Jihlava 2014 /Wojciech Staron
Take a look at the photo. It’s about Love, isn’t it? It comes from the film of Polish Wojciech Staron, ”Siberian Lesson”, that he made in 1998. On film stock. Here is the Jihlava catalogue description of the film: In…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK
Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.
Læs mereJihlava 2014 /Wojciech Staron
Jihlava 2014 /Kerekes and Janek
Gustav Mahler was in Jihlava. His face is looking at me from the wall in the breakfast room of Grand Hotel, which was grand once, an art nouveau building from the outside but how could they put that terrible furniture…
Anders Østergaard & Erzsébet Rácz: 1989/2
Click below and you get the local organisers of the pan-European screenings of ”1989”, and in many cases also the location of the screening that takes place on November 5th. What a great effort that lies behind this initiative. The…
Jihlava 2014 /Kerekes, Mansky, Nellis
SECOND CHANCE / THE ETERNAL LIGHT / AUDITIONING FOR PARENTHOOD I am back in Jihlava after 5 years. I stopped working for the training programme Ex Oriente in 2009, where the final session with pitching took place in this cosy provincial…
DOX 103
I read the last article this morning in a plane on my way to Prague. I had browsed through the sport pages of a stupid Danish tabloid newspaper and felt good in my 24C seat on Czech Airlines with DOX…
CPH:DOX 2014 /Østergaard & Rácz
1989 by Anders Østergaard & Erzsébet Rácz Of course the film had to start with 1956 and it does so with very fine and moving archive footage of people searching for the remains of Imre Nagy, whose government was not accepted…
CPH:DOX 2014 /Østergaard og Rácz
1989 af Anders Østergaard og Erzsébet Rácz Så er der guf for historikerne – igen. Denne gang ikke i forbindelse med et stykke 1864, Danmarkshistorie, vi er tættere på, det drejer sig om 1989, for 25 år siden i tiden omkring…
Maloof and Siskel: Finding Vivian Maier
”Finding Vivian Maier” is ”documentary of the Month” at the Cinematheque in Copenhagen with screenings from the 23rd of October, so Copenhageners – this is a must-see, it is lovely portrait of a mysterious woman, who her whole life was…
Cinedoc-Tbilisi Second Edition /2
The festival in Georgian capital Tbilisi ended yesterday and I found this message on the FB page: The award ceremony is over and we would like to announce the results: International Competition: The main prize of this section goes to…
Riga – and Gustavs Klucis
The premiere was in 2008, in Riga, the film about Klucis, ”The Deconstruction of an Artist”. Directed by Peteris Krilovs. And here I stand in front of the Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, where there…
Riga – and Herz Frank
I am in Riga – again – to take part in a “Baltic Sea Region Documentary Film Research Seminar” arranged by LAC Riga Film Museum. It starts today and my job is to give a brief introduction to the Danish…
EDN Interview with Claas Danielsen
Cecilie Bolvinkel from EDN is responsible for extensive ”Member of the Month” – interviews, that can be found on the website of the association. A fine one came out two days ago with Claas Danielsen because ” DOK Leipzig 2014…
The Flaherty and Sergey Loznitsa
No week without good news from The Flaherty, this time the following newsletter came in: The Flaherty is very pleased to enter into a new collaboration with Colgate University named the Colgate/Flaherty Distinguished Global Filmmaker. This project will fund a filmmaker’s…
Idfa and cph:dox 2014
After DOKLeipzig and Jihlava IDFF have announced their programme, these (idfa and cph:dox) two significant documentary festivals have press released selection decisions, ambitions and visions. Idfa (November 19-30) first – take a look at the website, link below – seven…
Jespersen & Farah: Krigerne fra Nord
Det er al ære værd, at DR ønsker at skabe debat omkring en films emne, som det er sket med Søren Steen Jespersen og Nasib Farahs “Krigerne fra Nord”, som – citat fra hjemmesiden – “handler om radikaliseringen og rekrutteringen…
Tiha K. Gudac: Naked Island
They have always been and they are still made, these gripping documentaries about people being arrested and sent to isolated islands for punishment. By the people in power. On this occasion, I remember several films on the camps on Makronissos…
Svetlana Strelnikova: Cardiopolitika
Sergey Sukhanov is the hero of this film. When in Eastern European countries for workshops I very often ask the filmmakers to say or write ”main character” or ”protagonist” instead of hero. But in this case Sukhanov is a hero.…
Anna Yanovskaya: Ten Centimeters of Life
First an explanation of the title of the film, enigmatic and fascinating it is: It refers to the ten centimeters of space below the ceiling where there was no water… the space that saved lives at the unbelievable dramatic flood…
