A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Film is an emotional stream, Niels Pagh Andersen said, Danish editor, living in Finland, and working with films from many different countries. TV documentaries, feature duration docs for cinemas. Andersen has a long and strong cv. And he delivered an…
Below you find the praise of the camerawork of Dutch director Helmrich, who won the main prize at idfa for his “Position among the stars”. He and many other masterclasses are to be found and looked at on idfa.nl –…
Even if not having seen all films in the main long feature documentary section at idfa, it is clear that the good choices of the jury appear to be based on artistic quality and subject relevance. Where nobody has waited…
At the end of last week the winners of the 23st idfa festival were announced. From the site of idfa I have taken this press report with easy references to content description of the films awarded, many of which will…
Many visitors to the festival in Amsterdam (November 17-28) are there to look for films to buy for their national television channels. The buyers sit in their booths and choose among more than 500 films, as do festival representatives from…
An early christmas present for documentary lovers: The offer to watch artistic short documentaries from the country of filmmakers who, if any, master the poetic film language: Lithuania. In times where these kind of films have problems in getting to…
The festival in Amsterdam has a nomination system like the one used at the Oscars – three films in each category of competition are shortlisted – and the directors have to wait until saturday night to hear if they are…
I post this article from the idfa site to higlight one of the most appreciated documentary projects that was pitched at the Forum 2010: Twin sisters Ilse and Femke van Velzen, filmmakers and human rights activists, returned last week from…
The Forum for International Co-Financing of Documentaries holds its 18th session. There is a friendly atmosphere at the round table where tv commissioning editors sit to comment on the projects that are pitched. Maybe too friendly for a veteran participant…
The Forum is half way through and my general impression is that 2010 selection has been good. There are many creative documentaries, and they are well received. It started strongly with Romanian Florin Iepan’s project ”Odessa” (PHOTO), his short catalogue…
Of course idfa with an audience of more than 100.000 must have an audience award parallel to the awards given by juries of film professionals. If you go to the website you will find an updated list that goes by…
The long-awaited Short List of feature-length documentaries in consideration for Academy Award nomination was finally released, and here are the lucky 15: Client 9:The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Dir.: Alex Gibney; ES Productions LLC) Enemies of the People…
Ally Derks, director of the idfa festival, held a strong speech at the opening of the festival Wednesday night. Here is the text of the strong cultural political appeal: Dear friends, tonight we are launching the 23rd edition of IDFA…
I did not get the name of the director of this Channel4 production but it does not matter as the film was without any authored point of view – a mere report about what happened, chronologically structured with interesting and…
We have written about the Cinema Vérité documentary film festival, held in Tehran from November 7-12 under the slogan “Reality for All” – see below. The winners of the festival have been announced like this: Iran’s 4th Cinema Verite International…
The without any doubt biggest in audience and most important documentary film festival for the professional community kicks off today in Amsterdam and goes on until November 28. Edition number 23 it is, that will welcome an audience with more…
Many of the 300 films at the festival in Amsterdam have been noticed or reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk. From the programme of today ”Armadillo”, ”Steam of Life”, ”Last Train Home” and ”Erotic Man” can be mentioned… But if I were at…
… and is, as mentioned above, also the place to go for professionals who are looking for films for their tv channels, or for festival programmers. Around 500 films are available for the accredited guests, who are there to select…
… is the headline of a long, interesting article in the Observer sunday November 7. It serves as a follow-up to the Sheffield Doc/Fest that has been covered excellently by the Guardian, see site address below. The Observer article (written…
We have posted several texts on the ever original and non-conventional 79 year old Jean-Luc Godard, especially in connection with his newest film ”Film Socialisme”. This sunday (November 14) Guardian has an interesting article that starts like this: It should…
In Reus, a city a bit more than one hour’s drive from Barcelona, there is a film festival called Memorimage. It is quite unique in its basic philosophy. It deals with ”today’s films with yesterday’s images”, as it is being…
The main awards of the festival were given to the Israeli film ”Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork” by Eyal Sivan, and to ”La Isla – Archives from a tragedy” by German Uli Stelzner. Both of them are strong political films, rich…
I have been in contact with EDN’s film consultant Ove Rishøj Jensen, who tells me that there will be no boycott action (see below) from the Iranian filmmakers towards the festival Cinema Vérité. On the contrary, the filmmakers and the…
Last year 142 Iranian filmmakers appealed to the documentary community worldwide to boycott the festival Cinema Vérité, see below. Yesterday EDN (European Documentary Network) posted the following text on its site: ”EDN will be present at the The 4th annual…
… which is a Czech city where the documentary film genre is celebrated every year at the end of October through a huge market programme for selling (pitching) film projects and finished films to television stations all over the world…
