A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Sheffield Doc Fest is over with a huge Industry section and a festival, with former ITV person Claire Aguilar as responsible. Kirsten Johnson’s personal “Cameraperson” got the first prize, here is a clip from Realscreen: Ido Haar’s “Presenting Princess Shaw”,…
– med undertitlen “et portræt af tusindkunstneren Flemming Quist Møller” er en herlig film, hvor jeg sad og klukkede af glæde over at se og gense. Det er nemlig en film, som er en del af min egen historie som…
… ønsker vi her fra Filmkommentaren. Vi gør det med et af vores yndlingsportrætter af dig, det er godt nok dit, fra din blog, men vi tilegner os det lige, for det er et af de mest inspirerende, et af…
I have known Nenad Puhovski for almost 20 years. His contribution to the development of Croatian documentary is enormous as a teacher, producer, director and ZagrebDox festival initiator and director. He was on the board of EDN (European Documentary Network),…
We have on this site for years announced the free offers from ”your online documentary cinema”, DocAlliance, the best vod you can find in Europe with a focus on Central and Eastern European documentaries but not only, there is also…
It all started on the island of Bornholm. From 1990 and for ten years we Danes arranged a film festival on this wonderful place in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The name was Balticum Film & TV Festival and…
If any name is connected to Polish documentary this is the one: Lozinski. Marcel and Pawel. Father and son. Let me start with the father, who is a bit older than me but we are from the same generation. We…
Oh New York, this urban jungle full of tales and stories. Of people who long for a good life. Or just for a life. Rich and poor, all ages, all colours. All languages. Michael Glawogger (RIP) was there to make…
The Krakow Film Festival is over for me. I have – with this one – delivered the agreed texts for the festival newspaper and I have watched the films in the Documentary Competition to give marks together with other critics.…
Last night the award ceremony was held at the 56th Krakow Film Festival. Projects in development, participating in the impressive Industry section, were honored and supported, and there were decisions made by juries in the many festival sections. I saw…
Apart from the already mentioned, see below, main award for Martin Solá’s “The Chechen Family”, the director Marcela Zamora received The Amnesty International Catalunya Award and the Jury’s Special Mention for her touching “The Room of Bones”. It is a…
On the last day of DocsBarcelona – in the afternoon – I attended the screening of ”Chechen Family” (”La Familia Chechena”) by Argentinian director Martin Solá, who brought to me not only a strong film but also the best Q&A…
Wonderful. The smell of books that meet you, when you enter the Altaïr Bookshop on Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. You go downstairs to smell and have the best coffee in Barcelona together with film directors, whose films are…
Look at the photo. Gaudi. La Pedrera, built between 1906 and 1910, 92 Paseo de Gracia. A must-see for visitors to Barcelona. But also the yearly venue for master classes at DocsBarcelona like yesterday, where (from left to right with…
… and directors inform and answer questions after the screenings. The heart of a festival, is it not, when the filmmakers get the chance to have feedback from the viewers, who have enjoyed their work on a big screen, vice…
… with full house at the Aribau Multicines, the 1100 seats were occupied for the opening ceremony with a couple of rappers, opening speech by festival director Joan González and the screening of ”Sonita” (also a rapper) by Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami,…
In June 2nd to 8th the Danish Cinematheque at the Film House in Copenhagen shows, as Documentary of the Month, “Lampedusa in Winter” by Jakob Brossmann, a film that has and will travel the world winning several awards. Below you…
Becoming Zlatan / Den unge Zlatan har sin danske biografpremiere i det beundringsværdige DOXBIO samarbejde onsdag den 1. juni 2016 i 50 biografer i hele landet. Se hvilke i et link nedenfor. Filmen havde festivalpremiere på IDFA i november sidste år…
Jeg ved meget lidt om ishockey, efter filmen om “Red Army” ved jeg meget mere. Det er de fremragende arkivoptagelser fra kampe i Sovjetunionen og i Canada, og ved diverse verdens- og olympiske mesterskaber, som fortæller denne fodboldgale blogger, at…
With the long name Moscow International Documentary Film Festival Doker has launched its second festival edition that runs until May 24. I am very amazed of what the young team behind the festival is doing full of enthusiasm and vision…
A thoughtful and clear text taken from the site of Doker: Moscow International Documentary Film Festival DOKer has stemmed from the project of the same name which screens independent non-fiction. DOKer project is aimed at analyzing and screening in Russia…
It’s nice to teach. I have done so for three days and have the final round today in green and rich Potsdam, at the impressive film school (now Universität) named after Konrad Wolf. Invited by Peter Badel for the second…
It’s the never ending story – the discussions around the definition of what is a documentary and which words to use. We still go to literature to characterise, using phrases like ”a film poem”, ”an essay”, ”novelistic” etc. And we…
Cuadernos means Notebooks or Diaries if I get it right – written by Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia. Regret to say that I had never heard about him before, even if his long bibliography includes works translated into English, French and…
There is still time to pick up on the free retrospective of Michael Madsen on DocAlliance, an event that made editor Allan Berg update our posts on the Danish director, quite many actually, from Celestial Night to The Visit, written…
