A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
This year’s Top 10 at the coming IDFA festival in Amsterdam is put together by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. He has chosen films that have impressed him and that have played a role in his own development. Here is a…
Danish Short Docs online… What a brilliant initiative taken by the Danish Film Institute and the newspaper Politiken: 12 films with a duration between 3 and 5 minutes are now available on the web edition of the newspaper. One new…
In Leipzig, at the same time as the festival, the final session of the Discovery Campus Masterschool took place with training of the participants for two concluding mornings with the pitching of projects that have been developed during the year…
The awards in Leipzig… Helena Trestikova won another first prize for her ”Réne”, which will be play here in Copenhagen at cph:dox. I did not see it yet but I am sure it deserves a prize, based on what I…
I have previously – in my diaries from DocLisboa – mentioned the new masterpiece by Avi Mograbi, Z32. It was also shown at DOK Leipzig, Avi Mograbi was there and I told him again, as in Lisbon, that his films…
Of course, you have to be careful when you take a quote from the press office of a festival. Especially as you have not been able to follow the festival intensely because of other obligations. But I went to the…
I can´t help thinking about this new film by Terence Davies, a masterpiece, I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. October 28 the Guardian had an excellent interview with him. A constant flow of wise words on filmmaking.…
This monday the first documentary commissioned for the internet by Arte France starts its broadcast. ”Gaza Sdetor – Life in Spite of Everything” is an experimental 60 day interactive project by French documentary production company Bo Travail with Arte France…
Good news about a film written about on this blog more than 7 months ago: TV Documentary: PRIX EUROPA Best Television Documentary Programme of the Year goes to Testimony by Razvan Georgescu (author/director), Stefan Grandinetti, Hans Zimmermann (camera). Produced by…
Saturday and Sunday 24 projects were pitched at the East European Forum at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic. It is always difficult to measure what is a success but of course positive reactions/commitments from broadcasters count.…
Think Big! Is what young producer and director Ilona Bicevska has done throughout a year of participation in the Ex Oriente 2008. The award was given sunday at the East European Forum in Jihlava. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany…
Another season of Ex Oriente Film is over. For a year – in 3 sessions – I have had the privilege to follow and tutor a group of documentary makers, a few already experienced, most of them upcoming talent from…
Two representatives from the San Francisco based ITVS (Independent Television Service), Cynthia Kane and Lois Vossen, attended the East European Forum. They made a very good impression expressing enthusiasm in their going for the creative and artistic documentary. They were…
I got this mail from Kriistina Pervilä: Yesterday evening Pirjo Honkasalo and I got the news about the arrest of Khadizhat and Malik Gaetaev, our main protagonists in The 3 Rooms of Melancholia. The news was published at FINROSFORUM.FI We…
Sometimes you have high expectations and get disappointed. Sometimes your expectations are fulfilled. Sometimes you get much much more than you expected even if you had high expectations. Terence Davies. Are you old enough to remember his “Distant Voices, Still…
During the doc festival and market season – which is now and lasts until December – your bed waits for you in a hotel, normally booked and paid for by the organisers of the event. Some people hate hotels, can…
”A sermon has to be like a woman´s dress. It should long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting”. These wise words (by the way try to change ”sermon” with film) come from the mouth of…
Sunday morning in Lisbon. Sunshine and empty streets. Perfect for a walk before going to sit in front of the video monitor and all the fine films of this festival. Strolled down (literally down) the streets to several great viewpoints…
Talking faces. Normally you associate this stylistical element to journalistic programmes on television. And not to creative documentaries. The Israeli documentary, “To See if I’m Smiling” by Tamar Yaron, builds its whole narrative on talking faces. Young women who have…
First full day at a festival in the South that does only schedule one film in the morning, the neo-classic ”The Long Holiday” by Johan van der Keuken. The hall was full of young people taken there by their cinéphile…
I am in Lisbon for the festival. The 6th International Documentary Film Festival. A success in terms of attendance, and a festival with an excellent programme. So much to watch. International and national competition, a competition for investigative documentaries, Frederick…
On the plane yesterday from Paris to Lisbon, I read the editorial of Le Monde (October 16). A strong humanistic appeal to us all to remember what happened very shortly ago in one of the world´s poorest countries. I translate…
You might sigh when you hear about another training programme for documentary producers in Europe… but this one is different and adds to Discovery Campus, Ex Oriente, Eurodoc and many others supported by the EU MEDIA Programme. In a very…
Picasso was obsessed with Manet´s painting from 1863, “Lunch on the Grass” (“Déjeuner sur l´herbe”). This may be witnessed in the great exhibition that just opened in Parisian Musée d’Orsay. Until February 1st 2009, more than 40 of the variations,…
