A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Voila, now it happened. I wrote this when at DOKLeipzig last year : ”Dum Spiro Spero” (photo) by author Pero Kvesic, a man who suffers behind the camera from reduced lung capacity. It’s a wonderful simple film, it has a…
I saw only a few of the Polish films from the national competition but two of them I saw got awards from the jury headed by Dariusz Jablonski, who is also the head of the Polish Film Academy. In that…
Below, in a previous post, some positive words about Doc Lab Poland and its Docs to Start, and now I repeat myself by talking about Docs to Go!, the presentation of 8 projects hosted by always enthusiastic and professional Rada…
Text that I wrote for the Daily newspaper of the festival: I started the wednesday morning at the Festival Centre moderating the „Docs to Start“ session, that is part of the impressive and super-professionally run DocLab Poland. 9 projects were…
Content is King, we are often taught, the issue/theme is the most important, the form is only the carrier. Mostly those ”teaching” are television people, who I have often heard saying at diverse pitching sessions: ”This film is too artistic…
A first glance at the main competition of the festival makes me say Diversity. In terms of countries represented, in terms of duration with several films that have the television length of around 52 minutes and films which are around…
Indian director Rahul Jain said the following to the audience sunday night at the closing ceremony of DocsBarcelona, where he got the Amnesty Award: Thank you to DocsBarcelona and the Amnesty International Jury. In my youthful idealism I’d like to…
It was a proud festival director Joan Gonzalez, who before the award announcement last night told the audience that almost 16000 spectators had visited DocsBarcelona this year. An increase of 50%! Much to do with the festival being longer than…
Una Noche Fantastica, she said, when she came to the stage after the film ”La Chana” about her had been shown. Full house for the closing film of the 20th edition of DocsBarcelona, standing ovation in several stages – when…
I Have No Idea How Much They Loved It – but I think they did, the audience for the masterclass with Polish Pawel Lozinski. We (Lozinski and I as the moderator) enjoyed a lot what we were asked to do:…
”New Directions and Perspectives in Documentary Films” was the title of the 90 minutes long panel discussion at the CCCB friday afternoon, moderated in a professional and warm manner by Debra Zimmerman from Women Make Movies in New York, the…
Oh, my dear Barcelona, city of architecture, Gaudi, a beach, mountain, gourmet restaurants, football… I have come here for DocsBarcelona for 20 years, I love you but I suffer to see you killing yourself. The traffic is noisy, overwhelming, polluting,…
I have organised this together with Martina Rogers from DocsBarcelona for years and I enjoy it very much. From the picture (from last year) you might see that in nice sofas there is seated an exclusive panel of people from…
We had the traditional sunday dinner invited by festival director Joan Gonzalez. His wife and my wife were there, Joan and his son Marti, with whom I always talk football. Barca – FC Barcelona – first of all, on the…
… and Son, and Jens Soering. I saw four films yesterday i.e. saturday here at the DocsBarcelona 20th edition. Let me start with a wonderful moment at the Q&A after the film ”All Governments Lie”. A 12 year old girl…
It was the third time that I saw ”Untitled” by Michael Glawogger and Monika Willi. Glawogger was here in Barcelona in 2014 to show his ”Whore’s Glory” and do a masterclass. Some months later the same year he passed away.…
So there we were last night for the opening of the 20th edition of DocsBarcelona in the Aribau Multicines. Full house and fine atmosphere. The audience got up to sing the Beatles ”All you need is love”, changed to ”All…
No objections to the choice of the jury at CinéDOC 2017, who gave the main award to ”You Have No Idea How Much I love You” by Polish Pawel Lozinski. With a special mention to Miroslav Janek’s ”Normal Autistic Film”.…
Sooo, what is that. I was curious and happy to be invited to see if that can work – the match of ngo’s and filmmakers. Such a good idea, a challenge for the filmmakers and for the ngo’s. Supported and…
”3 Rooms on Melancholia” by Pirjo Honkasalo: The film is from 2004. I had not seen it for many years and it was a different experience today. The film was the same but I had changed. There are children in…
With Lithuania as the guest country here at CineDOC Tbilisi festival, it was natural to have Giedre Zickyte visiting. The director, who has had a big success with the film ”Master and Tatyana” with and about the brilliant photographer Vitas…
… for me, arriving early saturday morning to the Georgian capital to have a wonderful first day at the five year old festival led by Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri. ”Welcome home”, a Georgian filmmaker said to me, and right…
I was there in Prague when American editor Joe Bini made his lecture in connection with the East Doc Platform. I wrote a small report that first of all had its focus on his collaboration with Werner Herzog. Now you…
The CinéDOC-Tbilisi festival starts tonight and what is the habit of most festivals for the opening night film, this is a light and entertaining one. With a subject that has been treated again and again, mostly in kliché-language: White male…
My first reaction was ”oh, did he not get that already”, but no. But this year the former BBC Storyville editor is to get it, the Special Award at the British Academy Television Awards 2017. No objections! Nick Fraser has…
