A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Playing the-best-of list game, here is what I consider as the best documentaries of 2011. This time I have not mentioned the countries of origin as the documentary film language is not bound to borders. Nevertheless, contrary to the American…
Whatever talk there is about financial crisis and difficulties in getting funding for creative, non-formatted documentaries, new talents enter the scene with their stories, visions and original and/or personal way of expressing themselves. Many others could have been mentioned, the…
It goes on and on, when will it stop or be stopped, the brutality in Syria? Today is friday, the day where many will be killed, as we know it from many weeks and months. And people opposed to the…
The film critic of The Guardian has made his contribution to the yearly stupid, popular and funny tradition of making your favourite list of films from the year that goes towards its end. Here it is, tomorrow I will make…
That Paris is the best cinema city in Europe is known by every film buff. Not only do all important new films arrive to the screen, but there are also ”reprises” and ”festivals”, so you can always enjoy Fritz Lang,…
The second seminar of the Athens based documentary project development Storydoc took place during the last three days of November 2011. After a prologue in Ramallah, which was a training session for around 20 Palestinian filmmakers, the first session with…
Below you will find texts about some of the presentations at the Storydoc in Athens. But there was much more to take from the seminar It was only natural to have Syrian Diana el Jeiroudi make a follow-up of her…
How to interpret and convey the Greek crisis in a documentary? How to go from the reportage and the news clip to an understanding of how the population sees and feels the dramatic development in the country where stood the…
With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union and the European Commission the documentary production company that is most active internationally in Greece, Anemon, led by Rea Apostolides and Yuri Averof, presented at Storydoc what they are…
Truls Lie, editor of DOX and filmmaker, made a fine inspirational introduction to what is the film essay. He stressed the characteristics of the genre and showed great classic clips from masters like Jean-Luc Godard (photo) (”L´Histoire du Cinema”, Chris…
This is what was written after I attended the Storydoc session in Ramallah, Palestine in March 2011: Nahed Awwad (PHOTO) showed us unique material from her 28 minutes long, scene divided disc. She presented what is to be an observational…
The American (LA) based member organisation IDA, International Documentary Association, holds its annual ”IDA Documentary Awards 11” December 2nd with a big show – the American way with sponsors, of course. The IDA has definitely an international perspective, as it…
This is not a neutral text. I have been part of the DOCSBarcelona team from the very beginning, and have seen how Joan Gonzalez and his team at Parallel 40 over a period of 15 years has built up a…
From press release of IDFA: The winners of the various IDFA competition programs were announced Friday, November 25 in Escape, during the awards ceremony of the 24th IDFA. Seung-Jun Yi’s Planet of Snail (South Korea) won the VPRO IDFA Award for…
The documentary film festival in Montréal RIDM sums up its activities and awards like this, with the DOKLeipzig winner “The Tiniest Place” again very much presented. More information, and trailers to be watched, by clicking on the titles below. To…
This is what is (also) nice about going to idfa – you meet directors and producers, whose work you have seen and appreciated before. Viktoria Szymanska made the wonderful “Themerson & Themerson” (photo) about the magic work of this British…
Breakfast meetings in the hotel. This morning I was lucky to meet Chinese Weijun Chen, the director behind the international successes “I Will Vote for You” (photo) and “The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World”. He was in Amsterdam to…
It is a bombardment of impressions to be at the biggest documentary film festival in the world. Films, meetings, receptions, ”hello, how are you”, ”nice to see you again”, people with badges walking in the streets around Rembrandtsplein, the square…
The Polish tradition for high quality documentaries is very much kept alive by the Wajda Studio, which formerly was called The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Especially the short documentary has had and has a strong home at…
The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) started two days ago and runs until November 27th. If you are not there, you have the chance to watch a fine selection of films, primarily from previous editions, offered for free…
17th floor of the Hotel Africa in the capital of Tunisia. Early morning, the city prepares for a new day. Sunshine. To the right the beautiful clock with the sea behind it, to the left a look down the Avenue…
Filmkommentaren.dk has followed the ”kickstarter V for Vinylmania” initiative, where Turin-based film company Stefilm called for help through a crowdfunding campaign and succeeded to collect $37.173 from 395 backers. The money will be used to make an international version by…
The cph:dox festival deserves credit for (also) putting a focus on the changes in the Arab world. With the support of IMS (International Media Support, Danish state supported organisation), no less than a dozen screenings and debates, entitled ”Free Radical”,…
Two films at cph:dox dealt with the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia: Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim’s “1/2 Revolution” and Elyes Baccar’s “Rouge Parole”. The latter about Tunisia, the first shot in Egypt. “1/2 Revolution” (PHOTO) was made by…
Awards were given at the cph:dox festival in Copenhagen and juries motivated their choices, this is the press release from the festival: In the main competition, DOX:AWARD, Ben Rivers’ ‘Two Years at Sea’ was awarded for its convincing depiction of…
