A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
British tv Channel4 broadcast a week ago a tv-documentary on what happened during the final weeks of the 25 year long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. The programme was presented by the journalist…
It starts next week on June 23rd and lasts for 10 days. The MIFF is one of the classic film festivals with big names, tributes to film history, stars, red carpet and competitions. Edition number 33 it is, led by…
It is a strong line-up of international documentaries that compete in Moscow. 7 films are on the list: From Europe comes ”Czech peace” by the succesful team behind ”Czech Dream”, Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, Austrian master director Nikolaus Geyerhalter…
The non-competitive programme has several interesting films to offer the audience in Moscow, many of them have been written about on this blog, all have been to imporant festivals often to be awarded: ”Position among the Stars” by Leonard Retel…
I asked Georgy Molodtsov, a young filmmaker, who I met at the DoxPro in St. Petersburg, and who is working for the Documentary section at MIFF – to give some background on the festival’s documentary development. Here are clips from…
The winner of the award that carries the name of late Czech director, the man behind ”Citizen Havel”, is Linda Jablonska (photo), who previously (on this blog) is known for her ”Welcome to North Korea”. This text is taken from…
There is a lot of film political commitment and competence in the activities of the SDI (Scottish Documentary Institute). The small staff (Noë Mendelle, Sonja Henrici, Flore Cosquer, Amy Hardie and Finlay Pretsell) stands behind the talent development production scheme…
It is a public secret that most public broadcasters do not have a young audience. ”Young people do not watch television”, it is being said again and again when television people meet. They watch films, including documentaries, online, or they…
YLE and arte, television channels – for many years leading in creative documentaries when it comes to international orientation, involved in coproductions and acquisitions of documentaries from all over the world. As an organiser of meetings where producers come to…
”Make Docs Happen” is the slogan of the Edinburgh Pitch. If that will be the case for the 2011 pitched projects, that they will be made, will happen, remains to be seen. For sure it is that the positive comment…
If you come, as I do, from a country where documentary film as an art form is part of a film culture, publicly supported and included in a film law, of course you are sceptical to the new phenomenon where…
Where the impression of the Sheffield DocFest film selection is one of British provinsialism (see below), there is reason to say bravo to the American Silverdocs, that offers its viewers a quality programme. The Discovery Channel supports the festival but…
… starts tomorrow. The festival and its industry activity used to be a couple of weeks in November before the idfa in Amsterdam. Now it has moved to June, presumably to have more new films without having to compete with…
On this site the vod (video on demand) initiative Doc Alliance, run by five European film festivals, has been praised several times for its quality in film selection and presentation, and for its cheap prices not to forget. Doc Alliance…
Koutecky died tragically in 2006, 50 years old, after having completed twelve years of filming Vaclac Havel. The material was edited by his colleague Miroslav Janek and the masterpiece Citizen Havel was born. An award has been set up in…
The festival ended this evening with the prize ceremony in the huge Kijew Kino. The jury, of which I was the chairman, judging 20 international documentaries, made the following decision – quoting the short motivations, reviews of three main prize…
It has a story, a point of view, a humanistic approach and a director, who is also the cameraman and who has the skills to catch magical moments as they happen in life. A decade ago the director made ”Siberian…
I want to be seen, says one them. I want to be conventional, says the other. Both of them took a very unconventional decision, to change from being a man to being a woman. The title says that they have…
From a filmic point of view it has everything, it is so well done: strong characters, who are developed, as a similar strong story is being unfolded, with conflicts, dramas, emotions, intimacy, closeness. The style is aggressive, the camera goes…
It is so natural that Krakow has been a Cultural Capital of Europe. It has history, beautiful buildings, an active outside life with loads of cafés – yes, we are many visitors in this city and the Main Market Square…
Vera and Marcel, brother and sister. Marcel, film director. They sit together around a table. They do so to recollect and remember Tonia, the mother of the siblings, a woman who was in jail and a woman who was filmed…
In the old festival hotel Cracovia, next door to the Kijow Cinema, where the main programme of the festival is running, there is a so-called Industry Zone, where festival people meet and talk to filmmakers in an informal atmosphere about…
The Polish Film Institute runs an honorable dvd publlishing policy. Previously I have reported on very good director boxes with films by Kieslowski, Karabasz, Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski – and now, here in Krakow, at the hall of the Kino…
Richard Raskin, Aarhus University, is the short film expert and editor of “Short Film Studies”. Raskin calls for papers for volume 2 number 2. Click below, to know more about the editor and to have the presentation of the film…
First an introduction taken from YouTube, where the Krakow Film Foundation has posted videos and some trailers from films taking part in the 51st (!) edition of Krakow Film Festival, 23rd – 29th May 2011: KFF is one of the…
