A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
March 11 2004, the bombings in Madrid. 191 people died, more than 2000 were wounded, when trains were exploded in the early morning. Two young males stood behind the crime, Jamal and Sarhane, a criminal and an islamic extremist, both…
The British Dochouse at the Riverside Studios in London does a lot for the creation of a documentary culture in the UK… but is apparently not only promoting films within the UK but also outside. I found this very interesting…
It is still fascinating and entertaining to watch Andy Warhol exhibitions: ”If you want to know all about AW, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There´s nothing behind it”. Sounds…
Many other sites have already informed about this. Now we do so as well, even if personalia is not our stuff. BUT Mikael Opstrup has published his documentary poetics on filmkommentaren.dk, in Danish and English, just search ”Mikael Opstrup…”. Here…
Trying to understand what is going on in the world takes a lot of time. These banal but wise words come from the old reindeer herder, who is the character of this visually strong reflection on time in an isolated…
Le Monde (11.12.08) includes an interview with Werner Herzog to announce the big retrospective of the German master and his around 50 films. The series run from December 10 to March 2 2009. He says nothing specific new in this…
… that has the subtitle, ”reporting from a closed country” is content-wise a totally shocking experience. There you are in the middle of a military brutality that is filmed by courageous video journalists, who know that a documentation like this…
Am I just an object of study for you, René asks Helena, the director of the film, in one of their numerous conversations during the 20 years, she has followed the child/the youngster/theman René, who spends most of his life…
Sergey Dvortsevoy thinks it is important to reflect on WHY you make documentaries, well film in general. He started late as a filmmaker, he made ”Paradise”, ”Bread Day”, ”Highway”, ”In the Dark” and now ”Tulpan”, the latter a film with…
Below – in Danish – a critical text about yesterday’s broadcast produced by DR, our public broadcaster in Denmark. Today I met some of the participants at the party for European films, organised by European Film Academy, EFA. They had…
Jeg vidste jo godt, at det ville være umuligt for DR/TV at hylde europæisk film på en værdig måde. Jeg vidste, at Mikael Bertelsen ville være mindre plat end de sædvanlige presenters, og han havde også flere fine indslag, som…
Sometimes it is easy to express your opinion. Like in this case where I found a text from the film critic at The Guardian, Nick Bradshaw (November 28), that precisely and in much better English than I can perform –…
Der er mulighed for søde gensyn og nyopdagelser i Cinematekets december-program. Under overskriften ”Den etnografiske dokumentar” er der Basil Wright (”Song of Ceylon”), flere gange Jean Rouch, inklusiv foredrag om ham, den fremragende Vietnamfilm af Trinh T. Minh-ha fra 1989…
Utrættelige Jørgen Vestergaard har lavet en film om ”Kirsten Kjær og hendes museum” i Langvad ved Frøstrup. Den varer 33 minutter og lader kunstnerens nevø, Harald Fuglsang (billede), fortælle historien om en farverig og kontroversiel personlighed, hvis mange portrætmalerier kan…
Taken from the idfa site: The VPRO Joris Ivens Award was presented to Anders Østergaard for Burma VJ – Reporting From a Closed Country. The film consists almost completely of material filmed in secret by a group of reporters during…
This review has been written by Georg Bocher, direction student at the Zelig Documentary film School in Bolzano: The first two minutes leaves no doubt about the scope of this documentary. It is between the most private family life and…
You wonder why it is interesting to watch a man, who sits at his desk browsing through a newspaper for more than a minute. It is. There is no computer at that desk, the governor of Uppsala uses a pen…
The Kurdish in Turkey – a long and complicated story about a people being suppressed. We have seen loads of news reports and some political documentaries about a conflict full of blood, and also for that reason it is nice…
The last day of the Forum at idfa in Amsterdam. For those who have never heard about it, let this text be the introduction, taken from the site of idfa: ”The FORUM is Europe’s largest gathering of filmmakers, television commissioning…
It is without any doubt absolutely fantastic to see all these documentary professionals gather in one room to exchange ideas, catch up from the last gathering, offer new projects, comment on the last films which have been watched or broadcast…
I know that I am biased in the following – working for the Institute for Documentary Films (IDF) in Prague that organises the Ex Oriente Film training Programme and the East European Forum in Jihlava – but I have to…
Here we come, monday morning, entering the arena in Amsterdam. Big room, round table, space for audience. They are all looking at us, when we react to the pitching. For many of us the body language communicates fatigue, another pitching…
