Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis (who are no longer the young generation but masters who belong…
A week ago I was in Mariupol with Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, whose ”Mariupolis” made a big impression on me. And now I have returned to the city in Ukraine with American director Steve Hooper, who is here in Riga…
The first day of pitching at the 20th edition of the Baltic Sea Forum ended with the presentation of the project ”Baltic New Wave”. The initiator and co-director of the film-to-be Kristine Briede was the presenter in front of four…
I had to have a photo of the grand old man in Latvian documentary Ivars Seleckis (born September 22 1934) and me just before the pitch rehearsal at the 20th edition of the Forum for documentaries being held in Riga…
No, I can not make a real review of this film… But why not? I know the two makers too well, and the project. I have seen them pitching the film at several workshops. And I am just so happy…
… with the subtitle “Sibiu International Film Festival” has existed since 1993. This year it takes place October 17-23. The Romanian festival in Sibiu sent an email about the selection that has been done and the interesting thematic grouping of…
Let’s start with this information: Mariupolis is a city in Ukraine at the Azov Sea and with the river Kalmius. Half a million citizens. The war in Eastern Ukraine has reached Mariupolis. A quote from a Cineuropa interview with Mantas…
DOKU.ARTS is one of those festivals that is different because it puts a focus on the essay film and adds a very attractive symposium to its film program. The symposium takes place October 7, the festival runs in Berlin from…
Det må være dig, der skriver om Bugs, mailede kollega Allan Berg til mig. Den ”minder mig om en dejlig gammeldags Filmcentralfilm…”, en henvisning til at jeg tilbragte 20 af mine arbejdsår i hedengangne Statens Filmcentral, SFC. Med det i…
The new film by Andreas Johnsen is already touring internationally – Started at Tribeca and has recently been in Prizren, Kosovo and in Skopje, Macedonia. But a Danish premiere is coming now, read this taken from the website of the…
I am writing this text to support a filmmaker in trouble – Russian Sergey Kachkin, who, in these days, 25 years after the fall of USSR, experiences problems in getting his new film, that he has been working on for…
… is the name of the awards given at the Sarajevo Film Festival, distributed last night in the beautiful city with Romanian Monica Lazurean Gorgan as the winner in the documentary category for her “A Mere Breath” (photo) (the heart…
Two hours drive from Prizren, is Skopje, capital of Macedonia. After Dokufest in Kosovo, Sarajevo in Bosnia, it is MakeDox that takes the documentary scene from last night and until friday 26th of August. It’s a festival that names itself…
I warn you – you are going to hear quite a lot about Baltic Sea Docs in Riga. I will be there – have been “part of the furniture” since it started on the island of Bornholm – to tutor…
For two more days you will be able to watch, for free, Sergei Loznitsa’s masterly done archive film ”The Event” through the DocAlliance, ”your online documentary cinema”, a fine editorial choice for us to remember what happened in those memorable…
You may discuss whether this is the right way to do it: to have 10 documentary film festivals recommend to the European Film Academy one film each to be nominated for the European Film Awards, followed by a decision taken…
It was visually crazy to be in calm Prizren for the Dokufest. Prizren that in its centre is full of cafés, where people drink tea and coffee, smoke cigarettes and eat cakes (they have sweet teeth in this area). They…
Last night in Prizren the Dokufest award ceremony was held at the Lumbhardi cinema followed by one more tribute to late Kiarostami, the screening of his “Close Up”. I take the liberty to mention the winners in the section, where…
Of course it’s not only about film screenings here in Prizren. There are masterclasses, pitching, koncerts, photo exhibitions… Kirsten Johnson arrived to have her ”Cameraperson” shown and to do a class that was led by Pamela Cohn, and expectedly turned…
… directed by Iranian Mehrdad Oskouei, 76 mins. long, is an interview based observational documentary about, no with young girls in a prison, it is also called a rehabilitation centre. They are there because of drugs, robberies, even murders, and…
The first days of the Dokufest here in Prizren were rainy, the nights were fresh, the sound outside my window of the Hotel Theranda was one of thunder, there was lightning and at 4.48 in the morning came and comes…
I do not recall, when was the last time that I saw a 334 minutes long documentary in a cinema. Maybe a Fred Wiseman film many many years ago? Anyway, I am very greatful to the organizers of Dokufest in…
”In this seamless blend of fictional and documentary form, we experience a stunning cinematic journey into the beauty of war-tormented Afghanistan. Shot over seven years on evocative 16mm footage, first-time director Pieter-Jan De Pue paints a whimsical yet haunting look…
… and ”I Don’t Want to Sleep with You I Just Want to Make You Hard”, long title, short film, 29 minutes, Japanese, directed by Momoko Seto, French produced, a sweet visit to a Kyabakura, a hostess club, where men…
Direct flight from Copenhagen, pretty much turbulence for my taste – don’t worry, it’s not dangerous, the SAS captain said – and arrival to Pristina, Kosova to be picked up and driven to Prizren. Three Danes, Andreas Johnsen, who is…
The time of year has come to bid you welcome to the fifteenth edition of the festival, to this jubilee edition that we so tirelessly and passionately worked on in order to bring you all a rich and varied program,…
