DoxBox 2
Orwa Nyrabia, together with Diana el-Jeiroudi the founder and director of the festival: We considered 300 films. 90 of them we requested for the selection. 100 passed for the selection committee, 6 people, and out came the around 40 films…
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.
Read MoreDoxBox 2
DoxBox 1
Second edition. Second time that Damascus has an international documentary film festival. The programme is enlarged, there is an industry section, sidebar retrospectives, it is all there. Impressive it is to be back. Full house at the opening film, “China…
ZagrebDOX 5
Just a brief follow-up note from Zagreb where the votes from the audience gave the following result: Best film “The English surgeon” by Geoffrey Smith. Second “Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev. Third “Burma vj” by Anders Østergaard. … they…
DOXBOX09
Second edition of the documentary festival in Damascus, Tartous and Homs in Syria. Reports from the 1st edition can be found on filmkommentaren.dk. I dont have the programme schedule yet but have seen the list of films and guests who…
Maysles Brothers Competition
It is the fourth time the programmer Cian Smyth organises the documentary festival ”within” the Belfast Film Festival, March 26- April 4. And again it is a pleasure to see a varied selection of high quality films, 44 in all,…
e-MEDIA
… stands for the excellent, weekly electronic newsletter published by the MEDIA Desk France & Antennes Media Strasbourg & Grand Sud. Editor Christine Mazerau. Excellent, because it is so rich in information, goes far beyond the promotion and information on…
ZagrebDOX 4
Awards were given out tonite at ZagrebDOX. The regional awards are the ones to be noticed signaling strongly the current high quality. All 3 films have or will have a well deserved international recognition. The two first have been written…
ZagrebDOX 3
It took some time for director Atanas Georgiev (Macedonia), his producer Sinisha Juricic (Croatia) and coproducer Ralph Wiser (Austria) to make and finish ”Cash and Marry”, which will be a hit at festivals in the coming year. As it very…
ZagrebDOX 2
12 projects from the region. I can not mention them all but again I must say that the validity of the argument, so often expressed on this place, that originality and creativeness in documentaries come from the Eastern part of…
ZagrebDOX 1
The ZagrebPro is the training and pitching session of the festival. 12 projects from the region were presented to 8 committed panelists, who contributed with critical, constructive and encouraging comments to the directors and producers present: Veteran Franz Grabner from…
…the Oscar goes to
“Man on Wire” as best long documentary, several times mentioned on this place. Here is a clip and some links: … the filmmaker – as the red thread of the narrative – builds up a suspense story in a montage…
Joris Ivens Retrospective
The very active news service provided by Cinéma du Réel informs about an upcoming retrospective series of Joris Ivens at the Cinémathèque française (51 rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris) from March 5th to April 5th. The text goes like this:…
Avi Mograbi: Z32
I have written several times about the new film of Avi Mograbi, and about this very important documentary filmmaker. I do it with pleasure again by quoting the review of renowned critique Jacques Mandelbaum, just published in connection with the…
CMCA and Documentaries
The CMCA (Centre Méditerranéen de la Communication Audiovisuelle), based in Marseilles, provides very useful information about what happens in the region through a free monthly newsletter in French ”Méditerranée Audiovisuelle” that is also available in an English version. The organisation…
Maximilian Schell: Marlene
I’ve been photographed enough, she answers, when Maximilian Schell asks her, why she does not want to appear visually in his documentary. Indeed she had and it does not matter as Schell makes a point out of this, organises a…
DOCSBarcelona 2009
Success story: DocsBarcelona 2009 closed (10 days ago) with a room full of people to watch Brett Gaylor’s “RIP: A Remix Manifesto”. The film brought to the end six days of activities meant to encourage the creation and interest in…
Tereza Nvotová: Take it Jeasy!
