Dokumania Back on Danish Television
A warm welcome back to the strand Dokumania on DR2 prime time every tuesday. We were a bit worried that it had disappeared after ”the mother” of it all, Mette Hoffmann, had left DR. It did not. So here we…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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Read MoreDokumania Back on Danish Television
One World 2017: The Art of Collaboration
Of course documentary festivals react to what happens in the world right now. The Prague-based human rights documentary film festival One World does, as says a press release that came in this morning. An edited version comes here: Theresa May’s…
Awards at Sundance Festival 2017
The Sundance festival handed out many awards yesterday at the closing ceremony. I picked out two from the World Cinema Documentary section. I have seen and praised one of them, the other I am looking forward to see. First…
Neil Young Picks his Favourites
… at the Finnish DocPoint Festival and it is not that Neil Young but the film critic with the same name, whose competent reviews in Hollywood Reporter and Sight & Sound I have followed with pleasure after I met Young…
Oscar Documentary Nominations
The documentary short list of 15 became 5 – to compete for the feature documentary Oscars. How many have you seen? Many FB’s have posted that question during the last few days after the final nomination had been announced. All…
Vitaly Mansky Cinema Warrior
The Trieste Film Festival that goes on until January 29th, and in its documentary section – and the industry part (pitching etc.) – had a special focus on the Baltic countries, with films by Audrius Stonys (Woman and the Glacier)…
Hanka Kastelicová Honoured at FIPA
She has been around, actually everywhere is my impression, at least in the Eastern European circles that I also visit to watch original, well told stories. Hanka Kastelicová, executive producer of documentaries at HBO Europe, has indeed done a lot…
Magnificent7 Doc Festival Belgrade 2017
The website of the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade is up and running. The festival starts February 1st – I am happy to be part of the selection team with Svetlana and Zoran Popovic again, for the 13th time and you…
Release Oleg Sentsov
… was the working title of the film project by Askold Kurov pitched on several occasions, and the words being expressed on several occasions at film festivals and elsewhere. The Ukrainian filmmaker and writer was arrested by the Russians in…
DocsBarcelona Reaches 100.000 Viewers
… in 2016, a big step from the 78.204 in 2015, to be totally precise: 102.769. Joan Gonzàlez, the man on the top of what he calls ”the project” DocsBarcelona, is a proud man, when he gives me the numbers…
Uldis Brauns 1932-2017 /2
The other Uldis – Cekulis – one of the producers of the film being made right now, ”Baltic New Wave”, wrote to me yesterday: Tomorrow we go with Kristine (Briede) to Saldus church, it is the biggest town on the…
The Poetic Documentary
I think we said ”poetic documentary” more than a hundred times in Aarhus during the weekend, where the mini-festival Baltic Frames took place. The theme for the festival chosen by the curators Signe Van Zundert and Niels Bjørn Wied, also…
Documentary of the Month: Weiner
… at the Danish Cinemateket Copenhagen January 26 – February 1. American ”Weiner” by Josh Kriegmann and ElyseSteinberg is a well made observational documentary about the rise and fall of Anthony Weiner, the congressman whose campaign to become mayor of…
Uldis Brauns 1932-2017
Sad news, Audrius Stonys said, when we met at the cinema Øst for Paradis in Aarhus, where the mini-festival Baltic Frames takes place: Uldis Brauns passed away, 84 years old. Brauns was with Herz Frank the leading man in what…
Roy Andersson
We have to wait until 2019 but Roy Andersson is always worth waiting for. I was happy to read this today and hurry to do a copy-paste from the (free) newsletter of Nordisk Film & TV Fond: (Roy) Andersson’s About…
My Name is Popovic
Yes, look at the lovely photo taken by Maja Medic yesterday in Belgrade at the award ceremony at Dvorona Kulturnog Centra, where the new award “Nebojša Popović” was given to SVETLANA and ZORAN POPOVIĆ for ”their devoted work on promoting and critically…
DocPoint Program Announced
The documentary festival in Helsinki, DocPoint, that this year takes place January 23-29, has a reputation for high quality, a broad international overview of the best of the best – and of course this is where you can see new…
