A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
It’s too hot to be outside during the day, and the organisers of the CinéDOC Summer School know that. The brilliant team from CinéDOC has made the 15 participants (10 from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbadjan plus 5 students from Konrad…
There he goes again, the master of dealing creatively with archive, Sergei Loznitsa. His new film, to be premiered at the Venice International Film Festival (August 28 – September 7), entitled ”State Funeral” is – I have copy-pasted from Screen…
29 film Zelig students got their diplomas recently, as last moment of the three years professional course in documentary filmmaking, edition 2016-2019, which just ended at the end of June. The final exams have been conducted by a commission formed by external experts in…
In a very interesting article, written by Nick Bradshaw, in Sight & Sound, the head programmer of the Sheffield Doc/Fest Luke Moody reveals why he decided to leave the festival after 20 months as director of programming. Bradshaw writes about…
in the Ghetto… made in cooperation with Andrzej Wajda and Agnieszka Holland Marek Edelman (1919-2009): Holocaust survivor and the last leader of the Warsaw Ghetto. When being interviewed – close up of his face, smoking one cigarette after the other…
Yevpatoria, Crimea, Ukraine, occupied by Russia since 2014. A song from the film about the city: “Here the sea gives me so much tenderness and love and health for years to come. Gardens and wonderful colors are all around, the…
From FB I copy who were the winners of the new documentary festival in Iceland: In our closing screening we didn’t only see a wonderful documentary, The Human Shelter (by Danish director Boris Bertram, ed.), but also gave awards to…
This is how the organisers introduce the festival: Welcome to IceDocs! “The first ever edition of Iceland Documentary Film Festival takes place in Akranes on 17th-21st of July 2019. Our mission is to introduce quality documentaries to local audience and…
Via the FNE (FilmNewEurope) I find a good interview with the director of ”Solo”, the Czech/French director and producer Artemio Benki, who reflects on being a French, yet living in Czech Republic for quite some time, chosing a theme for…
The Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries (BSD) is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, taking place in Riga, Latvia, from September 3 to 7 and mostly focusing on the projects from a greater Baltic…
… in Japan hosts a bi-annual documentary film festival of high quality. I have previously – see – praised the festival for its modest pr activity and seriousness. Old-fashioned some might say, I would say refreshing that in the…
”More than 100 wonderful documentary films as well as a great array of short fictions and experimental cinema representing 40 countries, is what characterizes the film competition…”, are words from the press release sent out a couple of days ago…
This film had its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Festival that ends tomorrow, July 6. It has had three screenings, and let me start this review of a film, that will conclude with the highest marks on this site…
It’s a strong piece of observational public service documentary, Greek/French director Marco Gastine has made. “Public Service” reminding us about, what legendary Scottish John Grierson thought should be the role of documentaries: to make the audience, the civil society understand…
… her 65 minutes long documentary has its premiere in Karlovy Vary tonight. The play- and colourful Latvian director is very busy on Facebook, where she for a long time has posted great photos, the last couple of days also…
This film that I first got to watch yesterday having heard and read about it, only positive words… Here is the annotation from IDFA’s Docs for Sale: “Benedetta (Barrese) wants to disappear. An iconic fashion model in the 1960s, she…
“The film screen is not a window through which you look at the world, it is a world in itself.” DAFilms.com presents yet another documentary film classic, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Recall his works from the golden collection of European cinema.…
The BFI Doc Society publishes a very good newsletter. In the one I received yesterday, there was a text about the presence of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose last film ”The Rest” was screened at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. He…
At the first session of the Ex Oriente the directors taking part were asked to write a text “I am your character” in a couple of hours. I used the two hours before meeting the directors with their texts to…
… with the subtitle ”Find Your Way – Vision – Space and Storytelling” here in Banská Stiavnoca in Slovakia – is going to its end. Two more program points, exiting both of them, and then a summing up tomorrow. First…
It was a very entertaining afternoon experience yesterday in Banská Stiavnica attending the screening of the 2015 documentary by Robert Kirchhoff and Filip Remunda (they call each other Robo and Filo!) followed by a masterclass with the two that gave…
I am in Banská Stiavnica in Slovakia, where the first session of the Ex Oriente workshop takes place. I have been invited as a substitute for Iikka Vehkalahti and I am happy to attend at the workshop of which I…
Readers of filmkommentaren will know that I am very happy with Syrian Orwa Nyrabia being the artistic director of IDFA. Step by step he is changing the festiwal together with his competent Staff. This post aims at making you read…
With the Austrian title: «Gehört, Gesehen – Ein RadioFilm“… 5 years after maestro Nicolas Philibert made his „Maison de la Radio », here is another equally fascinating visit to a radio broadcasting channel: Ö1, part of the ORF in Austria,…