Total respect for the 20 year old Czech director, who has completed her first feature length documentary and got it into cinemas where it still runs after a month. And even more respect for her choice of own childhood experience…
ZagrebDOX
There he is, festival director, producer and teacher Nenad Puhovski, who now for the 5th time launches a documentary festival in Croatia, and thus welcomes the world of documentaries in the heart of Zagreb. A clip from the welcome text…
ZagrebDOXPro
Within the festival ZagrebDOX, see above, a project development and pitching session has taken place for several years and will take place again in 2009, where 13 projects have been chosen. Cecilia Lidin from EDN and I have the privilige…
Slumdog Millionaire – Anthony Dod Mantle
Prestigious BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) ceremony in London had Slumdog Millionaire nominated in 11 categories. It won in seven, including Best Cinematography, which gives us another chance to say bravo to Anthony Dod Mantle, about whom…
Festivals collaborate on vod
Good access news. Festivals help each other, we are not used to that, and establish a vod. Says the IDF site docuinter.net: On February 10, 2009 Berlinale hosts a special presentation. Doc Alliance, an association of Europe’s five key documentary…
von Platen et al.: Long Bien Bridge
Hanoi, Vietnam. A legendary bridge. People, people, people. Working, walking, exercising, motorbiking, repairing, waiting, cleaning, haircutting, cell phoning, water, steel, construction, trains from inside and outside. No dialogue, no interviews, pure observation, no arrangement, small sequences, small human interactions, small…
Avi Mograbi
At DOCSBarcelona Israeli director Avi Mograbi had two screenings of his latest film, ”Z 32”, a film that I have praised several times on filmkommentaren.dk On top of that the director performed a three hour masterclass for 180 people according…
Nils Vest: An Oppressed People is Always Right
Danish director Nils Vest offers his controversial Palestine film, shot in a refugee camp in Southern Lebaning in 1974, to be watched online for free, or to be bought at his company. His contact details are mentioned below. Utrættelige Nils…
Tom Alandh: Det finns bare en Ingemar Johansson
Se, det var en smuk tv-dokumentar. Set på SVT i går og udsendt i anledning af hovedpersonens død. Om én af de store bokse-legender, svenske Ingo = Ingemar Johansson. Med fine spørgsmål fra instruktøren, journalisten Tom Alandh, stillet til Ingo’s…
DR: Dokumania
It is not very often you feel like praising the programming of a public broadcaster when it comes to documentaries. But what DR, the Danish public broadcaster, has done by introduction of the prime time slot (8.40pm every tuesday) Dokumania…
Danish Awards 2009
At a ceremony saturday February 1st the Danish Film Academy Robert Awards 2009 were given, including documentaries in a short and long category. The winners were for the Best Short Documentary “Little Miss Grown-Up” (photo), director Anders Gustafsson and Patrik…
Czech Doc Awards
Better late than never they seem to think in Czech Republic, a country with a fine documentary tradition. This is what is reported from the IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) Headquarter in Prague, from one of the best written and…
Peter Entell
What a pleasure to listen to Peter Entell at the masterclass in Belgrade in connection with the Magnificent7 festival. Well prepared he showed clips from his previous films, talked about them and about his way of filmmaking, especially related to…
Meeting the Film Makers
You might say that the films should be able to stand on their own. And right you are. You should be able to understand and sense a film without any introduction or comment or explanation. To watch it on your…
Magnificent7 2009/3
Look at the picture. This couple, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, stands behind the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. I have known them for years and have had the privilege to work with them for five years on the selection for the…
Magnificent7 2009/2
We experience right now the golden age of documentary. There has never been such a huge interest from an audience that age-wise mostly is young and has given up on television! And there have never been such an amount of…
Magnificent7 2009/1
It is such an adventure to go to the cinema for four days to watch 7 films that are received with enthusiasm and emotion by the most wonderful audience I know, the one in Belgrade. You can not overestimate the…
DOCSBarcelona 2009
