A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Beginning of January, no markets or festivals or workshops. Time to read the European Documentary Film Magazine, number 96. And time for a review of a magazine that has a strong and good focus on reviewing documentaries (critiques it is…
Yes, it was again a good year for the documentaries. New forms, hybrid, personal, came up with the classical engaged and committed Film still going strong in times of crisis. Yes, Film with a capital F. Yes, most of the…
Alan Berliner: First Cousin First Removed (USA) Catalina Vergara: Last Station (Chile) (Photo) Emma Davie & Morag McKinnon: Breathing (Scotland) Helena Trestikova: Private Universe (Czech Republic) Ilian Metev: Sofia’s Last Ambulance (Bulgaria, Croatia) Joshua Oppenheimer: Act of Killing (USA, Denmark)…
Camilla Magid: White Black Boy (Denmark) Carlo Guillermo Proto: El Huaso (Canada/Chile) Chico Pereira: Pablo’s Winter (Scotland) Dana Budisavljević: Family Meals (Croatia) Khaled Jarrar: Infiltrators (Palestine) Nahed Awwad: Gaza Calling (Palestine) Namir Abdel Messeeh:The Virgin, the Copts and Me (France)…
Again the excellent vod DOCAlliance – calls itself very rightly ”your online documentary cinema” with over 700 quality films – invites (documentary) film lovers to watch films for free, this time its 11 most watched documentaries of 2012. From December…
You have the feeling of being in a theatre behind the curtain. You are very close to the players with their elegant quick and professional use of their tools. In their white dresses and with their Japanese smiling politeness they…
Super-active young Russian director Georgy Molodtsov has before provided information to filmkommentaren. This time he informs us about a new activity that he is involved in as one of the newly elected members of Russian Guild of Documentary Film and…
It is quite a daring storytelling format that Georgian Tinatin Gurchiani has chosen for her first feature length documentary. She has invited (mostly) young people, some of them kids, for a film casting, where she from behind the camera asks…
There is so much to say about this first feature documentary by young Brazilian director Petra Costa. So much positive because of its visual brilliance and so much because of the way it treats its painful theme. Not to talk…
Jonas Mekas loves Paris. So does this blogger and his wife. We were there in December last year. Funny to sit in New York, the home of Mekas, one year later, in his Anthology Archives cinema, in the hall named…
Some Danish film professionals adviced me to watch Canadian Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell. They saw it at cph:dox, where it did not get the attention it deserved, it was all about ”Act of Killing” at that festival. I watched…
Oops, suddenly you stand in front of a small cinema with the name Maysles Cinema. In the window there is a poster for ”5 Broken Cameras” that runs the same night with a skype Q & A with one of…
The well composed and entertaining exhibition on Whitney in New York runs until March 2013. It has the title ”Dark and Deadpan: Pop in TV and the Movies” and invites you to a dark room with a dozen of screens…
I can not write a review as I have not seen the final edit of the film, and as I have seen material shot by Khaled Jarrar as well as cuts during sessions of the Storydoc programme, I would definitely…
I have during the last years tried my best to understand the organisation of the POV, that had its 25th season in 2012. I have – as many others – always been impressed by the commitment of Simon Kilmurry, Executive…
Read and enjoy the following – so well deserved and chapeau also for DR’s Horisont (the Danes can watch it online), which dedicated their whole monday programme to tell about the two Syrians and their meeting with the regime’s brutality.…
The film project “Kismet” was presented at the idfa forum in Amsterdam last month. A behind-the-scene documentary which is described like this at the website of the Greek production company, Anemon, that stands behind several professional, internationally distributed works: “Turkish…
Max Tuula and Maria Gavrilova from Marx Film in Estonia sent this important report: We address you because this situation does not only concern Russia and Russian politics, but also the freedom of expression and the rights of the artist…
Michael Haneke’s ”Amour” has Jean-Louis Trigtignant in the leading male role. In connection with the opening of that film in New York, the art cinema house Film Forum is running a retrospective of films with the actor. A unique chance…
Does it need an introduction this magnificent achievement in the history of documentary cinema and television? Lucky you who have not seen the series that started in 1964, when the children were 7 and have continued every 7 years until…
Legendary underground filmmaker and tireless defender of the independent cinema Jonas Mekas turns 90 years old and is of course celebrated in New York in the Anthology Film Archives with a small retrospective that runs December 17-23. Here are some…
The Treason Trial 1956-61 (photo), The Sharpville Massacre 1960, the Soweto Uprising 1976… it is all in its immense brutality very well documented in ICP (International Center of Photography) in New York – runs until January 6 2013 – there…
118 black and white works by Picasso at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition runs until January 23 and is highly recommended. As the curators put it on the site of Guggenheim: the first exhibition to explore the…
DFP stands for Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund and has existed for 10 years which is the reason that realscreen, the fine trade magazine that calls itself ”the best in non-fiction”, brings an interview with the director Cara…
For one who was around 20 in the short lifetime of Cream – 1966-68 – with ”White Room”, ”where the shadows run for themselves”, as one of their songs that still gives you the chills when you hear it, and…