Jihlava Festival Announces its Programme
The day after DOKLeipzig (below), the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) announces its programme schedule, October 23-28. The newsletter from the Czech festival does also, as DOKLeipzig, focus on statistics in its first paragraph. After headline ”57 world, international…
DOKLeipzig Programme Announced
Today DOKLeipzig announced its programme for the festival, that runs from October 27 to November 2. Whether you like to highlight it or not, the press release stresses that the festival offers 41 world premieres – 29 documentary and 12…
Olga Lvoff: When People Die They Sing Songs
Sonia, the daughter, sits down at the computer to write the headline “My Family’s European Genocide Story”… one of many stories, where a majority of a family ended up in Auschwitz, but in her case she is lucky to have…
Loparev & Kurov: Children 404
It’s one of those films, that had to be made and that you hope will be shown everywhere to pass the information about the absurd and inhuman condition that the LGBT community lives under in Russia after a law was…
Askold Kurov: Leninland
They have some verbal battles in the office, Natalya and Eugenia. They get on each other’s nerves. They both work at the museum, have done so for a long time, but where one is for the material side of the…
Does a Festival Critique Exist?
As a follow-up to the post below… here is a personal essay that I wrote for an academic book on festivals. It did not fit in, so here it is for you, a reflection on what is written on documentary…
Questions to Festival Programmers
It happens quite often. Mails arrive with sad news – ”they” did not take my film, nobody likes it, what should I do? Filmmakers are disappointed, the film that took them a couple of years to make are rejected by…
Arthur Sukiasyan: Our Atlantis
It’s an inviting start: Beautiful Istanbul, boats on Bosphorus, people fishing on the bridge, a man in a car, a man doing dummies for clothes, a woman taking out her photo album and more people getting ready to tell what…
Jon Bang Carlsen Retrospective in Leipzig
DOKLeipzig 2014 presents an ”homage to Jon Bang Carlsen”. A long text from the festival site follows below. The director is also to make a masterclass at the festival. To be recommended. Masterclasses with Bang Carlsen are always lively and…
Kurt Jacobsen & Warren Leming: American Road
As one who does not have English as native language this film demands attention and concentration. You have to get used to the constant bombardment of words, archive photos and films, interviews but if you succeed to do so, it…
Cinedoc-Tbilisi Second Edition
The Georgian international documentary film festival has launched its programme for its second edition (October 14-19), well thought and competent, with competitive sections and side bars like ”Ukranian Voices”. Here you find ”Euromaidan” put together by Darya Averchenko and Roman…
Nordisk Panorama 25!
Nordisk Panorama 25! – a documentary tour down memory lane. Yes, the first one was in Grimstad, this idyllic and romantic spot on the South coast of Norway. I was there and so was she, with whom I have shared my life…
Nick Read: The Condemned
Filmen vises i morgen tirsdag den 30. september på DR2’s Dokumania kl. 20.45. Den kan stærkt anbefales. Den danske titel er forklarende, ”Ruslands værste fængsel”, en direkte oversættelse af originaltitlen ville være ”De fordømte”. Her følger en kort anmeldelse på…
Message2Man St. Petersburg/ 4
Politics. Freedom to say what you want. In films as well. The Message2Man – that had its 24th edition this year – and its organisers are of course backing this basis for any film festival. Nevertheless the festival cancelled a…
Message2Man St. Petersburg/ 3
It was a Swedish documentary that got the Grand Prix at the Message2Man 2014 festival: Forest of the Dancing Spirits (photo), directed by Linda Västrik (104 min. | 2013 | Sweden, Canada). I copy-pasted a description of the film from…
Laura Poitras Opens DOKLeipzig
A scoop for DOKLeipzig. Read the festival’s press release: The 57th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will open on 27 October 2014 with the long-awaited film “CITIZENFOUR” by Laura Poitras. In the last instalment of her 9/11…
Helena Trestikova Free Online Retrospective
Yes, she is a documentary superstar, Helena Trestikova. Filmkommentaren has had many posts about her films, which are shot over decades, always with a warm heart for its protagonists, and a social perspective. Now the DocAlliance gives you an offer…
Russian Censorship Debate
Well, I was definitely away from my comfort zone… Around the table were Russian critics, journalists, a writer of a book on the banning of films in Soviet Union – and some younger filmmakers, who were there to say something…
The Future of DOX Magazine?