The Copenhagen documentary audience gets spoilt. First the professionals were invited to watch it at the yearly Maraton Dok, organised by EDN (European Documentary Network) and now Cinemateket at the Danish Film Insttute has chosen the film as the ”documentary…
For many of us it never goes beyond the words, when it comes to put into reality all the good intentions about the promotion of the documentaries. Few have had the strength and courage to link all the elements of…
Documentary of the Month is a unique distribution initiative, run by Parallel 40 in more than 40 cities, not only in Catalunya and Spain, but now also in Latin America – in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. It was born out…
The way to the audience can go through the showing of documentaries on a regular basis as Parallel 40 has initiated with the ”Documentary of the Month”, see above. Or it can be through festivals, the more and more popular…
Moderna Museet in Malmö, Sweden hosts an exhibition of 14 works by Marcel Duchamp. This one everybody knows, signed by Duchamp under the name of R. Mutt, from 1917. He chocked the world with this work, later to be nominated…
It is good and bad at the same time. Bad because it reflects that international cooperation for the production of non-mainstream documentaries no longer happens between the national film funds and/or the national broadcasters, good because it reflects that festivals…
The French based (in Marseilles) promotion and distribution mechanism Aflam, which has its focus on Arab cinema, pays a tribute to the late Syrian documentary film director, Omar Amiralay, who died in February this year. Amiralay was a persona non…
Quite a different text has to be written under this headline – compared to the one below from Egypt. From the atrocities in Syria, let us call it as it is, a massacre by the government on its own people,…
I was watching the Danish news magazine Horisont (modelled after the BBC Panorama strand) last night, prime time on DR, our public service channel. They had 25 minutes on Egypt. I sat down with some expectation that was competely let…
Tommy Seebach, popstjerne, vinder af det danske melodi grand prix adskillige gange, blev 53 år gammel. Han var, som det vist hedder, hård ved sig selv, knoklede for at få anerkendelse for sit talent, nåede toppen, faldt dybt, druknede sig…
Danish documentary master Jørgen Leth was challenged by his admirer von Trier in the very succesful film The Five Obstructions, that gave Leth a very well deserved international breakthrough outside the world documentary circles. Retrospectives of his work were arranged…
Seems to be prestige in documentary film sales in Denmark. Now the independent newspaper Information launches docs on their online shop. I swift to my mother tongue… Det er nu en beskeden begyndelse, som dagbladet Information lancerer via sin online…
Wonder how many documentaries will be screened in Cannes this year? The stars are there, the most fascinating is Faye Dunaway on the gorgeous poster of this year.
AFAC is the name, it is based in Beirut and “The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) is an independent Arab initiative established by local cultural lobbyists and a group of international donors in 2007. AFAC funds individuals and…
I have written about and praised the DOX magazine a couple of times as the magazine for the creative (artistic, authored, call it what you want) documentary. But if you want to follow what happens in the more commercial sector…
He lives in Bulgaria in Svishtov a town by the Danube. He is a building worker. And a fan. Of Manchester United. He orders a visit card that says “fan” as occupation and he wants to change his name to…
For the second year the Balkan Documentary Center organises a workshop for 7 creative documentary projects from the region. During one week the participants met tutors like Aleksandar Manic (”The Shutka Book of Records”), Boris Mitic (”Goodbye, How are You”),…
I felt priviliged to attend the so-called demo screenings of the first 3 films under “the informal label “buldoc”. Arranged in connection with the first session of the Balkan Documentary Center, and created by Martichka Bozhilova from the documentary production…
Syrian human rights activists disappear… The statement below was originally issued as an online petition, but for safety reasons, this petition has now been closed down. Around 1000 film people from all over have signed. However, you can still show…
What do you do when you sit in an airplane, don’t want to read any more newspapers or have done enough mails for today? Well, I was lucky to have received the new DOX magazine, summer 2011, the 90th edition…
Zanda Dudina from the National Film Centre in Latvia read my text about the film on Rudolf Ming, see below. She tells me that Rudolf – 13 at the time of the film, 16 today – now have a real…
It seems to be in the middle of nowhere, and isolated it is, what was meant to be (25 years ago) a place to live, in noble decency, planned to house the Romas by the socialist government. Today block 20…
Good news it is that this Latvian documentary, produced by the studio that carries the name of documentary legend Juris Podnieks, has made it to the Hot Docs festival (see below) and will have three screenings in Toronto in the…
Want to share this beautiful photo from Belgrade, from Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, Magnificent7, European feature documentary festival, next edition January 2012.
Good news for the documentary interested audience in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Monthly Documentary in May at the Film House is Leonard Retel Helmrich’ masterpiece “Position Among the Stars” that runs every day from Thursday May 5 till Wednesday May 11.…