The opening film tonight at the Dokufest festival in Prizren, Kosova is a several times awarded Chinese film that colleague Allan Berg, in Danish, praised at its CPH:DOX screening last year in November. I will not be in Prizren before…
I had been here on Mount Gurugu for fifteen months, when the two came and asked me if we could make a film, says the protagonist and filmmaker behind the camera, Abou from Mali, who like a thousand other Africans…
The Lisbon documentary festival that takes place October 20-30 announces two retrospectives of important film historical interest. One is mentioned as a full retrospective of the works of Peter Watkins… ”Peter Watkins is the subject of a full retrospective. Active…
…meaning the St. Petersburg festival Message to Man that holds its 26th edition September 25 to October 10… The competition programmes were announced today, for long and short documentaries, for short animated and short fiction films, for experimental works for…
This is a film that had its premiere at the Sundance festival in January, was at numerous festivals in the USA, won first prize at the festival in Sheffield and has got fine reviews in newspapers and magazines. Here is…
… at the International Film Festival, in a city I dream to visit one day… was ”In California” by French Charles Redon, a film that was also screened at IDFA 2015. This is the description of the film taken from…
“Nordisk Panorama Film Festival takes place between 16-21 September in Malmö, Sweden. Out of 616 submitted titles, 50 films have now officially been selected to partake in this year’s Nordic championship in documentary and short film production – Nordisk Panorama…
As a follow-up to the presentation of the documentary competition in Sarajevo this year, I made a small email conversation with Rada Sesic, programmer of the documentary competition at the Sarajevo festival (August 12 – 20). …This year many filmmakers…
You could – if you have the time – travel from the Dokufest Prizren in Kosova to Sarajevo for the yearly festival that has the main focus on feature films but also includes films from the region. The festival runs…
I read about it in connection with Parisian Cinema du Réel 2016, where it received the main award – and now tireless fighter for artistic qualistic, DocAlliance, offers it for free until July 24, an offer you should not refuse.…
… As each year passes, it gets a bit trickier to unearth moving image gems with music at the core of their stories. With many feature-length music documentaries becoming a bit stale and formulaic – more and more so every…
Wow, that sounds exciting, the diary of Jonas Mekas, ”I Had Nowhere to Go”, made into a film by filmmaker and video artist Douglas Gordon, the man who made the super-aesthetic film about Zinedine Zidane… The film has its premiere…
For years we have been following the festival in Prizren Kosova long-distance. This year – the festival dates are August 5-13 – it will be different. I will be there. Nevertheless – apart from enjoying the atmosphere and the open…
His name has been on filmkommentaren.dk since our site started as I have been covering the DokLeipzig festival, where Claas Danielsen was the festival director from 2004 till 2014. Before that I worked with him when Documentary Campus was Discovery…
I got an email from Laura Israel this morning, the director of the film on Robert Frank, with whom she has working for years as an editor. “Getting the Word Out” she wrote and told that the film is running…
I could not find the information on the website of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival – luckily Danish jury member Sigrid Dyekjær posted on FB the decisions made by her and colleagues Laurent Bécue-Renard and Hana Kulhánková: The Grand…
Until saturday July 9th the festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic is on and the red-carpet mainly feature film festival has a fine eye for documentaries as well. As part of the schedule the Jihlava Festival (20th edition this year…
… the Lance Armstrong Story, to include the subtitle, was screened last night at the DR2 Dokumania, whose editors apparently do not hesitate to bring sport documentaries during events like Wimbledon (last week ”Serena” (Williams) was shown), and now, when…
… has the subtitle ”Behind the Scenes” and indeed this is what it does, or rather where he takes us, Andrei Nekrasov, known for his controversial film on the poisoning of Litvinenko, for his ”Russian Lessons” that deals with the…
The Russian festival ended last night, I was not there in persona but if I had been you would have seen a happy man, who so many times have been at award ceremonies without having seen the winner(s). This time…
Take a look at the photo. If you are addicted to documentaries like me you think of Nanook, don’t you? If you have been around for decades like me, you might also think of Estonian master Mark Soosaar, who travelled…
This film about tennis superstar Serena Williams is one more of the many current documentary portraits of celebrities in the entertainment business and political life. Contrary to the classics in this direct cinema tradition (“Primary” (JFK), “Lonely Boy” (Paul Anka),…
– i.e. Moscow International Film Festival, that has a competition section for documentaries with 8 films. I have had the pleasure to get access to some of them, here are some notes on the two I have watched so far,…
… seen by Finn Larsen and Lars Johansson, a photo exhibition at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, running until August, curated by Finn Larsen and Hans Grundsø, with an exhibition newspaper catalogue of almost 100 pages that is in Danish AND English…