A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Big numbers in the press release of DOK Leipzig, sent out yesterday with an announcement of the so-called official programme. 56th edition, ” a total of 88 films from 34 countries will compete in the five competition categories. While there…
The programme of the 11th edition of the DocLisboa, that starts October 24 and ends November 3, was made public yesterday. Again you just have to say Respect! For the quality of the selection and for side programmes like ”Research”,…
It is not only in Colombia – see below – that festival organisers play with the word closeness between docs and dogs, when a new fest is to be launched. Look at the logo for a festival that starts today…
… which (Medellin) is a city in Colombia that October 15-20 will have its first documentary festival, built on the DocsBarcelona model with film screenings and industry activities, all thought out by Joan Gonzalez from Parallel40 in the Catalan capital,…
The following text was sent to filmkommentaren.dk by the organisers of Doclisboa’13: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is barred from leaving his country, he will not be able to attend Doclisboa’13. Mohammad Rasoulof has been invited to chair the Jury of…
The 1st international documentary film festival in the Caucasus runs from 15-20 October. The organiser is the Noosfera Foundation supported by – among others – the Idfa Bertha Fund and Georgian National Film Center. The festival has an International Competititon…
in the EU… I write ”dangerous” instead of ”stupid” and continue by saying ”here we go again” with the EU. One thing is that it has been decided to put the well established brand MEDIA into a new scheme under…
The IDFA Academy which I can highly recommend – I attended as observer last year – has asked me to help find young talents, who could qualify for their 2013 training programme. Here is the text, I am sure that…
The Vilnius Documentary Film Festival ended Saturday night and the jury headed by Leonard Helmrich, whose films were shown in a retrospective series, gave out the awards in the Baltic documentary competition, this year with a very strong line-up of…
But why don’t we know about it, one of the Russian directors said on the second and last day of the Conference in Hotel Vedensky in St. Petersburg, DoxPro, on financing of international creative documentaries. He referred to the ”Farewell…
First day of the Conference in Vedensky Hotel in St. Petersburg running parallel to the Message to Man festival. Theme of the meeting: Financing of International Creative Documentary Projects in the Northern Dimension Area: Cutting Edge and Trends. The opening…
It took 90 minutes to fly from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg and another 90 minutes to reach the hotel from the airport. Moskva Prospekt is veery long but I had good company in Viktor Skubey, producer and together with Ludmila…
No surprise in Malmø where the The Best Nordic Documentary Award was given last night to ”The Act of Killing”. Here is the motivation of the jury (Christian Bonke (director), Cara Cusumano (Tribeca Film Festival), and Kate Townsend (BBC Storyville)):…
Voilà, there you are in Malmø so close to Copenhagen, the home city of your correspondent, who after a good half hour of train trip took the escalators up from the deep Triangle Station to be at a square named…
I asked film director Mikhail Zheleznikov to explain to me what lies behind the section In Silico at the festival, for which he works. He answered like this: About In Silico. It’s the newest competition at Message to Man, and…
Scroll down some days of this blog and you will find a general presentation of the film programme at the festival in St. Petersburg that starts this coming Saturday. The festival has a fresh look, as you can see on…
It is my impression that many readers of filmkommentaren.dk are filmmakers or – consultants or academics, who teach documentaries at various places. This is the reason why I with pleasure forward this text to you from John Burgan, who together…
15 documentaries, long ones, 3 from each country, selected by national committees… that’s the new scheme for the Nordisk Panorama that this year has found its home in Malmö, Sweden for its 24th edition, September 20-25. This democratic approach will…
I was there last year, in Sibiu, where the Astra Film Festival this year can celebrate its 20th edition from October 14-20. The international competitive section of 9 films includes ”Leviathan” by Castaing-Taylor and Paravel, Marc Schmidt’s ”Matthews Laws”, Philibert’s…
I was there two years ago and was impressed of a good programme and had it not clashed with other obligations, I would have enjoyed to go to wonderful Vilnius for some days during the festival, that runs from September…
Danish director Daniel Dencik’s exciting documentary “Moon Rider” will have its Danish tv-premiere in Dokumania Tuesday September 17th one year after its cinema release through DoxBio. Here is the review of filmkommentaren.dk written in Danish: Det er sjældent, at en…
It is festival time – September, October and November – all over the world and it is a good time for the documentary genre. Gianfranco Rosi won the main award in Venice with his ”Sacro Gra” in competition with feature…
Palestinian artist and documentary filmmaker Khaled Jarrar received the Jury Documentary Award at the Malmö Arab Film Festival that ended a couple of days ago. More important, in terms of audience, is it maybe that the film has been chosen…
The Baltic Sea Pitching Forum ended Sunday afternoon. On the second day the hall on the 11th floor of Hotel Albert in Riga was again full of filmmakers, observers and a panel of tv editors, fund people and sales agents…
Training days for the pitching part of Baltic Sea Docs are over, Saturday and Sunday are the days for the projects to be presented at the Hotel Albert in Riga. And it is quite a range of projects that will…