Young Serbian director Mila Tulajlic has finished her work on “Cinema Komunisto” that will have its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam and its national premiere as part of the Magnificent/ festival in Belgrade January 25-29. The film will exist…
At a meeting arranged in connection with the EU MEDIA supported training programme Eurodoc, under the leadership of the former head of documentaries at arte France, Thierry Garrel and current Head of Documentaries at YLE, Finland Erkki Astala, the following…
November 4-14 is the time to watch documentaries in Copenhagen. An excellently edited and layouted website – address below – takes you through the huge programme with its many competitive sections, its industry programme, seminars, concerts, paries and events. There…
… stands for Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal and is a 10 day long festival event with ” Dozens of activities: workshops, roundtables, master classes, tributes, kids’ screenings, receptions and parties, and a market “with the mission of supporting…
I am in rainy Belgrade. Wonderful to be back in the city where the magnificent documentary film festival Magnificent7 takes place every year. At the end of January. But this is actually not the main reason for my presence… for…
The night of making some people happy, others disappointed. The award ceremony to hand out more than 70.000€ and statuettes. Speeches and clips. Main prize, The Golden Dove, went to the Swedish film “Vodka Factory” by Jerzy Sladkowski (PHOTO), The…
Every monday the opponents to the GDR regime met at the Nikolai church in Leipzig. With candles in their hands – speeches, “stille und schweigend” as said one of the leaders, former priest at the church, Christian Führer, who also…
He has only made 5 films, Sergey Dvortsevoy, but he is one of the most wanted documentarians for the so-called masterclasses. His popularity is huge as the attendance proved at the festival, where the room was packed for the 2…
… and a jury member means that you are treated well, very well indeed. You are in a nice hotel, you get a per diem so you can go and buy yourself a wienerschnitzel or a curry-wurst, and a beer…
The opening of film festivals is something that veterans like me normally avoid because of boring official speeches and/or a moderator trying to be funny and/or blonds or brunettes in high heels being there for their looks, knowing nothing about…
… and the local Leipziger Volkszeitung has an interview with festival director Claas Danielsen, who stresses that the 53rd edition of the festival could need a couple of days more for a festival that he predicts will have many full…
Ken Loach, no introduction needed, gave a strong speech the other day at the opening of the London Film Festival. According to the Guardian, that brought an excerpt of the speech (Saturday 16 October) the veteran director, who has made…
It was a person in the audience, who appealed to the panel: We are world famous for our writers – Joyce, Beckett etc. – now it must be time to become known for our films. He, and around 100 other…
Oh, what a medium television can be as we have experienced during the last week! Direct tv. Cinema verite. I refer to the rescue operation of the 33 miners in Chile, even more emotional for me, who was in the…
The Tafaseel web documentary magazine, see below, asked me to write an article for their first edition. Here it is: 3 months per year I am away from home. I travel in and outside Europe to talk about documentaries, the…
A new, very interesting, well edited documentary web magazine, tafaseel-mag.net, published by Syrian filmmakers and festival organisers of Dox Box has been launched. No.1 includes a lot of interesting articles and comments and reviews and news, that I am looking forward…
… is one the best progrqmmed festivals in Europe. The 2010 edition goes from October 14-24 and has several interesting film historical highlights parallel to the international and Portuguese sections. The directors who are presented to the local and international…
Our Paris correspondent, Sara Thelle, has already written about Film Socialisme by Jean Luc Godard, and her article was one of the reasons that I, with great expectations and huge pleasure, went to see the film in MK2 Beaubourg, where it…
The upcoming festival in Leipzig (October 18-24) has an interesting retrospective with films from the conflict zone in Caucasia. Here is the site introduction text: “Eight programmes with some twenty films will give you sufficient opportunity to deal with a…
Saturday in Buenos Aires. Sunshine. Spring has come to the wonderful city of Argentina. We (my wife and I) have just come back from some days in Chile. I met filmmakers who are going to DOKLeipzig and to idfa. The Chileans…
The Danish audience, at least the one in Copenhagen, centralised Danish cultural policy, but that is another story, will have the possibility to watch one of the most awarded and spoken about documentaries from the recent years, “Cooking History” by…
… means ”Documentary of the Month” and is a strong film-cultural initiative for the distribution of creative documentaries for the audiences in around 40 cities of Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana, Illes Balears and other Spanish cities. Since May 2009, The Documentary…
The festival has a fine offer for – taken from the presse release – ”all those who are so excited they can hardly contain themselves. They can now (re)discover outstanding, award-winning filme even before the festival is underway! From 12…
Breathless is the word that characterises the feeling you get when you browse through the site of the upcoming DOK Leipzig programme that was published a couple of days ago. 12 cinemas, more than 300 films to choose from, lots…
The great art documentary film about avantgarde pioneer photomontagist and Stalinist propagandagist Gustavs Klucis, mentioned and presented on this site several times during the last couple of years, has received the first prize of the 40 year old International Film…