More and more documentary film festivals pick a theme for their programs. The festivals want to state their comments on what goes on in the world and/or in their own country. This goes for the young Cinédoc-Tbilisi festival in Georgia.…
… is the title of the British WW2 comedy drama, directed by Danish Lone Scherfig, that I saw this morning in Grand Teatret in Copenhagen. It is a lovely picture to bring up the same term the protagonists use, when…
The press releases coming from the Leipzig festival are always well written. The one about the 2017 is copy-pasted here: DOK Leipzig’s anniversary edition’s theme is Nach der Angst (Post-Angst). It runs through the Special Programmes and is also linked…
A press release came in: ”In collaboration with its organizer, Institute of documentary film, Film, we have prepared a selection of the best works that have gone through this prestigious workshop throughout its history of 15 years! Nine critically acclaimed…
For those of our visitors, who don’t read Danish: I have written two reviews, with top scores, in Danish language as this could push Danes go to the cinema. ”Den anden side” by Pernille Rose Grønkjær about and with standup…
It’s not every day that a documentary takes it all as did ”Bobbi Jene” by Elvira Lind at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Three awards given yesterday to the film produced by Julie Leerskov and Sare Stockmann. The…
Grandmother is old and fragile, she can not live on her own. Her daughter with four children, 3 boys, the oldest 6-8 years old I guess, and a baby girl, moves in, to help; into a flat that has little…
Director Laura Cini was at DocsBarcelona 2016 at a rough cut screening in front of a selected panel with me as the moderator. She has now finished the film, sent it to me, asking my opinion as she experiences rejections…
There are a handful of documentaries in ”La Sélection officielle 2017” at the 70th edition of the Cannes Festival, May 17-28. No surprise that films by Agnès Varda, Raymond Depardon, Claude Lanzmann and Eugene Jarecki are listed, and no surprise…
So there they are the films selected for the 20th edition of DocsBarcelona. Listed in alphabetical order or in sections or according to screening hours and venue, it starts May 18 and ends May 28, with an extension of some…
I had high expectations. I had seen and admired the director’s ”Constantin and Elena” from 2008. I had seen Andrei Dascalescu pitching the project at East Doc Platform in 2016, I wrote these words on this site: ”(Planeta Petrila was)…
A press release came in from one of the oldest documentary film festivals, in Krakow, that celebrates its 57th edition BUT with a young competition on music documentaries, the fifth edition of this novelty. A quote of a quote: “As…
This is a copy-paste of the press release from Copenhagen Architecture Festival, that is indeed very active when it comes to the inclusion of the film medium: Denmark’s largest architecture festival Copenhagen Architecture Festival opens its fourth edition Wednesday, April…
With its fifth edition the organisers of this still very young Tbilisi Georgian festival, director Archil Khetagouri and coordinator Ileana Stanculescu, took the decision to move the event from October to May 11-16. Argumentation: Too much happens in October. And…
I was a jury member of the first DOKer festival in 2015 and am very happy to see that the filmmakers behind the event are able to continue their pioneer work of bringing films from around the world to the…
Luckily I live in a country where subtitling of films is the rule – no dubbing as in German or France, where as an example European cultural channel Arte is the big sinner in the language killing discipline. In Denmark…
I have met Shorena Tevzadze and producer Nikoloz Gogochuri several times at workshops in Georgia, where this fine film was developed. Their dedication to the theme and their love towards the characters of the film was always there; watching the…
The IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) has published a very informative, well made interview with Polish director Pawel Lozinski, who was at the EastDoc Platform in Prague, where he had a double role: to show his film ”You Don’t Know…
This is a clip from an interview with Slovak Robert Kirchhoff, whose ”A Hole in the Head” was reviewed on this site: Cineuropa: In your previous documentary, Normalization, you investigated a sensitive issue, and you are now pursuing another difficult theme,…
It feels unfinished, sketchy this personal film by Syrian Yaser Kassab. It is one long reflection and interpretation of, as the director has formulated it in the catalogue of Cinéma du Réel, “loss and grief”. Far from mainstream. In dark…
It’s a handmade cinema, Roman Bondarchuk said, after our pleasant tour to Lviv Film Center, where we visited the rooftop sunday morning. Saturday night a party had been held and Mr. Mykhailo, responsible for the running of the place, was…
Do you remember the film by Kostomarov called Together, Roman Bondarchuk asked me on the Virmanska Street, when we sunday were walking around in sunny Lviv in Western Ukraine. The couple in the film, Ludmila and Vladimir Loboda, were sitting…
A press release came out last night: The 14th International documentary films about human rights festival has ended in Kyiv. The awards ceremony was held in the Cinema House. The closing ceremony began with a gesture of solidarity with Ukrainian…
What kind of world do we leave for our children? A banal and pathetic question maybe. But it came to my mind this morning, when I attended the Warscape pitching in Kiev at the Docu/Pro section of Docudays. 6 projects…
… which is of course a simplification but I was thinking of it several times during the days here in Kiev, where the Docudays goes on, one of those many festivals, less known, compared to IDFA, CPH:DOX, DOKLeipzig and Hotdocs…