Michael Glawogger: Untitled
Good news on a sad background – coming from the Berlinale. I am so much looking forward to see the film by Master Glawogger and Monika Willi – it will have its world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama 2017: “This film…
Baltic Films in Aarhus Denmark
Below you find a post in Danish calling for people who are interested in Film, Baltikum, Ukraine, Post-Soviet History and current politics in the region – to come and watch films at the second edition of Baltic Frames mini-festival in…
Best Documentaries 2016/ Intro
2016… should I choose 20 or 16 as the Best Documentaries I have seen this year. I took 16. They appear in a random order. I have not put them in order of 1, 2, 3 etc. with 1 being…
Best Documentaries 2016
Photo from Homeland, Iraq Year Zero by Abbas Fahnel Rahul Jain: Machines Raoul Peck: I Am Not Your Negro Kirsten Johnson: Cameraperson Ugis Olte & Morten Traavik: Liberation Day Torstein Grude & Niels Pagh Andersen: Mogadishu…
Award to Svetlana & Zoran Popovic
So well deserved… I thought when it was announced yesterday that my dear Belgrade friends Svetlana and Zoran Popovic were to be recipients of an award, a new one set up in the memory of the critic Nebojša Popović, who…
How Docs Reach the Audience
3 months after the St.Petersburg conference on ”How Docs Reach the Audience” 12 videos are now available online for everyone interested. With around 12 hours of interesting talks about Nordic and Russian experiences, when it comes to reach an audience……
Photography
For one who daily watches moving images and is in the programming process for a festival – 90 documentaries in a month – it is pure pleasure to stop for a moment and look at photographs, be it the reportage…
No Nation Films
A mail came in on the 14th of December from old friend Orwa Nyrabia, here is first a quote from the mail and then one more from an article written by Melanie Goodfellow for Screendaily, link below, read it all:…
Jon Bang Carlsen, Pamela Cohn, Viesturs Kairišs…
… and me are online thanks to our visit to the 2016 DocuDays UA in Kiev. The festival has recorded the lectures made and edited them into nice, informative videos where ”experience is shared”. There are clips in between the…
Warscape
… is the title of a contest initiated by the Docudays UA (Ukraine) festival together with International Committee of the Red Cross. Yulia Serdyukova, who is part of the selection committee of the hopefully many interesting projects coming in from…
Finn Larsen: The Dump
The Dump – growing mountains of waste in Greenland, is part of the exhibition ”MANS LAND” 2012, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Galleri Pi, Copenhagen and museums in Greenland, now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cta1-rrX6Xs&feature=youtu.be (The Dump, streaming, ENGLISH version) (The Dump, streaming, GRØNLANDSK version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbHfLqkyRl0&t=197s (The Dump, streaming, DANSK…
Aleppo
Syrian Guevara Namer, who I have known from the Damascus DOXBOX festival, and who now lives in Berlin, sent me a link and a text asking us to share, which we do through this. First the text, then the link…
Rahul Jain: Machines
You are 12-13 minutes into the film before someone is saying something. Before that the camera operated by Mexican Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva takes you into a huge textiles factory in Gujarat, India to – with the words of Richard Leacock…
Raoul Peck: I Am Not Your Negro
Lucky punch! We had lunch with producer and director of the Robert Frank film ”Don’t Blink”, Melinda Shopsin and Laura Israel, who recommended us to visit a new cinema in downtown New York, Metrograph, a very nice venue, European art…
IDA Winners
It was ”O.J.: Made in America” by Ezra Edelmann that got the ”Best Feature Award” at the IDA (International Documentary Organization) ceremony in Los Angeles friday night. There was nothing for excellent films as ”Cameraperson” by Kirsten Johnson or ”I…
Rembrandt, Ukrainians, Eisenstein, Goldin
And what do they have in common? I will tell you in this small report from New York, where everyone talks about – well, you know who, we had to struggle to pass his blocked corner at his Tower on…
IDA Awards to be Given Friday in LA
