A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Grand old man and enfant terrible of French militant cinema René Vautier died Sunday January 4th in his home in Cancale, Brittany, at the age of 86. Originally from Brittany, René Vautier fought the Germans as a very young member…
DocAlliance starts its new year with a present to its (hopefully) many viewers: ”Olga” by Miroslav Janek is available for free viewing until January 11. It is a film that was on my Best of 2014 – here is a…
On the way to the Zelig film school in Bolzano a stop was made in Berlin for some days. Apart from enjoying oysters in KaDeWee or la Fayette the city’s many good restaurants often have Kalbsleber in its classic version…
First text of 2015. Happy New Year to all our readers! I sit in the armchair of my room, the place to be when football is to be watched on the small tv screen, or documentaries on the computer via…
It was almost ”business as usual”, when the DFI (Danish Film Institute) proudly could announce that 15 Danish documentaries were selected to be screened at IDFA, for most documentarians the festival for films that have been categorized to be a…
Back to film blogging after holidays. Michael Haneke is the right one for a comeback. In the Paris Review winter 2014 issue there is a small excerpt from an interview with the director – if you want to read the…
Here we go again. A year has passed. I have seen films at festivals and in cinemas around Europe and in the US. I have seen films at home via links sent to me, thanks to many for their generosity.…
Alphabetical order: 1989 by Anders Østergaard and Erzsebet Racz, Denmark/Hungary 20,000 Days on Earth by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, UK Alentejo Alentejo by Sergio Tréfaut, Portugal Citizen Four by Laura Poitras, Germany/US Democrats by Camilla Nielsson, Denmark Garden Lovers…
Shame on me that I in my turbulence after the screening did not remember the beautiful review that Sara Thelle wrote when she had watched the film in connection with cph:dox. I repeat two paragraphs here: … I (Sara Thelle)…
by Wiam Simav Bedirxan & Ossama Mohammed. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and has been to major festivals like Toronto, cph:dox and idfa. Two days ago it had a theatrical release in 30 cinemas in France, where the…
I love them all, the three year old grandchild Henry said, referring to the Krtek films made by Czech Zdeněk Miler. Even if he runs around saying Ninja Turtle all the time, his best moments are those with the animation…
Stephen Smith, one of the directors of “Vanishing Point”, wrote to me a couple of months ago. He asked if I would care to watch his film, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Apart from a very fine…
There has been quite a film party going on in the Latvian capital. Not only has the city, as Cultural Capital of Europe, hosted the EFA Awards – films have been shown at the Riga International Film Festival that ran…
A couple of months ago I wrote a text about the upcoming second edition of the Cinedoc festival in Tbilibi, Georgia. The festival included a section called Ukranian Voices with several films, also one that I had not heard about,…
Got this mail from Carmen Cobos this morning referring to a screening in Aarhus, Denmark tomorrow; “IMPERFECT HARMONY – my debut film as director will be shown in your country this Thursday, maybe you care to see it” – the…
Sergei Loznitsa was awarded one more time for his ”Maidan” (photo) at the festival in Firenze. The brief jury motivation goes like this: Timely in this current passage of History, the filmmaker calmly and masterfully engages in the unfolding of…
After a long career at festivals (winning the Grand Prix at Cinéma du Réel 2014) the feature length documentary by Mehran Tamadon opened in cinemas in Paris December 3. In many cinemas in the French capital, that is still unique…
Is it wrong to characterize a film as lovely? Well, the young woman on the still photo is wonderful to be with, and she has been made lovely through the approach of a director, who dares to leave the main…
Zhanna, Lyosha and Maria. St. Petersburg 2013. Small apartment. Full of smoke from the cigarettes of Zhanna and Lyosha. Maria is the mother of Lyosha. She provides the two junkies with food – and love. She works, they do not…
Erich Lessing, born 1923, Austrian reportage and art photographer, associated to Magnum, famous for photos from Hungary 1956 and for photos of art in museums. And probably for much more – which is not the theme of this film that…
The other day I visited the National Gallery in London. I was there for three hours, generously being introduced to the fabulous collection by skilled art historians, who took me and others to watch and learn. We stood in front…
Normally, there is no reason to bring a photo of two men signing a contract but in this case I want to honour my dear friend and colleague Joan Gonzalez (right) for making one more of his many dreams come…
The 55th edition of the Firenze based documentary Festival dei Popoli is running now – until December 5. A rich programme and it’s all very professionally presented on the website. And I liked the welcoming words of the festival director,…
Denmark’s oldest film journal Kosmorama (first issue in 1954) presents a slate of articles (online and in English as well) that could interest the true film buffs among our readers. The articles are written by film historians and academics. The…
Got this press release from Andrea Pruchová from DocAlliance this morning – concerning an early super-generous xmas gift to all of us documentary fans: His films tend to attract general attention. While festival juries churn out awards, as seen in…
How should a jury work? Is there a recipe? No, of course not. Should a jury talk after each screening or… how to remember the films you have seen? The idfa jury 2014 for First-Appearance competititon did like this, an…
