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…
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 MoreKen Loach: The Spirit of 45
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…
How to Build a Country from Scratch
… is the title of another fine Op-Doc that you can watch on New York Times website. A bit more than 9 minutes long it is a presentation, full of humour, in 12 steps/chapters of the new country, South Sudan,…
Hybrid Docs at Forum Berlin
The Forum of the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (runs until February 17) is the section, where you can be sure to find new and exciting works. Including documentaries. Here is a clip from an interview with the Forum director Christoph Terhechte,…
Agnès Varda Online Festival
What a feast! And don’t say you can not afford it – it is for free! And it lasts until February 17! I am referring to another generous offer from ”your online documentary cinema” provider DocAlliance. 17 films of Agnès…
Best Nordic Documentary/2
A short follow-up – Mika Ronkainen got his well-deserved Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at the Göteborg International Film festival. The jury motivated the award to ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) with these words: … a touching story of inner…
Magnificent7 2013/6
The 9th edition of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival ended Sunday night at the big hall of the Belgrade Sava Centre. Manuel von Stürler presented his ”Winter Nomads” followed by Helena Trestikova’s ”Private Universe”. For the first film, that…
Magnificent7 2013/5
Magic evening in the Sava Centre last night. 8-900 people had decided to spend their saturday night out in the company of Finnish artist Kimmo Pohjonen. It was a good choice you could hear from the reactions during and after…
Magnificent 7 2013/4
Ilian Metev, director of ”Sofia’s Last Ambulance”, started his friday masterclass at Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade playing Bach on his violin, quite a generous gift to the workshoppers from the young Bulgarian artist, who had a career as a violinist,…
Magnificent7 2013/3
The festival in Belgrade enters into its third day, and the response from the audience has been, yes, magnificent! On the opening wednesday night the film by Swedish Malik Bendjelloul ”Searching for Sugarman” was met by great enthusiasm by the…
Best Nordic Documentary?
Guest writer at filmkommentaren, Danish Mikkel Stolt watched Finnish Mika Ronkainen’s latest work ”Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart” (photo) at the Nordisk Panorama in September. The original, non-mainstream hybrid documentary made a big impression on Stolt, who concluded – referring to…
Dragan Wende West Berlin
Two important prizes for a film by Lena Müller and Dragan von Petrovic, co-directed and filmed by Vuk Maksimovic, whose uncle is the protagonist of a film that the team itself – on the site of the film – calls…
Op-Docs
The New York Times runs a series of short documentaries that are quite interesting. OP stands for Opinion and here is how the newspaper (you can get a monthly online subscription for 1$) presents its strand: ”Op-Docs is The New…
Sundance Shows Living Room Documentaries
A very interesting critique of (some of) the selected documentaries for the Sundance Film Festival comes from Anthony Kaufmann, who has written for NY Times, Village Voice, Variety among others. I dare to make a long quote from the beginning…
Nicolas Philibert with Film on Radio France
For this blogger Nicolas Philibert is one of the most important documentary directors of out time. Filmkommentaren has written about his films frequently, below you have a link that will take you to ”collected posts” about the French director, who…
Godard, Pennebaker & Leacock
… and 7 wonderful minutes with Jefferson Airplane performing from a roof in New York Midtown in 1968. Yes, it is film and music history at its best as Richard Brody, cinema editor at The New Yorker, wrote yesterday urging…
Magnificent7 2013/2
On Wednesday January 30 at 7pm the opening of the 9th edition of the EuropeanFeature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7 will be announcedby the lady, who represents the festival venue, the biggest theatre in the region, the Sava Center in Belgrade.…
Magnificent7 2013/1
This text is written for the catalogue of Magnificent7 2013: I am writing this from New York, a metropole of mainstream entertainment cinema, but also the place to be for two veterans of independent cinema, the 86 years old Albert…
IDFA Statistics and Info
It is a good idea to get on the mailing list for the idfa newsletter. The one from January 18 includes statistics on the 25th edition of the festival last November and communicates deadlines for the IDFA Bertha Fund (before…
P.P.P.
Taken from a newsletter from FID, the International Film Festival in Marseille (July 3-8), where a passionate director Jean-Pierre Rehm writes: Concerning our upcoming 24th edition… a retrospective will be devoted to Pier Paolo Pasolini. A Mediterranean figure, certainly, since…
Documentary Fortnight 2013
A press release in an edited version: Moma, the Museum of Modern art in New York organizes February 15–March 4 “Documentary Fortnight 2013: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media”, the 12th annual two-week showcase of recent documentary films…
Dror Moreh: The Gatekeepers
This Academy Award Nominee 2013 – and it was also nominated for the main prize at idfa in November 2012 – has troubled my mind for days since I watched it. Which I did a couple of times. Why? Because…
DocPoint Helsinki
The programme of the Finnish documentary film festival reflects again that the festival selectors know what they are doing – and they should in a country that has such a high standard in documentary culture. From January 22-27 more than…
Oscar Nominations January 10/2
So, the nominations have been announced. For the Best Feature Documentary. We will know the winner by February 24. Apart from ”5 Broken Cameras” with Burnat and Davidi, the nominees (= names) will be determined later. The names here are…
Cinema Eye Honors 2013
Awards are being lined up to be distributed these days. The Oscar nominees will be announced in a couple of hours and in three days the Golde Globe comes up. Good for cinema with all this artificial competition?, maybe, good…
Oscar Nominations January 10
At the beginning of December 2012 15 documentary flms were shortlisted. Tomorrow (I am writing this January 9 late evening) 15 will become 5. Originally there were 126 official submissions, that were taken down to these 15: Alison Klayman’S “Ai…
Sevara Pan
Sevara Pan is the name of our first 2013 guest writer. She is of Uzbek-Korean origin, was born in Siberia (Russia) back in the 1980’s. She was raised in Central Asia in the post-Soviet period and moved to Germany where…
Norwegian Documentary – a Critique
DOX editor and documentarian Truls Lie has written an article for the Norwegian Le Monde Diplomatique, in Norwegian and now also printed in the film magazine Rushprint. Lie attended a documentary meeting for the Norwegian documentary film community in December,…
Big Boys Gone Bananas
They are proud, and they, the filmmakers, have all reason to be. Both because the Swedish film around the banana company Dole trying to block the US showing of Bananas (reviewed and praised here in Danish by Allan Berg), a…
Elías Léon Siminiani: Mapa
I had seen ”Mapa” pitched in DocsBarcelona and at idfa. With verbal passion and with a teaser that was totally out-of-the-box for how trailers should be according to us ”pitch doctors”. A Film-Film teaser, a brilliant piece of montage with…