IDA, The International Documentary Association, is awarding documentary filmmakers and films this coming friday at a ceremony in Los Angeles. It is now ”award season” as they say in the US film circles and the IDA event is one of…
A Visual Weekend in Philadelphia
… must include a visit to the extraordinary Barnes Foundation. We were there thanks to Philly citizens Anita Reher, ex-EDN and now running the Flaherty in New York, and Robert Goodman, photographer and film teacher. So first some words…
Shadow Girl Wins 3 awards in Valparaiso
And I got more news from Docsbarcelona Valparaiso – the beautiful film ”Shadow Girl” that premiered in Barcelona at the DocsBarcelona in May received three awards at the festival: The National Award, the Audience Award and the Interactive Award. The…
Syrian Love Story Wins in Valparaiso
The entreprenant director of DocsBarcelona Joan Gonzalez is also director of DocsBarcelona Valparaiso in Chile, the first edition with a national and an international competition, training sessions – as he proudly texted me some days ago: In the city where…
VOD for Arabic Creative Documentaries
I had the pleasure to meet Palestinian Reem Bader at the Antalya Film Forum earlier this autumn. She told me about the vod platform she was involved in building up. It looks great. Let me quote from the site: ”Welcome…
Flying Film Festival 2017
No, we normally don’t promote festivals calling for films, but there are exceptions like this one. A festival in the air, with Francesca Scalisi and Mark Olexa as captains. These are the words from the cockpit, and a link to…
Diedie Weng: The Beekeeper and His Son
China, the country of so many stories that we have not yet heard. Here is one. A beautiful one, premiered at the festival in Nyon, a multilayered work, as a good documentary should be, about countryside/city, generation conflicts in a…
IDFA: Kogusashvili/ Sarvestani/ Hendrikx
Three more brief reviews of ”Gogita’s New Life” (Levan Koguashvili), ”Prison Sisters” (Nima Sarvestani) and ”Stranger in Paradise” (Guido Hendrikx). With some genre simplification: A docu-comedy, a journalistic/humanistic documentary and a hybrid documentary. Georgian Koguashvili, whose film, with all respect,…
Lucija Stojevic: La Chana/ 2
It must be wonderful to get an Audience Award, and especially at IDFA in Amsterdam, where the amount of people who watch your film is huge. Yhe 2016 Audience Award has been decided upon and it went to the film…
Lucija Stojevic: La Chana
Antonia Santiago Amador, known as La Chana, is the unique personality of the film with the same title. It is on the top of the top ten Audience favourites at the IDFA festival that runs until tomorrow sunday included. It…
IDFA Nowhere to Hide/Still Tomorrow
I have forgotten why IDFA has decided to announce winners on a wednesday for a festival that goes on until sunday included? But good for those of us, in Amsterdam or online from home, who are still trying to catch…
IDFA: Alberti, Ni Chianáin, Hristov
Maite Alberdi, Chilean documentary director, who made the wonderful ”Tea Time” in 2014 and the equally wonderful ”I’m not from Here” this year together with Lithuanian Giedre Zickyte, a film that is nominated for the European Film Awards – has…
Ugis Olte & Morten Traavik: Liberation Day/ 2
In the ”Guardian Film Today” that I subscribe to (it is for free and for everyone) there was tuesday 22nd of Nov. a review by Peter Bradshaw worth reading as most of his articles Here is a text clip: Most…
Tatyana Chistova: Convictions
It’s absurd theatre! Well, I have tried it myself in 1967. To be called for military service in the Danish army. I chose the easy solution to take one (completely useless) year of service at the air force instead of…
Grude and Andersen: Mogadishu Soldier
I had to choose that still from the IDFA introduction to the film that I have just finished watching. It’s a girl in pain, a victim from the brutal civil war in Somalia, that – says the end credits –…
IDFA: Lozinski, le Maire, Delane, Cordes
They are quite different in themes and styles, the films that I am going to write about in this post. What they have in common is that the directors mentioned in the headline all have films shown at IDFA, Amsterdam…
IDFA November 16/27
Yes, it started yesterday, the fabulous documentary event in Amsterdam and today it’s all over with screenings, masterclasses, the academy, some films are in competition, others are not, facebook is full of ”come and see my film”, there will be…