Mikhail Barynin: 24 Snows
Take a look at the photo. If you are addicted to documentaries like me you think of Nanook, don’t you? If you have been around for decades like me, you might also think of Estonian master Mark Soosaar, who travelled…
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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Ryan White: Serena
This film about tennis superstar Serena Williams is one more of the many current documentary portraits of celebrities in the entertainment business and political life. Contrary to the classics in this direct cinema tradition (“Primary” (JFK), “Lonely Boy” (Paul Anka),…
Two of the Competition Films at MIFF
– i.e. Moscow International Film Festival, that has a competition section for documentaries with 8 films. I have had the pleasure to get access to some of them, here are some notes on the two I have watched so far,…
Youth in Randers 1978-1979 /2
… seen by Finn Larsen and Lars Johansson, a photo exhibition at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, running until August, curated by Finn Larsen and Hans Grundsø, with an exhibition newspaper catalogue of almost 100 pages that is in Danish AND English…
P. Lozinski: You Have No Idea How Much I Love You
A couple of weeks ago I wrote articles for the Krakow Festival newspaper. One of them had the headline “Lozinski” and was about father and son, Marcel and Pawel. I saw that there was a new film by Pawel in…
Doc Alliance Selection 2016
… sounds very formal, much better if you call it, like the organizers also do, “2016: Fresh Documentary Talents at the Upcoming Ninth Das Awards”, “Das” standing for “The Doc Aliance Selection Award”, that is to be distributed August 7…
Ung i Randers/Youth in Randers 1978-1979
Later this week I will visit an exhibition in Øksnehallen in Copenhagen. An exhibition that has been set up by the two photographers Finn Larsen and Lars Johansson, wholived and worked in Randers, the sixth biggest city in Denmark, around…
D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus på SVT
It’s not often you get the chance to salute a broadcaster for putting a focus on “stars” of the documentary history. Therefore a big hurra for Swedish public broadcaster SVT for programming 5 films of the American couple, direct cinema…
Cameraperson wins in Sheffield
Sheffield Doc Fest is over with a huge Industry section and a festival, with former ITV person Claire Aguilar as responsible. Kirsten Johnson’s personal “Cameraperson” got the first prize, here is a clip from Realscreen: Ido Haar’s “Presenting Princess Shaw”,…
Til lykke med fødselsdagen JØRGEN LETH
… ønsker vi her fra Filmkommentaren. Vi gør det med et af vores yndlingsportrætter af dig, det er godt nok dit, fra din blog, men vi tilegner os det lige, for det er et af de mest inspirerende, et af…
Nenad Puhovski: Generation 68
I have known Nenad Puhovski for almost 20 years. His contribution to the development of Croatian documentary is enormous as a teacher, producer, director and ZagrebDox festival initiator and director. He was on the board of EDN (European Documentary Network),…
DocAlliance…
We have on this site for years announced the free offers from ”your online documentary cinema”, DocAlliance, the best vod you can find in Europe with a focus on Central and Eastern European documentaries but not only, there is also…
Why I Love Polish Documentaries
It all started on the island of Bornholm. From 1990 and for ten years we Danes arranged a film festival on this wonderful place in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The name was Balticum Film & TV Festival and…
Lozinski
If any name is connected to Polish documentary this is the one: Lozinski. Marcel and Pawel. Father and son. Let me start with the father, who is a bit older than me but we are from the same generation. We…
Krakow FF: New York, New York
Oh New York, this urban jungle full of tales and stories. Of people who long for a good life. Or just for a life. Rich and poor, all ages, all colours. All languages. Michael Glawogger (RIP) was there to make…
Krakow Film Festival: Quality and Diversity
The Krakow Film Festival is over for me. I have – with this one – delivered the agreed texts for the festival newspaper and I have watched the films in the Documentary Competition to give marks together with other critics.…
Krakow Film Festival Awards
Last night the award ceremony was held at the 56th Krakow Film Festival. Projects in development, participating in the impressive Industry section, were honored and supported, and there were decisions made by juries in the many festival sections. I saw…
