Ina Holmquist & Emelie Wallgren: Kiss Bill
There is 50 years between me and the two teenage girls; I have never heard about a German pop star called Bill from a band called Tokio Hotel; I am not sure I want to hear him play or sing,…
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.
Læs mereIna Holmquist & Emelie Wallgren: Kiss Bill
The Syrian Revolution
When in Corfu, we asked the Syrian documentary colleagues for a reliable information source to follow the revolution in the country. They referred to the site of LCCS, Local Coordination Committees of Syria. The site is updated daily and includes…
Storydoc Session in Corfu/ 1
Documentary film projects from 11 countries, 21 of them, were developed during 5 days at the Ionian University in the city of Corfu. From morning till evening, July 11-15, the filmmakers, directors and producers, had meetings with invited tutors –…
Storydoc Session in Corfu/ 2
Two key tutors were given the floor on the first day of the workshop. Danish Mikael Opstrup from EDN (European Documentary Network) introduced some presentation tricks to the participants before they were to communicate the content and form to their…
Storydoc Session in Corfu/ 3
Stan Neumann inspired on the second morning at the Storydoc session in Corfu. The French editor and director, born in Czekoslovakia, had been given the task to urge the filmmakers to think about form and not only content. Form, he…
Storydoc Session in Corfu/ 4
With Mediterranean projects in focus it was a natural programme choice to have a session on the situation for documentarians in the countries that have experienced or are experiencing changes that have been named ”revolution” or the ”Arab Uprising” or…
Storydoc Session in Corfu/ 5
21 projects took part in the workshop in Corfu. I have previously written about the 4 selected Palestinian projects which were selected at the Storydoc prologue session in Ramallah, Palestine. The selected projects proved their quality as did the filmmakers…
Asif Kapadia: Senna
In a report from the Moscow International Film Festival the following I wrote the following about the film about legendary Ayrton Senna: (the film) has a classical straight forward narrative, simple it is, and should be, with its focus on…
Summer Filmmaking in Lithuania
It is quite an experiment… you bring together 50 young film students from all over Europe, having grouped them in beforehand as directors, cameramen, editors, sound recorders and producers – let the directors pitch their stories and pick their collaborators,…
Mantas Kvedaravicius: Barzakh
At the Summer Media Studio in Neringa Lithuania, a European Film Student Workshop, that goes on until July 17, with editing as the theme, ending up with 10 short documentaries, it was very appropiate to show the awarded Lithuanian documentary…
Documentary in Europe Workshop
The 15th edition of Documentary in Europe in Bardonecchia, Italy starts tomorrow. It includes training, project development, pitching to a panel of commissioning editors, matchmaking between directors, producers and distributors – and screenings. (By the way, the organisers are making…
MIFF Documentary Competititon/ 2
In this text I can only speak for myself as one of three jurors at the first documentary competition at the 33st Moscow International Film festival stating that there was a clear agreement in the jury for the winner, Hell…
Danfung Dennis: Hell and Back Again
”I love my pistol”, says Sergeant Nathan Harris, the protagonist of the film about an American soldier, who gets seriously wounded in combat in Afghanistan, is taken back to the US and to his wife Ashley, who helps him recover;…
Anastasion a.o.: Redemption of General Butt Naked
Quite a shocking film it is. Protagonist: A warlord who during the Liberia civil/tribal war ran around slaughtering anyone near him, yes naked he was, surrounding himself with child soldiers ”educated” through Rambo films, has now found God, preaching reconciliation,…
Liz Garbus: Bobby Fischer against the World
Archive material, interviews and commentaries, the film has a classical build up of a story about the chess genius, American Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), whose story is one of those written out of a reality that surpasses any Hollywood fiction script.…
Moscow Film Diary/5
Yesterday I was interviewed for Voice of Russia in a radio programme edited by Donna West and Julia Reysner. This is the written introduction followed by the link, if you should want to hear a Danish person speaking his best…
Moscow Film Diary/4
”My Perestroika” is a fine documentary by Robin Hessman. It was screened the other day for an American audience on the pov – documentaries with a point of view. A trailer from the film + loads of information on the…
Moscow Film Diary/3
The question has often been asked – about the position of the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) in the world of festivals. In the (excellent) filmneweurope site an interview with the programme director Kirill Razalogov clarifies the situation and the…
Wim Wenders: Pina
Saw the 3D film about legendary coreographer Pina Bausch in a totally full cinema hall during Moscow International Film Festival. It was one of those unique cinema experiences you will never forget. One after one the members of her Tanztheater,…
Silverdocs Documentary Festival/2
The Washington based festival ended last night and awards were announced – all together $76.500 in cash and in-kind, as the festival site announces. The three main awards were given to (for best US feature) ”Our School” by Mona Nicoara…
Moscow Film Diary/2
Second day. Press conference in a cinema. There seems to be a huge interest in the fact that a documentary competition has been included in the MIFF (Moscow International Film Festival). I do not recall having seen so many people…
Moscow Film Diary/1
Very close to Copenhagen is Moscow and after a long drive from the airport through heavy Moscow traffic – always like that, the driver said – we landed at one of the ”seven sisters” hotels, Stalinistic architecture, impressive, totally renovated,…
Chinese Films on Docalliance
It is a pleasure – again – to be able to promote the quality vod Docalliance. Not only is the selection of films for the catalogue excellent, the prices are very low and the texts are free from normal site…
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields
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…
Docs at Moscow International Film Festival
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…
MIFF Documentary Competition
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…
MIFF Out of Competetion
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…
MIFF Free Thought Documentary Programme
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…
Pavel Koutecky Award/2
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…
Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/1
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…
Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/2
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…
Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/3
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…
Edinburgh Documentary Pitch/4
”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…
Crowdfunding of Documentaries
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…
Silverdocs Documentary Festival
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…
Sheffield Doc/Fest
… 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…
Doc Alliance Strikes Again
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…
Pavel Koutecky Award
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…
51st Krakow Film Festival Awards
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…
Wojciech Staron: The Argentinian Lesson
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…
Markus Lindén: Regretters
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…
Pawel Kloc: Phnom Penh Lullaby
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…
Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945
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…
Marcel Lozinski: Tonia and her Children
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…
Krakow Film Festival Small Talk
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…
Polish Doc Film History
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…
Short Film Studies
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…
Krakow Film Festival
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…
Côté & Henriquez: You don’t like the Truth
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…
Parallel 40: Joan Gonzalez
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…