Here is the full press release from idfa – it came in late last night: The winners have just been announced in IDFA’s various competition programs in the Compagnietheater in Amsterdam at the awards ceremony of the 27th IDFA. Of…
I met her in Damascus during the DoxBox festival and later again in Cairo for a workshop, so I know how hard Nadine Sahib has been working to complete her film, that now (bravo!) is at idfa, in the First…
From November 30th till December 7th the DEFC (Documentary & Experimental Film Center) organizes the 8th edition of Cinema Vérité Iran International Documentary Film Festival. There have previously been appeals for boycott of this festival, that of course is supported…
The 22nd edition of Camerimage in Poland, a festival that has its focus on cinemetography ended on the 22nd of November. The festival includes documentaries in its award-giving and distributes life-achievement awards as well. One was given to a well-known,…
It’s never too late to review an important documentary. I had for years known about “Judgement in Hungary”, seen clips, some very rough cuts, always in doubt whether it would be possible to make a feature length documentary (primarily) located…
Festival director and film critic Amir Labaki is in Amsterdam for IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) and is interviewed for the fine Daily News of the festival – an online press service of the festival, in general to be…
This is how the ICP (International Center of Photography) introduces the exhibition: ”Genesis is the third long-term series on global issues by world-renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado (born Brazil, 1944), following Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000). The result of an eight-year…
I was there yesterday – on the bowery in New York. And of course remembered the 1956 docufiction classic by Lionel Rogosin. That carries the title “On the Bowery”. Back in the hotel I watched the trailer of the film,…
All members of EDN received this mail yesterday before the General Assembly to be held at the General Assembly at idfa in Amsterdam. The proposal will be presented by PeÅ Holmquist: Dear EDN member,In relation with the General Assembly of…
Idfa started yesterday, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the 27th edition, amazing it is in itself, and ” what differentiates IDFA from other European doc festivals is its appeal to public audiences and professionals alike”, a quote from realscreen…
This is by every standard a remarkable film – not because it tells us about the extensive surveillance of all but everybody, but because we get to meet an otherwise obscured person of such significance to today’s society and because…
Sundance Documentary Film Program director Tabitha Jackson talked at the DOC NYC, the documentary film festival that runs in new York right now, until the 20th of November. Jackson who used to work at Channel 4 in London, and was…
Around three weeks ago I had a pleasure attending Leipzig Networking Days, a much anticipated annual pitching event brought about by Documentary Campus in the framework of its development workshop Masterschool. It was my third time at the event and…
Hurry up, Breaking News: CPH:DOX has announced the list of films that will be available for free streaming in cooperation with Doc Alliance. Over the course of 48 hours, on 16 and 17 November, the following five films will be…
The main competition awards of this year’s cph:dox, the DOX:AWARD went to two brilliant documentaries according to the jury – and the filmkommentaren.dk editors, who have praised both ”The Look of Silence” by Joshua Oppenheimer and his many named and…
As someone close to the philosophy of Eurimages (the cultural support fund of the Council of Europe. Established in 1989, currently numbers 36 of 47 member states), that is not the EU, I am happy to bring this message from…
Press release from the Copenhagen festival “that has yet again experienced a severe demand from the audience and a great number of films has guaranteed full theaters during the festival – now CPH:DOX sets up even more screenings of the…
DEMOCRATS Af Camilla Nielsson Jeg havde egentlig tænkt mig at anmelde Camilla Nielssons ”Democrats” på engelsk, men da jeg så Kim Skottes slappe afvisning af filmen, på ti linier i dag i Politiken, skiftede jeg mening og skriver dette som…
East Beats West… that is what I have often written on filmkommentaren.dk and this year in Jihlava I again saw fine Eastern European works and attended workshops with Wojciech Staron and Peter Kerekes, and had meetings with talented people from…
Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado: THE SALT OF THE EARTH Arrogant as I am, films about still photography (or paintings) are not something I usually pay much attention to. The relationship between the timeless photography and the time-dependent moving image…
IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY? by Michel Gondry Wow, the theatre is almost packed. Average age is around or even under 30 and several hipster beards are in sight. I suspect these are fans of either Gondry or…
For those who can watch Danish television – DR2 viser i morgen ”1989” i det sædvanlige tirsdag-slot ”Dokumania” og i de kommende to uger en række af de film, som vises på festivalen cph:dox. Da cph står for Copenhagen =…
ESCAPING RIGA by Davis Simanis One of those screenings where everything worked out as it should. Young Latvian director Davis Simanis (looking at you from above on this page) travels to Copenhagen, where he has never been before. He walks…
Cph:dox fills our columns these days – reviews, reports etc. BUT the second largest city in Denmark, Aarhus, has its own festival, Aarhus Filmfestival that includes shorts and docs, the latter with themes like ”fights”, ”life”, ”female”, ”ex-Soviet” and titles…