– with this headline on the DocAlliance website: Visual Philosophy of the Unknown. The (unsigned) article on the website is a very fine introduction to an original auteur, who with few films have reached international fame. Here is a full…
… that has the subtitle ”New Heroes of the Cuban Revolution” is a well told character driven, emotional and informational, visually excellent documentary from a country, where the president’s daughter Mariella Castro is ”heading a new state program for transgender…
I have a weak spot for Polish documentaries and this fine film by young Marta Prus makes me – again – wonder why. Is it because the directors know how to create a tense atmosphere very much due to excellent,…
The program is announced for DocsBarcelona 2016, May 23 to May 29. I have below copy-pasted the press release that came out today. As one of the programmers for the festival part, I am looking forward to attend and participate…
My friends at the Bolzano based film school Zelig has asked me to tell our readers that the call for applications for the 2016-2019 training cycle is open. Normally we don’t do that kind of promotion on this site but…
Georgia is (still) not a member of the European Union and yet there is a cultural link that works as in this case, I copy-paste a message from the festival FB page: ”We are very proud to announce that CinéDOC-Tbilisi…
By courtesy of Louie Palu, the main character of ”Kandahar Journals”, that he also directed together with Devin Gallagher, the upcoming DocsBarcelona festival, is using one of his photos to promote the festival. Stunning. Attractive. From the website of the…
Renowned critic and writer Richard Brody has – in the New Yorker – written a long and extremely interesting article on – as he calls him – ”Jonas Mekas, Champion of the ”Poetic” Cinema”. This time the theme is not…
… this is just a natural thing in documentary filmmaking, the moment you think you know everything and it only remains to capture your “discoveries”, the truth of life takes over and turns against you. So, I let my visions…
14 minutes was all needed to make this gem of a film. It reminds me, who watches loads of feature duration documentaries, how strong a short film can be when you have a wonderful person in front of the camera…
From the production side it is interesting. The film is commissioned by Danish festival CPH:DOX under its program CPH:LAB, where filmmakers from different countries meet to work together. 10 intensive workshop days, original ideas to develop, one year to make…
“This year’s edition of DOK Leipzig, which runs from 31 October to 6 November, stands under the motto “Disobedience”, in German “Ungehorsam”. The term acts as an integral aspect throughout the Special Programmes. For instance, the Retrospective explores the styleshaping…
The festival, that runs May 29 till June 5, has previously announced the selection of Polish documentaries and short films and animated films for competitive sections, as well as a special focus on Sweden this year. And not to forget…
It makes me glad, when it goes well for former students from the Bolzano based Zelig Documentary School, where I was a teacher for many years. Therefore my curiosity made me ask Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi for a vimeo…
A magic sense of piousness is what Georgian Salomé Jashi creates at the beginning in her new documentary film, that has its world premiere at the Visions du Réel in Nyon this coming Wednesday April 20. A traveling shot from…
Always provoking, always exaggerating as part of the provocation, and yet there is always some truth in what he says – Peter Greenaway, this time as part of his getting a BAFTA recognition for his work at an event in…
We have had several posts including Don Edkins, described in one of them as ”…a true gentleman in the world documentary community, and a man who in his work in a true Griersonian way seeks to combine the documentary art…
… takes place in Nyon Switzerland from April 14 to 23 and presents as usual – under the direction of Luciano Barisone – a strong program with the emphasis on the artistic documentary.. Barisone was interviewed by cineuropa (by Muriel…
… according to Joshua Oppenheimer, Lucy Walker, Alex Gibney, James Marsh, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Franny Armstrong, Khalo Matabane, Molly Dineen, Angus Macqueen and Kim Longinotto, is a good read from The Guardian end of March. I have taken three statements from…
It comes with Audience Awards at the Sundance Festival, at IDFA and at the One World 2016. It is going to be the opening film at the DocsBarcelona end of May and will be included in the Documentary of the…
After the death of the DOX magazine there is a lack of longer and deeper articles about the documentary genre as an art form – where to find reflections on aesthetics and ethics, historical articles, interviews with important directors and…
One festival after the other, and it’s fine that festivals like Amdoc in Palm Springs that I have been reporting from and now also the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (that I will just drop this about) introduce non-American films…
Festival director Teddy Groyua wanted suspense, when he was to announce the winners of the Film Fund Pitch Competition. He showed three trailers, the finalists, he said, and said afterwards ”you want to know who are the winners… they are…
The last day of the American Documentary Film Festival 2016 was a good day. That started quietly for me with a film on the Swiss Guard of the Vatican, ”Escerito: The World’s Smallest Army” (86 mins.) by Italian veteran director…
After a fine sunday 6 hour excursion that included the town of Coacherella, that hosts a music festival every year but on this sunday mostly looked like the most deserted place on earth, with some great murals like the one…