My wise advisor asks me to de-personalise the important debate about whether DOX has a future or not. I will do my best to suppress my frustration. Starting with a concrete, constructive proposal: Don’t stop DOX and – inspired by…
Message2Man St. Petersburg /2
Second day in St. Petersburg started with a lovely tour to Russian Museum downtown at the square where a statue of Pushkin stands, always with birds resting on his stretched-out arm. The newly renovated rooms with the Russian avant-garde I…
2nd Edition of AegeanDocs /2
We already told that for the second time the AegeanDocs festival is running, it opened on the 20th of September (and runs until the 28th) with a screening of “The Act of Killing”. Producer of the festival Chara Lampidou sent…
Message2Man St. Petersburg /1
Do you know the situation for Russian artists, was the first question that came from the audience at the Q&A after Danish Andreas Johnsen’s ”Ai Wei Wei” screening last night at the St. Petersburg documentary festival. The film about the…
Nordisk Panorama 25 Year
I attended the opening of the 25th edition of Nordisk Panorama friday night in Malmö, Sweden. It was a grand event because the organisers had picked the right film to start the festival. Below is the website description of Garden…
Documentary Talents
There is no photo attached to this post, you have to look up to the right, where you get three of them. Co-editor of filmkommentaren.dk, Allan Berg, suggested that I chose three obvious talents, who have made films which travel…
EDN Terminates DOX/ 3
Emanuele Vernillo, didactic tutor at Zelig School for Documentary, Television and New Media in Bolzano calls the decision “absurd”. Here is his text: I am reading with big interest the discussions about the closing of DOX on paper. I want…
EDN Terminates DOX/ 2
PeÅ Holmquist, director and producer of documentary films, first President of EDN has written a letter about DOX: In EDN Newsletter, week 37, I get the news about our magazine DOX:Doesn’t exist anymore! DOX has been there nearly from when…
Michael Moore:Filmmakers not Documentarians
Last week Michael Moore, at the Toronto International Film Festival Doc Conference, 25 years after his “Roger and me” (photo) was released, presented 13 rules for making documentary films. A manifesto. He stressed that documentary filmmakers should not be called…
EDN Terminates DOX Magazine
A ”EDN Weekly” newsletter came out. In a subordinate clause there was shocking news: ”… I had to decide to terminate the publishing…” of DOX Magazine. Just like that. Voilà. A big big mistake! After more than 100 issues the…
Scorcese on his new Book Film
Copy-paste quote from RealScreen on Martin Scorcese talking about his new documentary “The 50 Year Argument” on New York Review of Books, co-directed with David Tedeschi. A talk taking place in Toronto at the international film festival, read more, link…
New Danish Documentaries to Message to Man
“GlobalDoK: Danish Film Institute Present” is the title chosen for a presentation of new Danish documentaries in St.Petersburg at the Message to Man festival (September 20-27). In collaboration with the DFI and with me as a helper for the programmer…
Uldis Brauns photo by Uldis Cekulis
The photo in the post below is a bit small but shows the wonderful screening situation in the house of Uldis Brauns. Here you have him in the garden.
Uldis Brauns
During the many years that I have followed Latvian documentary cinema, the name Uldis Brauns has always been like a magic enigma. Who is he, where is he, what is he doing? The master, that is how he is characterised…