Stoyanov and Rainova: The Last Black Sea Pirates
World Premiere in Nyon today of a film that was on its way for a long time. I have not yet seen the final result but clips on its way to completion give high expectations. The text below is taken…
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.
Read MoreStoyanov and Rainova: The Last Black Sea Pirates
Cinemateket maj/juni 2013
The following text in Danish is praising the Copenhagen Cinemateket, part of the Danish Film Institute, for its programme for May and June. A real treat for film lovers, film history with the giants Luchino Visconti and Satyajit Ray in…
FIDADOC 2013
The FIDADOC festival (the only one in the country with a focus on documentaries) has announced the programme for the 5th edition to take place in Agadir, Morocco. The festival, that was set up by Nouzha Drissi, who died tragically…
Florin Iepan: Odessa
Romanian director Florin Iepan has – according to his Facebook page with a lot of links from the press coverage – shown a rough cut version of the film ”Odessa” in Bucharest on the 8th of April. I have known…
CPH:DOX Awarded
Normally festivals award films and film directors, but festivals can also be awarded, and the Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX has received two recognitions lately, the most important (also important for future funding one can hope, sorry for being so materialistic)…
Searching for Sugarman in France
A week ago the French newspaper Le Monde brought an interesting article about the national launch of the Oscar winner Searching for Sugarman theatrically. Released in cinemas by December 26 2012, the film is now running in around 70 cinemas,…
The Mexican Suitcase
You can easily spend some hours at the Parisian Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaisme with the excellent exhibition of works of the three photo documentarians Capa, Taro and Chim (open until June 30), also called photo journalists, also called…
It’s All True 2013
Amir Labaki, director of the It’s All True festival in Brazil (Sao Paolo, Rio, Brasilia, Campinas – from April 4-23), is a man, who loves film history and knows how to celebrate it, as he does this year with a…
Shola Lynch: Free Angela
With the subtitle… and all political prisoners, an addition that Angela Davis, the person in question, the hero of the film, the charismatic icon of the Black Power movement, imprisoned in 1970 for involvement in the killing of a judge,…
Adrian Paci: Lives in Transit
Parisian museum Jeu de Paume runs (until May 12) a fascinating exhibition with the Albanian artist Adrian Paci, who lives in Italy. On tv screens, on big screens, with paintings – Paci circles around the theme, as he has expressed…
Visions du Réel 2013
The programme of the 44th (!) edition of the documentary festival (April 19 to 26) in Nyon, Switzerland has been published. The festival includes ” a total of 110 films in competition from 45 countries, including 24 Swiss films. For…
Sarah Polley: Stories We Tell /2
First in Danish and then in English: Sarah Polleys film er mesterlig. Jeg satte den på min liste over de bedste dokumentarfilm i 2012. Den er elegant fortalt, underholdende og gribende, en familiefilm eller rettere en film om en familie…
Cattin & Kostomarov: Playback
Let me pass on some words from the Aleksei German obituary in Guardian February 26 (written by Ronald Bergan) – he died 74 year old after he … for more than 10 years, (German) had been struggling to complete History…
Dimitry Kubasov: Alekhin
Kubasov is one of the directors behind ”Winter, Go Home”, a graduate from the school of Marina Razbezhkina. This film, I can see from the end titles, comes from the same source and deals with the writer Evgeny Alekhin (photo),…
Docu Days Awards 2013
The festival is over, awards were given last night, again the Red Hall in the Cinema House in Kiev was packed with primarily a young audience full of enthusiasm. You may have head-shaking opinions about the architecture of the Cinema…
Docu Days Audience Behaviour
I dare the risk of being called a grumpy old man, but why the f… does the audience, quite a good part of it, here in Kiev, at the Docu Days festival, behave so disrespectful to the films being screened,…
Docu Days: A Farewell to Cinema
In June 2012 the football championship UEFA Euro took place in Poland and Ukraine. And of course some films came out of that. An Ukranian premiere was arranged at the Docu Days festival. 10 films were collected as a Youth…
DocuDays Opening Problems /2
Through reliable sources filmkommentaren.dk has succeeded to get hold of a translated version of the official document read from the stage at the opening of Docudays festival here in Kiev. As earlier announced negociations were held immediately that secured that…
EDN Award 2013
Friday night two old boys in the documentary community, Italian Stefano Tealdi and Catalan Joan Gonzàlez got the EDN Award 2013. I allow myself this characterisation of dear friends, who were there, when EDN (European Documentary Network) started and who…
DocuDays Opening Problems
Below you can read about the snow storm in Kiev outside the Cinema House, where the festival ceremony took place last night, March 22nd. But compared to what happened inside that was nothing. The nicely dressed presenters on the stage…
Festival Opens with Snow Storm
Childhood memories! Snow, snow, snow. Well, we had it in Denmark the last week but not dramatic in the Copenhagen area and no problem in taking off from Copenhagen airport friday morning or to go by the connecting flight from…
O. Balahura: Life Span of the Object in Frame
A good advice – go to the trailer of this film which is to be found on the website of the upcoming festival in Kiev, Ukraine DocuDays UA. Click below. It will give you a fine introduction to a documentary…
Being a Tutor…
And there you are – hello, nice to meet you and you are the one with which project? A situation many documentary tutor colleagues will recognise from the extraordinary many documentary workshops in and outside Europe, set up for local…
Karla’s Arrival – for free
Got a mail from Koen Suidgeest, whose touching film “Karla’s Arrival” has gone all over the world due to the director’s constant commitment and energy. Here it is, and here is the generous invitation to watch the film for free,…
AFAC and Documentaries
They are doing important work for the documentary at AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture). I have been privileged to be tutoring at two of their workshops, the last one in Beirut late February. Rima Mismar is the woman…