Full house for the opening film of 2013 Baltic Sea Docs, “The Act of Killing”, director’s (Joshua Oppenheimer) cut (editor Niels Pagh Andersen), 158 mins. The film was screened not only in Riga but also in three other Latvian cities/towns:…
Sunshine. Wonderful view from the 11th floor of Riga’s Hotel Albert, named after a certain Einstein. ”If you don’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”, is one the sentences that are presented in the hotel that is…
It’s September 26-27 that an important documentary conference takes place in St. Petersburg. And you can sign up NOW by clicking the link below. It is for free and you can take part in person or via the internet. If…
… is a high quality magazine on documentary and the name of a very strong strand on SVT (Swedish public television) that has published its autumn repertory, opening this week with ”Pussy Riots” by Mike Lerner. ”The Act of Killing”…
New director of EDN (European Documentary Network) Paul Pauwels blogs to his members, and to those who want to/consider become a member of a very useful and unique organisation. As former privileged director of EDN, I warmly recommend you to…
Taken from the website of the festival: Jury members were Joslyn Barnes, Writer and producer (USA), Jasmin Basic, Film historian and Curator (Switzerland), Vibeke Bryld, Director and Writer, editor of DOX Magazine (Denmark). HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM:…
French producer Estelle Robin-Yu talks well and long in an interview brought and made by EDN (European Documentary Network). She talks about her background, about why and how she has been involved in international co-productions, and about the new construction…
Here are the descriptions of the five films that took part in Rough Cut Boutique session in Sarajevo: Baglar – Turkey, directors and producers Berke Bas, Melis Birder, Inhouse projects An underdog basketball team from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern…
And here they are, the awards from the workshop for projects at a rough cut stage, text taken from the site of the festival: Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Documentary Center proudly announce official awards for the 3rd edition of…
Last day of a workshop at the Sarajevo Film Festival. A documentary workshop with a concept that has a focus on the creative side of documentaries and not on the financing side. Refreshing! And – as one of the tutors…
Wonderful to bring good news to the table. In this case about a project that has been developed for some years – I have had the pleasure to meet it in a couple of times in workshops, first time at…
The easy solution for a blogger… to bring the brand new press release of a festival. On the other hand, this is an important festival and the attention it attracts from documentary film people around the world is significant and…
It has been shown in Rotterdam and is scheduled for the upcoming DokuFest in Kosovo, but that’s all for European screenings so far. This is at least what the website of the film tells the reader… But it will come,…
Of course the new Al Jazeera America will first of all be a news channel, when it is launched by August 20, but according to realscreen the channel also wishes to have a strong documentary profile – documentaries (my interpretation)…
It has for years been a good tradition that the Baltic Sea Pitching Forum runs a parallel film programme for the Riga citizens. You could call it a mini film festival and there is indeed high quality and in many…
Et godt film-initiativ er taget i Århus og det er i de bedste hænder, når det drejer sig om program og indledning af filmene. Denne blogger mødte gennem fire år på DoxBox festivalen i Damaskus direktøren for Det Danske Institut,…
English title: Blows of the Axe, which refers to the 1950s practice by Argentine distributors of chopping up film prints to prevent people from stealing and illegally projecting them (according to an interview with di Tella in Idiom, google that,…
OBS – In one week, August 15, the French-German cultural channel arte dedicates a whole day of programming to Greece! The thematic day on arte is initiated and organised by the Strasbourg based arte commissioning editor Madeleine Avramoussis with the…
.. med undertitlen ”Rejser med Jon Bang Carlsen”. Læserne af denne tekst skal til start vide, at såvel Jon Bang Carlsen som Lars Movin i årtier/årevis har haft en høj stjerne hos undertegnede blogger. Jeg har i de 20 år,…
Yesterday at midnight the great Swedish cultural strand K-Special of SVT showed (third run) a French production from 2012 with Jonas Mekas, who declares that ”I’m not a filmmaker, I don’t really make films, I only keep filming, I am…
Yes, that film blew me away. Actually, it did already around one and a half year ago, when its producer (and camerawoman) Irina Shatalova contacted me asking for general advice on financing and distribution, giving me a pretty dark image…
The festival in Kosovo (starts August 17) has announced its impressive programme. The artistic director Veton Nurkollari welcomes the audience in this way: “We are thrilled to present an expanded slate of competitions at DokuFest this year, with films that…
Have to confess that I have been using the term “hybrid”, whenever I have been talking about the new tendencies in the documentary genre. Without really being able to get closer to what it is, where it comes from, what…
… to its loyal documentary lovers, hope there are many, who use this exceptional vod library that now has more than 800 titles, which can be overwhelming, where to start and where to end… which is the reason why ”…
Sometimes, and maybe it happens more often with Polish short documentaries than with films from other countries, you sit after a fine film experience and say to yourself, ahhh it could have been longer, which is maybe the best compliment…