Step by step the DOCSBarcelona has grown into an international documentary event of great importance in the city that right now hosts the best football team in the world. It is now a festival and a pitching forum. The organiser…
Picasso and Delacroix
Earlier I wrote about Picasso and Manet, one of several parts of the exhibition ”Picasso et les maitres”. Now, back in Paris for some days, Louvre was the location to visit to see the master’s variation of the Delacroix painting…
Anthony Dod Mantle
They were queueing outside the cinema at Odéon in Paris. To get in to watch the new international hit directed by Danny Boyle, ”Slumdog Millionaire”, which is not going to be reviewed here, it has been all over, and touching…
James Marsh: Man on Wire (2)
Special service for our Danish readers as the film opens in cinemas in Denmark tomorrow – I made a review 4 months ago on filmkommentaren. Go to search and write James Marsh: Man on Wire. Here are some words of…
Sundance Film Festival 2009
Starting today the film festival for independent film, running in Park City, Utah, goes on until January 25. The website tells it all – films, panel discussions, and the documentary sections are growing in strength, as is the Sundance Institute…
Magnificent7 2009
The European Feature Documentary Film Festival in Belgrade, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic from the Kvadrat Film School and in collaboration with the Sava Center, has published the 2009 programme: read here As I have had the privilege to…
Hammarsberg m.fl.: Maggie/Guldbaggen
A review of a good film can be repeated. That is the case for this documentary that got the Swedish Guldbaggen award as best documentary of 2008, at the ceremoney where most of the prizes very much deserved went to…
Joao Moreira Salles: Santiago
It is one of those films that is a must for documentary addicts like me, and why not for people who in general are interested in the examination of the relationship between the filmmaker and his/her victims, their protagonists, their…
Sarkozy (2) and French Television
Yesterday commercials disappeared from French public television from 8pm in the evening until 6am next morning. Tomorrow the French Senate starts the examination of the text for a reform of “l’audiovisuel public”, initiated by president Sarkozy. The French independent producers…
Docpoint 2009
The Finnish documentary festival celebrates Broomfield and Leacock. It points in the direction of a selection policy that respects the old masters, which is furthermore stressed by the latest news from festival director Erkko Lyytinen on the dokblog of YLE.…
Cinemateket: Tegnedrengene mm.
Hvilken brilliant idé – og det manglede bare! Cinemateket viser i januar Tegnedrengene’s to mesterværker ”Eventyret om den vidunderlige kartoffel” (1984) og ”Eventyret om den vidunderlige musik” (1990). Det gøres i forbindelse med serien af animerede dokumentarfilm, og det er…
Maj Wechselmann: Bang og Verdenshistorien
Maj Wechselmann har en imponerende filmografi, se hendes hjemmeside, hvor filmene også kan bestilles. Jeg havde lejlighed til at se hendes sidste udgivelse i går på SVT1, en film om Barbro Alving, journalist og verdensborger, som Maj Wechselmann politisk engageret,…
World Documentary 2008
I am not going to nominate the 10 Best, even if I like these kind of games. If you browse through filmkommentaren.dk, click ”Articles/Reviews ENGLISH”, you will find the priorities of mine. When I again and again have written ”East…
Danish Documentary 2008
Below you will find a couple of brief status articles on Danish documentaries in the year that is about to finish, 2008. Nothing sensational, nothing quality-wise to be compared to ”The Monastery”, the Danish documentary from the last years but…
Dokumentaren i Danmark 2008/1
Det begyndte med en klump i halsen og en lille tåre i øjenkrogen, da 1500 tilskuere klappede i et par minutter efter at have set Pernille Rose Grønkjærs mesterværk ”The Monastery”. Instruktøren var på scenen i Beograds store koncertsal, hvor…
Dokumentaren i Danmark 2008/2
Her på redaktionen prøvede vi at starte en debat om DFI’s støtte- og distributionspolitik. Jeg prøvede at sige, at DFI forsømmer at udvikle FilmKunsten til fordel for den journalistiske dokumentar – og såvel kollega Allan Berg og jeg havde indlæg…
Agnes Varda: Les Plages d’Agnès
From le monde 16.12.08, a clip from the review of Jean-Luc Douin, for our French reading readers, about a film that previously was praised briefly by my colleague Allan Berg: ”Toute mémoire est en désordre, toute sensation difficile à capturer,…