A Bulgarian filmmaker makes a film for a charming, warm and smiling American photographer, Marion Michelle. He met her during the research for a film to be made in the footsteps of Joris Ivens, who made his ”The First Years”…
Something went wrong. Difficult to say what. Anyhow, the two old brothers live together but do not communicate. Somewhere in the north of Bavaria, in the countryside, where Heiner has inherited the farm and Fritz takes care of the household.…
With German master director Edgar Reitz (”Heimat”) as the president of the jury, the International Film Festival of Mannheim-Heidelberg gave the Special Jury Award to ”Another Planet” (see also review, go to ”search”). Here follows the motivation: “There are films…
János Richter, direction student at the Zelig Documentary Film School in Bolzano has written this review: Billy Mitchell has a carefully styled mullet haircut and wears patriotic ties. His whole appearance communicates his conception of perfection. He is the owner…
2008 CPH:DOX awards have been given out at the CPH:DOX Galla. DOX:AWARD 2008: went to Anders Østergaard for “Burma VJ”, with a Special Mention to Mark Hammersberg, Ester Martin Bergsmark and Beatrice Maggie Andersson for “Maggie in Wonderland” (see review).…
From the very well organised industry part of the the festival, I would like to highlight 3 of the projects that I am looking forward to see as finished film: ”Into Eternity” from Danish Michael Madsen and his producer Lise…
A learning lab. This is what Tine Mosegaard, the organiser, called the DOX-Forum in the catalogue intro for the 3 day industry event, an integrated part of the film festival. A programme consisting of pitching sessions and seminars like the…
Nomally panel discussions are boring with a lot of repetitions. This one was different. The panelists complemented each other and were open in their sharing information and points of views on the involvement of the art museums in distributing films.…
Around 20 minutes into this staged documentary I started to get impatient. Come on, make the story move, we got the message, the neighbours dont like each others, they dont talk, it is a silent war, where they will not…
Trefeurig is the name of a small village community in Wales. This is where director and cameraman Gideon Koppel takes us – on a stunningly beautiful, wonderfully slow, and editing-like surprising voyage that I have difficulties in forgetting after two…
We met him years ago, this Hungarian director, who stood behind the much discussed, but great film ”Children of Kosovo”. We, meaning colleague Allan Berg and I, who defended the director’s right to use extremely aesthetical cinematographic means to describe…
Jakob Skovgaard Petersen, his wife and their two children were in Cairo for some years. Petersen was appointed Head of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute and he was there during the cartoon crisis. A brilliant and knowledgeable man, not only a…
I was at the Film House tonight to meet Jan Troell, the 77 year old Swedish master, who right now experiences big international success with his latest feature, ”Maria Larssons evige Øjeblik”. English title is ”Everlasting Moments”. A whole evening…
I have been thinking a lot – why does this film not involve me? Why do I stay in a careless mood? I had high expectations, I had read about it, seen the overall praise it has got and I…
Hammarsberg, Bergmark & Andersson: “Maggie In Wonderland”. Andersson is Maggie, credited as co-director in this moving documentary about herself, a Kenyan woman, who lives in Malmö on the 15th floor with a balcony full of pigeons. “It’s me telling you about…
Have to confess that I had never heard about Natasja before her death in a car accident on Jamaica summer 2007. 60+ was not her target group! But this fine documentary, that avoids to take the sentimental approach and thus…
That Nanna Frank Møller is an excellent editor has been proved many times, primarily in her collaboration with Danish director Max Kestner. That she has a talent for directing herself became obvious with the film about the circus sisters, ”Someone…
Danish Producers Association distributed documentary prizes at the opening of CPH:DOX 2008. 3 films took the five prizes. All three films have been reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk In Danish. All three films have very local themes. Årets GuldDok/Grand PrixInstruktør Ulla Boyes…
If you like me are waiting with great expectations on one of the most talked about and praised documentaries from this year, since the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the Israeli film Waltz With Bashir, you can warm up…
In the previous text you can find a review of one of the many documentaries, the one about Patti Smith, that Copenhagen offers its documentary audience from Friday November 7-16. We will follow the amazing festival programme with reviews, reports…
The film is a bombardment of words. From start till end Patti Smith reads texts of her own or by the many poets she has been inspired of in her multifacetted career as singer, painter, photographer, writer and visual artist.…
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.…