EDN & DocAlliance join Forces
Here is an offer you can’t refuse, taken from the EDN website: EDN is happy to announce that all members, who are part of the organization on April 12, will get free access to over 700 documentaries at Doc Alliance…
Dox Box Global Day for Syria
… is a project initiated by the film festival DoxBox in Damascus where the festival for obvious reasons do not take place. Instead Syrain films have been shown all over the world – and there has been a “soirée thématique”…
Thessaloniki Doc Fest 15
The 15th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival started two days ago and runs until the 24th of March. The programme is as always impressive – as is the communication from the festival that in a classical journaistic form…
Ken Loach: The Spirit of 45
A new film by Ken Loach, this time a documentary. The director (born 1936) looks into ”the spirit of 45” in England, the post-war time where a welfare state was built on social and human values which are difficult to…
Films for Free from East and Central Europe
We have previously praised the work of the vod DocAlliance, its special collaboration with the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague and what this institution is doing to promote films from Central and Eastern Europe. Today a mail came…
Jon Bang Carlsen – The Inventor of Reality
Danish master Jon Bang Carlsen is in Bucharest these days. He has been invited to present a retrospective of his works at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, One World Romania, that runs until March 17, like the one…
Archidoc 2012/13
On the International Women’s Day, March 8, the third session of the EU MEDIA Programme supported training and development scheme Archidoc took place in Prague as part of the East Doc Platform. It was thus very appropiate, that most of…
Herz Frank 1926-2013/2
Many words today to honour Herz Frank. Russian director Vitaly Manski put it like this: “Years will go by, and only 2-3 documentary film-makers will be remembered from each century.” But even today it is clear – Herz Frank is…
Herz Frank 1926-2013
Last sunday morning I showed Ten Minutes Older to filmmakers from Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Algeria and Morocco. They had not seen Herz Frank’s masterpiece from 1978 before, they loved it and lined up to make a copy so they can…
Documentary Feast Beyond Belief
They are masters of promotion, the Czech organizers of East Doc Platform that runs from next week parallel to the One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Here is their press release with all the links you need, start with…
Danish Robert Awards 2013
And there you sit in front of your tv set waiting to see ”The Act of Killing” be honoured at the Danish Film Academy Robert Awards 2013 ceremony. It was not to be seen, not even mentioned in the broadcast…
Dokumania: The Gatekeepers & 5 Broken Cameras
Danish prime time documentary slot Dokumania (on DR) shows two of the Oscar nominated films: Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers and Emad Burat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras (photo) on March 5 20.30pm and March 12 20.30pm. And in Danish:…
POV Receives $1 Million Award
Good news (February 27) about the American POV and its commitment to the creative documentary: “The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (that) supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world……
ZagrebDox 2013
… is running until March 3rd with a fine programme put together by the founder and director of the festival, now in its ninth edition, Nenad Puhovski. The international competition includes strong films like ”Elena” by Petra Costa, ”Chasing Ice”…
5 Broken Cameras
This excellent film by Palestinian Emad Burnat, co-directed by Israeli Guy Davidi was nominated for an Oscar but did not win. The film, however, had already before the nomination won several awards in festivals and has had/has a theatrical release…
Flaherty: Epic Encounters
No, it is not a forgotten film by ”the father of documentary”, Robert Flaherty. Flaherty is, of course named after him, ”a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to…
Ally Derks Goes to New Zealand
… to be honoured for her work at The Documentary Edge International Documentary Festival in April. Director of the festival, Alex Lee, asked filmkommentaren to convey the news, which we do with pleasure. Some clips from the press release: “We…
Sugar Man
First – to sort of sum up – the following quote from Realscreen after Malik Bendjelloul’s got the Best Documentary Feature prize at the 85th Academy Awards February 24: “The win for director Bendjelloul and producer Simon Chinn (Man on Wire,…
Marathon Dok 2013
Here we go again, EDN has announced the classic, yearly Marathon Dok where Danish professionals and film/tv students are invited to get updated on new original documentary work. A clip from the website: “March 2, 2013. From 14:00 to 22:00. Theodor…
Maria Clara Escobar: The Days with Him
I met Maria Clara Escobar and her producer Paula Pripas in Edinburgh last year in June. They pitched the film that is now finished, original title, in Portuguese, ”Os Dias Com Ele”. A couple of weeks ago the film got…
Audrius Stonys on DocAlliance
For 2.5€ in total you will be able to watch three great films by Lithuanian documentary poet, Audrius Stonys, who is “the event of the week” of the brilliant vod. The films are Uku Ukai (2006) (photo), Countdown (2004) and…
The Act of Killing Wins in Berlin
… of course it does, two awards, the Ecumenical and the Audience Panorama Award. What is more important to notice is the speech given by one of the directors, Joshua Oppenheimer, when he accepted the Ecumenical Award. Here you are:…
In the Belly of the City
A newsletter arrived from Torino sent by Stefilm, now the classic Italian documentary production company, once – when we were much younger – the company that was mentioned by everyone as the only one from Italy, that dared to go…
Paul Pauwels gives Pitch Advice
“Don’t be afraid of showing your passion. Prepare yourself and do your homework. Try to find out who will be present during a pitching session and what kind of slots people are responsible for. Use body language, make sure the…
Ulla Jacobsen 1967-2013
We knew it was serious. Ulla wrote it herself in personal facebook messages. Always in her modest, gentle way, returning the question about her health to ”but how are you” and ”how is the documentary world out there?”. A world…