A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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…
There is indeed a diversity in the programming of American Documentary Film Festival 2016, the fifth edition held here in Palm Springs. Reportage, documentary films of artistic quality and also a chance to dig into film history, this time Joe…
Margot Nash, experienced Australian filmmaker, whom I had never heard about, gave me the best documentary of friday in Palm Springs, ”Silences” (73 mins.) and demonstrated how beautifully English can be spoken with a text of high literary quality. Her…
Same procedure as last year – the festival kicked off thursday morning with a film fund pitch competition led by its festival director Teddy Grouya. A dozen of projects were presented in a more than two hour long session, free…
13th International documentary films about human rights festival has ended in Kyiv. The awards ceremony was held on March 31th in Cinema House. Hosts of the ceremony: festival moderators Marina Stepanska and Oleksandr Vynogradov. Films were competing for prizes in…
Palm Springs, March 31, the official opening of the Amdocs takes place tonight after a morning pitch session and a film programme that runs during the whole day. Actually the festival screenings already started yesterday as one day has been…
Early monday morning. We arrive to the modern airport of Kiev, Borispil, to go back to Copenhagen after far too short a stay but with intense days at the Docudays UA festival. A familiar face meets us at the check…
I am a landscape painter, said Jon Bang Carlsen at his masterclass at the Docudays in Kiev last night. I found it to be a perfect auto-description after having seen his ”It’s Now or Never”, that came out in 1996,…
I want to say Bravo Sweden. Our neighbouring country has for years been the main sponsor of the Docudays UA Human Rights Festival here in Kiev. From the state organisation SIDA, channelled through the Swedish embassy 4 mio. SEK (426.184…
To say that the opening of the 13th edition of Docudays UA here in Kiev last night was joyous is an understatement. If there was any award for the visually best, most intelligent and funny opening ceremony of a documentary…
The festival poster is to be seen around Kiev – the bears are there and not only ”inside us”, read elsewhere what the creative organizers want to communicate with that. A much more direct communication is to be found in…
… and full names: director Anastasiya Miroshnichenko and producer Volia Chajkouskaya. I met Volia C. in Minsk in connection with the Listapad festival, where she gave me a link to their previous film, “Crossroads”, reviewed on this site. About their…
In the series ”Documentary of the Month” the Danish Cinemateket shows the French ”Alive!”, a warm light-hearted film about five HIV positive men, who meet to train for a skydiving experience. They talk about being gay, about their first sexual…
”The School of Disillusionment”… is the subtitle of this year’s Docu/Class in Kiev at the festival that starts in four days and runs until April 1st. Look at the creative logo for this part of the event, (how do you…
I have not seen the film yet, but I will, with high expectations because I have heard about it for several years from the maker and have had the privilege to tutor with Kirsten Johnson a couple of times, in…
Along with Jon Bang Carlsen the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival pays a tribute to Mark Cousins, also an original filmmaker, loved by this site, a man who knows his film history (buy the 930 minutes long dvd compilation he made with…
The 18th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival includes a retrospective of films by Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen, indeed not the first time this director has been, much deserved, presented as one of the most interesting documentary directors of…
I left Prague yesterday after 7 fine days with the East Doc Platform and its professional and personal touch. I was happy that my hand luggage was not being weighed at the airport, my IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) catalogue…
East Doc Platform Development Award: WHEN THE WAR COMES (dir. Jan Gebert, prod. R. Síbrt, V. Hozzová; Czech Republic) Photo Viktoriá Hozzová receiving the award from Luke Moody, Britdoc. Czech TV Postproduction Award: RUSSIAN VIEWFINDERS (dir. Alexander Abarutov, prod. O.…
The One World festival in Prague, number 18, will have its award ceremony on Wednesday; the winners, however, have already been announced. I mention, via the press release of today, the winners of the main competition, for the whole list,…
”It is too artistic for our audience”… he said so, Erkko Lyttinen from YLE, the Finnish broadcaster that has always defended the artistic documentaries… has the last bastion fallen? I had heard that remark before, but from less important broadcasters…
… having said so, I hurry to say that the films that I mention in this post are also creative, but they have in their presentation thought of television as the channel to an audience, at the same time as…
Traitor, I said a long time ago to Jesper Osmund, who has edited the film about Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the magnificent Swedish footballer, who ”killed” the Danish ambition to qualify for the European championship. A Dane to help the Swedish brothers…
I know that the headline is mixing harsh reality and entertainment but this is actually how it is to be at EDP, East Doc Platform, here in Prague. During the days I have been giving feedback on documentary projects that…
I am at EDP – East Doc(umentary) Platform – in Prague, that provides ”training and networking for projects, workshops, promotion, financing and awards”. It takes place at the Cervantes Institute and runs parallel to and in collaboration with the One…
”… Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in…
Original title: Prophets Prey. Danish DR Dokumania shows Amy Berg’s film on tuesday March 8 at 20.45, music composed cy Nick Cave. In the following Danish text there is a presentation and a short review of the film. Første afsnit…
This is the statement of the festival in Kiev (25.3-1.4) linked to the logo chosen: “The Olympic Mishka” (Olympic bear) is the mascot of 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, one of the happiest episodes in life of the Soviet Union. You can still see…
The theme: The Suva Reka massacre during the Kosovo war. 1999. When Nato was bombing Yugoslavia. Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serbian police-officers. Batajnica, at the banks of the Danube, upstream Belgrade Zemun, became the hiding place where the corpses…
A classic among the many documentary festivals – and in Paris. The selection for this year’s edition, taking place March 18-27, primarily at the Centre Pompidou, has been made: there is an international competition, a French, one for First film…
From Georgian producer, filmmaker, photographer, workshop organizer and promoter of documentaries Anna Dziapshipa I received a “please sign this petition” request, I did so via change.org – the issue was a protest against a radical date change of submitting projects…
There is a lot of good mood in this new film by Avi Mograbi – as there always is in films by this great Israeli filmmaker, who in his films for decades has raised a critical voice to the way…
ZagrebDox ended sunday and awards were given. I mention some of them with ”smartlinks” for you to see what we have written about them on this site. But go to the festival website to get the whole picture. Festival director…
I know the French director Catherine Bernstein from the Paris-based European training programme Archidoc and from several of her awarded documentaries. She is a master in dealing with archive material, which is so brilliantly demonstrated in this film that will…
You have to catch the attention of the audience right from the beginning. The opening of a film is so important. Here you have to make an invitation to the viewer, give some basic information that indicates, what he/she can…
It’s a very fine film, I placed it on the 2015 Talent List and am pleased to see that the Copenhagen audience will get the chance to enjoy it. Cinemateket has chosen Antonio Tibaldi and Alex Lora´s ”Thy Father’s Chair”…
Thank you for letting me be in the company of Aisha for 70 minutes. You invited me to get to learn a young girl and woman full of Life living in a country I know very little about, Jordan. And…
… and runs until February 28. Here is a brief introduction text from the site of the festival: “A documentary about an ordinary family with extraordinary secrets, directed by Karen Guthrie, on Sunday, 21 February, opens the 12th edition of…
A fine filmmaker and a good friend has passed away. Suddenly, two days ago. I got the message from Ludmila Nazaruk from St. Petersburg, the hometown of Sasha. I saw him last time at the ”Message to Man” festival in…
So this is the official photo from the award ceremony. The President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite is in the middle with (from left to right) Alge and Arunas Matelis, my wife Ellen and me, the President, Audrius and Aida Stonys,…
Look at the photo, taken by Giedre Beinoriute just after the award ceremony. It is the Independence Day of Lithuania and the ceremony is about to start. On the red carpet former President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus welcomes Vytautas Landsbergis…
I am biased. I have known about this film to be done for years. I was a teacher at the Zelig film school in Bolzano, when Georg worked there, he showed me material that was very interesting, and I met…
And the festival in Krakow has decided to put focus on Sweden at the upcoming festival. Here is a clip from the press release of today, with a photo of Polish-Swedish Jerzy Sladkowski taken last week, when he presented his…
My first reaction to the press release sent out by the Krakow Film Festival was… why not before? But I will not use it against the fine people of a festival that I have always loved a lot and intends…
… which stands for North South Doc Network, more about that below. The festival that runs from April 30-March 4 opens with the premiere of director Joe Berlinger’s latest film ”Tony Robbins: I am not Your Guru” and includes three…
Simon Kilmurry – previously at the POV, now in his new position as executive director of the IDA (International Documentary Association) – asked me to write about the upcoming conference of the association, ”Getting Real”, that has the headline ”Art.…
I am back in Copenhagen after another unforgettable version of the Magnificent7 Festival, number 12 it was and of course there is reason for the organizers to be proud of what they have achieved with a festival of 7 films,…
Wojciech and Malgorzata Staron were in the vip room yesterday after the screening of their masterpiece ”Brothers” that was shown in the big hall of the Sava Center in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 festival. Almost 1000 viewers attended and I…
Jerzy Sladkowski’s ”Don Juan” was shown here in Belgrade the other night and his Q&A meeting with the audience in the vip room of the Sava Center lasted for more an hour in a packed room, where many were sitting…
Taken from the site of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade () this text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic about the film to be shown tonight at the Sava Center in Belgrade: For centuries, one of the…