I have met Valentin, the projectionist, on screen, at several workshops and presentations, and I have seen how fragments, all these clips, of his life slowly have become a film that now – bravo – is to have its premiere…
”Me No Worry, Me No Care, Me Go Marry a Millionaire, If He Dies Me No Cry, Me Go Marry Another Guy”… are the words Pomm uses to wake up Elisabeth, who reacts with a smile. Pomm calls Elisabeth mother…
The Halny? Shocking film! Says someone coming from a flat country after having watched a film about the power of the wind in a mountain area. I had never heard about the halny before so I made a visit to…
… the new film by Asif Kapadia („Amy“ and „Senna”), one of the masters in archive based documentaries, „The movie melds personal recordings with omnipresent reportage to portray the turbulent years of a gifted footballer burning brightly in late 1980’s…
– a copy paste from the festival’s FB page: Having watched all the competitive films the International Documentary Jury of the 59th Krakow Film Festival consisting of: Jacek Petrycki – chairman (Poland), Talal Derki (Germany), Marja Pallassalo (Finland), Shane Smith…
I was not in Krakow for the festival this year, but I saw the films in the main international competition and gave my points together with other film journalists – and made 4 texts for the Daily Newspaper, which is…
A lot of awards were distributed last night in Tel Aviv at the 21st edition of DocAviv. Let me mention the two main awards and give you the link – below – to the festival website. Winner of Israeli Competition…
He said many clever things, Audrius Stonys, at DocsBarcelona, where his film ”Bridges of Time”, directed with Latvian Kristine Briede, at two screenings had a good audience as had the masterclass with the Lithuanian director. Festival director Joan Gonzalez, whose…
Fernando Botero… all art interested people know him from his paintings and sculptures. I have been reminded of him again and again when arriving to the airport in Barcelona, where his horse sculpture is a meeting point. Don Millar, the…
Cecilia Lidin, member of EDN and former director of the association from 2009-2011, now film consultant at the Danish Film Institute writes today on FB : Calling all EDN Members! Tomorrow the EDN office will be moved from Copenhagen to Amsterdam.…
Let me remind you that when DocsBarcelona started 22 years ago all pitching sessions were public. When the EDN launched the workshops in The South of Europe, with the support of the EU Media Programme, the first one took place…
DocsBarcelona is making a political statement. The festival showed “Avec un Sourire, la Revolution” by Canadian Alexandre Chartrand, on the 19th to an audience of around 700 people, who gave the film and its message a standing ovation. AND the…
I have made a copy paste of the fine text from the DocsBarcelona website, presenting the presence of Lithuanian documentary master director Audrius Stonys: 7 SHOTS 7 is the annual proposal of DocsBarcelona to a personality in the audiovisual world.…
At the DocsBarcelona today, at a special session the first episode of a new Netflix original documentary series will be screened. Normally I would say, all right and so what, but as the director is León Siminiani I am interested.…
Joan Gonzalez, director of the festival this morning, in Catalan: Bon dia! Ahir amb mes de 2100 espectadors va ser el dia amb mes afluència de públic de totes les edicions del @DocsBarcelona No podem començar millor la segona setmana del…
Towards the end of the film, Martìn Perino is in a school class with his friend, the dancer Solé. He talks to the students: ”Solé and I would like you to write down, what you feel or think, when you…
The wonderful photo above from the opening of DocsBarcelona some days ago does not represent the whole truth. Green should have been more dominant. At least according to my experience yesterday, where I was in the cinema for 6 hours…
Indeed, that was a lovely Friday at the cinema – in Barcelona on the second day of full program. As one of the programmers of the DocsBarcelona festival, it is a pleasure to sit with the audience to see how…
… and when that is the case, like last night at DocsBarcelona, the participants get a memorable treat at a masterclass from a master, who has a lot to say about filmmaking. And who is a performer, who knows how…
Full house, of course, for the opening screening of “Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky, who was there on stage answering a few questions, asking his first assistant director and editor on the film, Ainara Vera, to come to the stage and…
First there was this one – – “EDN Bylaws Violated…” Then there was a letter from the (self-appointed) interim director Flore Deroose sent to EDN members via EDN Admin System, if you did not get it, ask her on flore@edn.network…
Yes, it is tonight that DocsBarcelona opens with the screening of “Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky, a dear friend of the festival and a true master of cinema. The festival runs until the 25th with films in the CCCB, cultural centre,…
International Competition Best Film –The Disappearance of My Mother (Photo) – by Beniamino Barrese Jury statement – “This film openly talks about respect, dignity, beauty and honesty. The film makes us think about how we treat privacy and who has…
Csilla Kato, member of the Caucasus Jury at Cinédoc Tbilisi wrote this longer version of motivation for the winner: Earthquake shakes our basic security feeling and the basic assumption, belief, that we can accommodate comfortable life on a supporting and…
10 projects were part of the Civil Pitch in Tbilisi, one of the activities of the Industry section of Cinédoc Tbilisi festival in the capital of Georgia. After a couple of days of training led by Daniel Abma and Brigid…
After the screening of a beautiful 2018 restored copy of “Etre et Avoir”, the film by Nicolas Philibert, that he made in 2001 to be premiered in 2002, to be an amazing audience success in cinemas in France, 2 mio.…