… were announced three days ago. 15 films that later will be taken down to 5 nominations that are made by January 10. 126 films qualified to be considered. Have chosen to take text clips from Variety to mention the…
Pleased to recommend a new offer from the vod DocAlliance, this time related to Austrian documentarian Geyerhalter. Here is a slightly edited version of the promotion text from the vod site: We offer a selection of the best films by…
Samer lives in Ramallah, his mother is Safa, who lives with his father and siblings in Gaza. Mustafa lives in Gaza, his mother, Hekmat, and his sisters live in Ramallah. The distance between Gaza and Ramallah is around one hour’s…
The Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen is of course a must for all art lovers, who visit Denmark. A new web-initiative by the museum deserves to be promoted. Here is the text from the museum: “Louisiana Channel delivers…
It was one of those nights – the premiere of Mila Turajlic’s ”Cinema Komunisto” – that will be remembered. A totally packed Sava Centre in Belgrade were present for the closing film of Magnificent7 Festival 2011. Standing ovations. It was…
Sometimes you are lucky because normally you leave a festival having NOT seen the winner. Not this year where this blogger was privileged to take part in the idfacademy where the first point on the agenda was a screening of…
To be repeated: You can watch 7 of Jørgen Leth’s films for free on the vod Docalliance (link below), a – too use one of the director’s favourite words – generous offer to film lovers all over to see ”A…
Danish text to inform the Danes where they can watch the series of films ”Why Poverty”, see more below in previous posting: Det danske Filminstitut (dfi) har sammen med DR støttet produktionen af serien og DR står bag kampagnen, der…
Today, Idfa guests and idfa audience had the chance to watch the eight long films in the long awaited and now well promoted series “Why Poverty?” – with four days to go before the worldwide launch that you can read…
Emotional moment when Emma Davie welcomed her audience at the premiere of the film at Munt cinema. She stressed how much her main character, Neil Platt, who died three years ago, wanted the film to be made, to have a…
Yes, see previous posting, there are more and more funds which invest in documentaries, most of them in docs with a social content, but some also stressing that they want cinematic quality. Let me make a commercial for the organization…
… edition Number 20! In itself a marvellous event where filmmakers from all over the world meet to present their projects, catch up on professional and private matters, it is indeed a clear sign of the both warm and professional…
… was the headline of the afternoon session that I attended, run by EDN’s Mikael Opstrup with a (maybe too) small introduction by Jesper Osmund on the nature of what he (good choice) calls pitch trailers. Osmund, who has edited…
Was it because people were a bit tired hearing about crowdfunding that there were less people in the auditorium this morning. Or because of all the parties that are offered from the side of idfa? To idfacademy participants who are…
The programme is ”an intensive four-day training program for emerging filmmakers, producers, and film students”. As coach for the group of filmmakers from the Black Sea Docstories workshop I am there as well and have enjoyed the well composed and…
Famous for his film about his father, ”Nobody’s Business”, clever and funny with an excellent, playful montage, it was simply great to watch the newest documentary by Alan Berliner, also with a family member as main protagonist, also with a…
The opening ceremony of the 25th edition of idfa took place in the Tuschinski theatre close to Rembrandtsplein in Amsterdam. The mother of the festival, as she is called, flamboyant Ally Derks made the opening speech full of passion and…
Mid wednes(day) off from Copenhagen with troubled SAS to Amsterdam to attend the 25th idfa (International Documentary Film Festival). On board is also Jørgen Leth on his way to idfa as several times before. This year to be in the…
”Celebrating 40 Years” is the title of the 3 mins. montage done by Peter Symes and Mandy Chang. A montage because of the 40 years since the death of John Grierson, the father of documentary, and the setting up of…
Sean Farnel, former programming director at the festival Hot Docs, and one of the few North American with a deep knowledge of the European documentary scene, has written an interesting and refreshing article that touches upon many essential questions about…
DOX:AWARD The act of Killing af Joshua Oppenheimer. Special mention til Tchoupitoulas af Bill og Turner Ross . NEW:VISION AWARD Leviathan af Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verana Paravel. NORDIC:DOX AWARD Searching for Bill af Jonas Poher Rasmussen. SOUND & VISION AWARD Beware of…
It is quite an achievement, this film by Marco Gastine, French-Greek filmmaker, based in Greece, a film about the campaign that led up to May 2012 parliamentary elections in the country with a crisis everyone still talks and writes about.…
The IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague publishes a very actively edited website with information and facts about filmmaking in the Eastern part of Europe plus a series of interviews conducted to celebrate the10 Years of the training programme…
For the 13th time the French launch their Month of Documentaries all over the country. More than 1700 films, new and old, are being screened in what can only be seen as the most effective promotional tool to create interest…
Behind the scenes, the making of.. a film. We have seen them lots of times, following how the actors prepare for their roles, how the shooting was done, how the director directed. This is exactly what ”The Act of Killing”…