A good offer to Danish citizens with a computer and a wish to watch films from cph:dox. I switch to Danish language: Dagbladet Politiken skriver, i forkortet citat: Den niende udgave af den danske dokumentarfilmfestival er i gang, og politiken.dk…
Text taken from Facebook, announced publicly in Copenhagen yesterday at the cph:dox festival by film producer and festival director Orwa Nyrabia from Damascus: Syrian filmmaker Nidal Hassan disappeared in Damascus on Thursday 3-11-2011, no information about him has come to…
The 52nd edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has started and runs until the 13th of November. In a newsletter issued by the festival, under the headline “a modest ceremony raised the curtain of the festival”, the festival director…
IDFA (the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) put a text on its website the other day with an appeal to ilmmakers with a film selected for the Cinema Verité Festival to seriously consider withdrawing their film and decline any invitation…
Help, there is only 7 days to go to reach our goal. These are the words from filmmaker Paolo Campana in Turin, Italy. It is all or nothing, he says, as it is with the crowdfunding done through Kickstarter. I…
In Danish as this is about getting Danes to come and watch the forbidden masterpiece of Omar Amarilay, Syria’s most important documentary filmmaker, who died this year in February, a month before the Syrian revolution started: Tabet af den syriske…
Cph:dox opened with an entertaining documentary with Russian Slavik Kryklyvyy, Latin American dancer, as the main character, who tries to make his way back to the top, where he was the best in the world – 10 years ago. The…
When noone else does anything to bring good documentaries to Athens, you have to do it yourselves! This is what three film people, all women, decided to do and if you have a look at their programme, you can only…
Dokumania, DR’s flagskib for dokumentarfilm, hver tirsdag på DR2, i morgen kl. 21, viser den prisbelønnede amerikanske dokumentarfilm “Helvede tur-retur”, som har vundet flere første-priser og er med i køen til at blive Oscar-nomineret. Helt fortjent. Jeg var i juryen…
… at the International Documentary Film Festival was given out last night. Twelve awards. The best World Documentary, Opus Bonum, given by a one person jury, James T. Hong, was ”Lost Land” by Belgian director Pierre.Yves Vandeweerd, whereas ”Bakhmaro” by…
Alina Rudnitskaya is a very talented filmmaker from Saint Petersburg. Her newest 25 minutes long documentary from this year, ”I will forget this Day” (photo) has already been awarded at several festivals for its stylistically strong vision of women and…
It is quite an achievement by the filmmakers to establish and keep a tension the whole way through a feature length film, where actually nothing happens in a classical action sense. And yet a lot happens, small banal events and…
One thing is that the launch of this Swedish film has been more than noticeable with constant updates on screenings and screening events, links to history, funding campaigns and much more – look at the Facebook link below – but…
RIDM… stands for Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal… its 14th edition takes off November 9 and runs until November 20. A small festival compared to the ones in Europe right now (Leipzig, idfa, cph:dox) and to HotDocs in Toronto,…
stands for The Independent Television Service’s (ITVS). It supports documentary projects for broadcast in the US – subject-wise from all over the world. 8 films have been supported out of ITVS International Call for 2011, where 476 submissions were received…
This documentary of Phil Cox, that has done and is still doing the international festival circuit, is the Documentary of the Month at Cinemateket, The Danish Film House in the centre of Copenhagen. The film will have six screenings, the…
The European Film Academy has announced the nominations in the category European Film Awards Documentary 2011 – Prix arte. A committee consisting of Nik Powell, director of the NFTS and deputy chairman of the EFA Board, EFA Board Member Despina…
Journalist witnesses Syrian authorities torturing activists – this is headline of an article of today brought by Channel 4 News, accompanied by an interview with the internationally renowned film-maker Sean McAllister, who describes what he saw and heard while detained…
Unfortunately and tragically, we have to return to Syria again. Orwa Nyrabia, filmmaker and co-director of the Damascus-based Dox Box Festival, that filmkommentaren.dk has reported from the very beginning of its existence, reports daily on facebook, several times, from his…
I don’t want talking faces, you often hear documentary filmmakers say. To be understood: it is boring television stuff. In this case, and in many other, of course, the talking faces, at least most of them, are interesting to look…
At a moment where European documentary film festivals are gathering documentarians and a local audience in big crowds to present huge numbers of film (DOK Leipzig, cph:dox, Jihlava, DocLisboa, idfa etc.) it is wonderful to see that other smaller, but…
Tonight the awards of the 54th DOK Leipzig festival were announced. A new record total of 74,500 euros (!) in prize money was granted to a total of 17 awards. The total prize list follows below. The three international competition…
In the train for Copenhagen after 5 days at the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. I had my currywurst mit scharfe sauce a while ago and am ready for the train ride home via Hamburg. Gives…
Festival directors must have visions and points of view. DOK Leipzig festival director Claas Danielsen has. The following is taken from the press release of the festival after the opening of the festival: Claas Danielsen held a very personal speech,…
Please surprise me, give me time for reflections, to smile, laugh, cry, tell me something I did not know in beforehand – or show me something that I have not seen before, or make some unpredictable montage of location connections…