DocsBarcelona Awards and Numbers
Apart from the already mentioned, see below, main award for Martin Solá’s “The Chechen Family”, the director Marcela Zamora received The Amnesty International Catalunya Award and the Jury’s Special Mention for her touching “The Room of Bones”. It is a…
DocsBarcelona: Chechen Family
On the last day of DocsBarcelona – in the afternoon – I attended the screening of ”Chechen Family” (”La Familia Chechena”) by Argentinian director Martin Solá, who brought to me not only a strong film but also the best Q&A…
DocsBarcelona Vermut & Shadow Girl
Wonderful. The smell of books that meet you, when you enter the Altaïr Bookshop on Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. You go downstairs to smell and have the best coffee in Barcelona together with film directors, whose films are…
DocsBarcelona: When Directors Intervene
Look at the photo. Gaudi. La Pedrera, built between 1906 and 1910, 92 Paseo de Gracia. A must-see for visitors to Barcelona. But also the yearly venue for master classes at DocsBarcelona like yesterday, where (from left to right with…
DocsBarcelona Films Meet Audience
… and directors inform and answer questions after the screenings. The heart of a festival, is it not, when the filmmakers get the chance to have feedback from the viewers, who have enjoyed their work on a big screen, vice…
DocsBarcelona 2016 Started
… with full house at the Aribau Multicines, the 1100 seats were occupied for the opening ceremony with a couple of rappers, opening speech by festival director Joan González and the screening of ”Sonita” (also a rapper) by Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami,…
Jakob Brossmann: Lampedusa in Winter/ 2
In June 2nd to 8th the Danish Cinematheque at the Film House in Copenhagen shows, as Documentary of the Month, “Lampedusa in Winter” by Jakob Brossmann, a film that has and will travel the world winning several awards. Below you…
Magnus og Fredrik Gertten: Den unge Zlatan /2
Becoming Zlatan / Den unge Zlatan har sin danske biografpremiere i det beundringsværdige DOXBIO samarbejde onsdag den 1. juni 2016 i 50 biografer i hele landet. Se hvilke i et link nedenfor. Filmen havde festivalpremiere på IDFA i november sidste år…
Gabe Polsky: Red Army
Jeg ved meget lidt om ishockey, efter filmen om “Red Army” ved jeg meget mere. Det er de fremragende arkivoptagelser fra kampe i Sovjetunionen og i Canada, og ved diverse verdens- og olympiske mesterskaber, som fortæller denne fodboldgale blogger, at…
Doker 2016 Program
With the long name Moscow International Documentary Film Festival Doker has launched its second festival edition that runs until May 24. I am very amazed of what the young team behind the festival is doing full of enthusiasm and vision…
Doker 2016 Profile
A thoughtful and clear text taken from the site of Doker: Moscow International Documentary Film Festival DOKer has stemmed from the project of the same name which screens independent non-fiction. DOKer project is aimed at analyzing and screening in Russia…
Film Uni Babelsberg Konrad Wolf
It’s nice to teach. I have done so for three days and have the final round today in green and rich Potsdam, at the impressive film school (now Universität) named after Konrad Wolf. Invited by Peter Badel for the second…
6 Types of Documentaries
It’s the never ending story – the discussions around the definition of what is a documentary and which words to use. We still go to literature to characterise, using phrases like ”a film poem”, ”an essay”, ”novelistic” etc. And we…
Andrés di Tella: 327 Cuadernos
Cuadernos means Notebooks or Diaries if I get it right – written by Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia. Regret to say that I had never heard about him before, even if his long bibliography includes works translated into English, French and…
Michael Madsen Posts/Blogindlæg
There is still time to pick up on the free retrospective of Michael Madsen on DocAlliance, an event that made editor Allan Berg update our posts on the Danish director, quite many actually, from Celestial Night to The Visit, written…
Michael Madsen Retrospective For Free
– with this headline on the DocAlliance website: Visual Philosophy of the Unknown. The (unsigned) article on the website is a very fine introduction to an original auteur, who with few films have reached international fame. Here is a full…
Daniel Abma: Transit Havana