It’s festival time. And classics change leadership. Since 1986 Mario Simondi was the symbol of the documentary festival in Firenze, always searching for the high quality and hosting his guests perfectly. I can witness this as can Allan Berg, my…
I promoted the possibility of watching short documentaries from the Bridging the Gap series a couple of weeks ago. This very active documentary institute in Scotland also publishes a newsletter that you can subscribe to for free, see site below.…
Lucky you who have yet to discover the work of Frederick Wiseman. Lucky us who again get the chance to watch them on the big screen. A quote from the site of Wiseman’s Zipporah company: “… his cameras have observed…
The best – according to this blog writer – Danish documentary for years, “The Monastery”, is now to be seen or re-seen on French/German cultural channel arte on the following days: 9/10 (22.25), 21/10 (01.20), 24/10 (09.55) arte has changed…
10 years have passed since the death of Jørgen Roos (1922-98), who for decades was THE Danish documentary and short film director. He was – as Hans Christian Andersen, subject for several films by Roos – a brilliant storyteller, who…
Danish artist Per Kirkeby exhibits more than 100 of his paintings, 50 of his sculptures and works in other genres at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark – until 11/1 2009. My colleague Allan Berg praises below a film…
The world’s most famous film magazine, a piece of film history in itself, founded by André Bazin, influenced directly or indirectly by Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and other nouvelle vague people, is in danger again. The…
Something to be copied. And easy to do so… Just came back from Malmö from a visit to a so called Doc Lounge. Which is ”the soft hang-out spot for documentary film lovers in Malmö, (where you can) meet the…
The article below includes words about one of the most prominent Danish tv documentarians, Poul Martinsen, employed at DR for decades as the director of documentary programmes and films that are still remembered by the Danish viewers. Both because they…
At Poul Martinsen er en fin og klog dokumentarist, som har lavet et væld af seværdige dokumentarprogrammer og – film for Danmarks Radio vidste vi jo godt. Os der har alderen til at have været tv-seere tilbage fra tresserne eller…
Here is another fine initiative that enables you to watch documentaries from the UK online. Let the Scottish Film Institute make their own presentation: ”SDI is an internationally recognised documentary research centre at Edinburgh College of Art specialised in documentary…
A festival that is very dear to me has made its selection. I am working as a scout for Leipzig festival director Claas Danielsen and his team, when it comes to films from the Baltic and other Eastern European countries.…
Its been an interesting weekend, politically speaking, in South Africa. I had been away travelling for a week and came back on Saturday to find out that the President of South Africa – Thabo Mbeki – had been deposed. He…
I had hoped for more from this film about a journalist legend that I had heard so much about, read so much about, but never seen a film about. A journalist whose work I had read only a little of,…
I have written – and so has Allan Berg – many times about Lithuanian documentary poet Audrius Stonys, who by the way is a big admirer of the films of Jørgen Leth, who is on the cover of filmkommentaren.dk for…
The BFI (British Film Institute) celebrates its 75th birthday by publishing a collection of dvd’s including one of documentaries from the golden period 1930-1950. What a discovery for those who dont know about it, and what a revisit for us,…
I (Tue) wrote from Riga about the theme in the headline after a pitch at the Baltic Sea Forum. I made Iikka Vehkalahti comment on it and now there is a contribution from Marje Jurtshenko at Estonian Television, who was…
Three persons are presented in a parallel montage. An Englishman in his garden preparing for his trip to Ukraine. Henry Marsh is the surgeon, as is the man he is to visit in Kiev, Igor Kurilets, and the patient to…
På dokumentar-branchetræffet i Ebeltoft for et par uger siden præsenterede Anders Østergaard sin ufærdige film om videoaktivisme i det turbulente Burma. Lars Movin var udsendt reporter fra FILM, som nu udkommer elektronisk. Movins artikler kan findes på FILMupdate, se nedenfor.…
Take 5 minutes break and go to the website of British newspaper Guardian and watch an interview with good old observational documentary hero Albert Maysles, this mild man who is a true believer of the classical approach to reality. This…
Iikka Vehkalahti, YLE Finland had this comment to Riga Diary 5: “Dear Tue. I have to admit, that we (YLE TV 2 Documentaries) have a slogan: ” don´t look at tv, look at TV 2 Documentaries”. It´s implement is actually…
It is more than 30 years ago. I remember it vaguely. I remember that he did it. The tightrope walking between the the twin towers in New York in 1974. But I did not remember the story behind it. That…
Need to brush up your documentary film history? If so, the BFI (British Film Institute) can help you. I have just spent a little hour in company with two brilliant British actors, Derek Jacobi and Malcolm McDowell, who have introduced…
Scratch me! Hug me! Don’t act stupid! The father is 90 and the son around 50. They live together, they sleep in the same bed. They caress each other in the bed. The son constantly scratches the father´s back and…
I attended the first handful of projects that were pitched at the Baltic Sea Forum. Before I had to leave back to Copenhagen. Again I heard a sentence that is often expressed at pitching sessions by the commissioning editors present.…
The Boy from Riga: Sergei Eisenstein. Born in 1898, son of Mikhail and Julia. Lives in the city until 1915 where he goes to St. Petersburg to study. His father becomes the architect of beautiful Jugendstil buildings that are still…