… that has the subtitle ”New Heroes of the Cuban Revolution” is a well told character driven, emotional and informational, visually excellent documentary from a country, where the president’s daughter Mariella Castro is ”heading a new state program for transgender…
Marta Prus: Talk to Me
I have a weak spot for Polish documentaries and this fine film by young Marta Prus makes me – again – wonder why. Is it because the directors know how to create a tense atmosphere very much due to excellent,…
Christian Braad Thomsen: Fassbinder /2
Danish documentary master Christian Braad Thomsen’s Fassbinder portrait opens in theatres in New York today. Richard Brody praises the film in a great article in The New Yorker (April 28 2016), in which he compares it with another portrait film…
DocsBarcelona 2016
The program is announced for DocsBarcelona 2016, May 23 to May 29. I have below copy-pasted the press release that came out today. As one of the programmers for the festival part, I am looking forward to attend and participate…
Zelig Documentary Film School 2016-2019
My friends at the Bolzano based film school Zelig has asked me to tell our readers that the call for applications for the 2016-2019 training cycle is open. Normally we don’t do that kind of promotion on this site but…
CinéDOC Tbilisi – Good EUnews
Georgia is (still) not a member of the European Union and yet there is a cultural link that works as in this case, I copy-paste a message from the festival FB page: ”We are very proud to announce that CinéDOC-Tbilisi…
DocsBarcelona 2016 Poster
By courtesy of Louie Palu, the main character of ”Kandahar Journals”, that he also directed together with Devin Gallagher, the upcoming DocsBarcelona festival, is using one of his photos to promote the festival. Stunning. Attractive. From the website of the…
Jonas Mekas See Everything Like for the First Time
Renowned critic and writer Richard Brody has – in the New Yorker – written a long and extremely interesting article on – as he calls him – ”Jonas Mekas, Champion of the ”Poetic” Cinema”. This time the theme is not…
Audrius Stonys: The Truth of Life…
… this is just a natural thing in documentary filmmaking, the moment you think you know everything and it only remains to capture your “discoveries”, the truth of life takes over and turns against you. So, I let my visions…
Sara Broos: Homeland
14 minutes was all needed to make this gem of a film. It reminds me, who watches loads of feature duration documentaries, how strong a short film can be when you have a wonderful person in front of the camera…
Alberti & Zickyte: I’m Not From Here
From the production side it is interesting. The film is commissioned by Danish festival CPH:DOX under its program CPH:LAB, where filmmakers from different countries meet to work together. 10 intensive workshop days, original ideas to develop, one year to make…
DOK Leipzig 2016: Disobedience
“This year’s edition of DOK Leipzig, which runs from 31 October to 6 November, stands under the motto “Disobedience”, in German “Ungehorsam”. The term acts as an integral aspect throughout the Special Programmes. For instance, the Retrospective explores the styleshaping…
Krakow FF Announces Intl. Competition
The festival, that runs May 29 till June 5, has previously announced the selection of Polish documentaries and short films and animated films for competitive sections, as well as a special focus on Sweden this year. And not to forget…
Olexa & Scalisi: Half Life in Fukushima
It makes me glad, when it goes well for former students from the Bolzano based Zelig Documentary School, where I was a teacher for many years. Therefore my curiosity made me ask Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi for a vimeo…
Salomé Jashi: The Dazzling Light of Sunset
A magic sense of piousness is what Georgian Salomé Jashi creates at the beginning in her new documentary film, that has its world premiere at the Visions du Réel in Nyon this coming Wednesday April 20. A traveling shot from…
Peter Greenaway: A Medium for Visual Intelligence
Always provoking, always exaggerating as part of the provocation, and yet there is always some truth in what he says – Peter Greenaway, this time as part of his getting a BAFTA recognition for his work at an event in…
Don Edkins – EDN Interview
We have had several posts including Don Edkins, described in one of them as ”…a true gentleman in the world documentary community, and a man who in his work in a true Griersonian way seeks to combine the documentary art…