A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Gustav Mahler was in Jihlava. His face is looking at me from the wall in the breakfast room of Grand Hotel, which was grand once, an art nouveau building from the outside but how could they put that terrible furniture…
Click below and you get the local organisers of the pan-European screenings of ”1989”, and in many cases also the location of the screening that takes place on November 5th. What a great effort that lies behind this initiative. The…
SECOND CHANCE / THE ETERNAL LIGHT / AUDITIONING FOR PARENTHOOD I am back in Jihlava after 5 years. I stopped working for the training programme Ex Oriente in 2009, where the final session with pitching took place in this cosy provincial…
1989 by Anders Østergaard & Erzsébet Rácz Of course the film had to start with 1956 and it does so with very fine and moving archive footage of people searching for the remains of Imre Nagy, whose government was not accepted…
”Finding Vivian Maier” is ”documentary of the Month” at the Cinematheque in Copenhagen with screenings from the 23rd of October, so Copenhageners – this is a must-see, it is lovely portrait of a mysterious woman, who her whole life was…
The festival in Georgian capital Tbilisi ended yesterday and I found this message on the FB page: The award ceremony is over and we would like to announce the results: International Competition: The main prize of this section goes to…
The premiere was in 2008, in Riga, the film about Klucis, ”The Deconstruction of an Artist”. Directed by Peteris Krilovs. And here I stand in front of the Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, where there…
I am in Riga – again – to take part in a “Baltic Sea Region Documentary Film Research Seminar” arranged by LAC Riga Film Museum. It starts today and my job is to give a brief introduction to the Danish…
Cecilie Bolvinkel from EDN is responsible for extensive ”Member of the Month” – interviews, that can be found on the website of the association. A fine one came out two days ago with Claas Danielsen because ” DOK Leipzig 2014…
No week without good news from The Flaherty, this time the following newsletter came in: The Flaherty is very pleased to enter into a new collaboration with Colgate University named the Colgate/Flaherty Distinguished Global Filmmaker. This project will fund a filmmaker’s…
After DOKLeipzig and Jihlava IDFF have announced their programme, these (idfa and cph:dox) two significant documentary festivals have press released selection decisions, ambitions and visions. Idfa (November 19-30) first – take a look at the website, link below – seven…
They have always been and they are still made, these gripping documentaries about people being arrested and sent to isolated islands for punishment. By the people in power. On this occasion, I remember several films on the camps on Makronissos…
Sergey Sukhanov is the hero of this film. When in Eastern European countries for workshops I very often ask the filmmakers to say or write ”main character” or ”protagonist” instead of hero. But in this case Sukhanov is a hero.…
First an explanation of the title of the film, enigmatic and fascinating it is: It refers to the ten centimeters of space below the ceiling where there was no water… the space that saved lives at the unbelievable dramatic flood…
The day after DOKLeipzig (below), the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) announces its programme schedule, October 23-28. The newsletter from the Czech festival does also, as DOKLeipzig, focus on statistics in its first paragraph. After headline ”57 world, international…
Today DOKLeipzig announced its programme for the festival, that runs from October 27 to November 2. Whether you like to highlight it or not, the press release stresses that the festival offers 41 world premieres – 29 documentary and 12…
Sonia, the daughter, sits down at the computer to write the headline “My Family’s European Genocide Story”… one of many stories, where a majority of a family ended up in Auschwitz, but in her case she is lucky to have…
It’s one of those films, that had to be made and that you hope will be shown everywhere to pass the information about the absurd and inhuman condition that the LGBT community lives under in Russia after a law was…
They have some verbal battles in the office, Natalya and Eugenia. They get on each other’s nerves. They both work at the museum, have done so for a long time, but where one is for the material side of the…
As a follow-up to the post below… here is a personal essay that I wrote for an academic book on festivals. It did not fit in, so here it is for you, a reflection on what is written on documentary…
It happens quite often. Mails arrive with sad news – ”they” did not take my film, nobody likes it, what should I do? Filmmakers are disappointed, the film that took them a couple of years to make are rejected by…
It’s an inviting start: Beautiful Istanbul, boats on Bosphorus, people fishing on the bridge, a man in a car, a man doing dummies for clothes, a woman taking out her photo album and more people getting ready to tell what…
DOKLeipzig 2014 presents an ”homage to Jon Bang Carlsen”. A long text from the festival site follows below. The director is also to make a masterclass at the festival. To be recommended. Masterclasses with Bang Carlsen are always lively and…
As one who does not have English as native language this film demands attention and concentration. You have to get used to the constant bombardment of words, archive photos and films, interviews but if you succeed to do so, it…
The Georgian international documentary film festival has launched its programme for its second edition (October 14-19), well thought and competent, with competitive sections and side bars like ”Ukranian Voices”. Here you find ”Euromaidan” put together by Darya Averchenko and Roman…
Nordisk Panorama 25! – a documentary tour down memory lane. Yes, the first one was in Grimstad, this idyllic and romantic spot on the South coast of Norway. I was there and so was she, with whom I have shared my life…
Filmen vises i morgen tirsdag den 30. september på DR2’s Dokumania kl. 20.45. Den kan stærkt anbefales. Den danske titel er forklarende, ”Ruslands værste fængsel”, en direkte oversættelse af originaltitlen ville være ”De fordømte”. Her følger en kort anmeldelse på…
Politics. Freedom to say what you want. In films as well. The Message2Man – that had its 24th edition this year – and its organisers are of course backing this basis for any film festival. Nevertheless the festival cancelled a…
It was a Swedish documentary that got the Grand Prix at the Message2Man 2014 festival: Forest of the Dancing Spirits (photo), directed by Linda Västrik (104 min. | 2013 | Sweden, Canada). I copy-pasted a description of the film from…
A scoop for DOKLeipzig. Read the festival’s press release: The 57th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film will open on 27 October 2014 with the long-awaited film “CITIZENFOUR” by Laura Poitras. In the last instalment of her 9/11…
Yes, she is a documentary superstar, Helena Trestikova. Filmkommentaren has had many posts about her films, which are shot over decades, always with a warm heart for its protagonists, and a social perspective. Now the DocAlliance gives you an offer…
Well, I was definitely away from my comfort zone… Around the table were Russian critics, journalists, a writer of a book on the banning of films in Soviet Union – and some younger filmmakers, who were there to say something…
My wise advisor asks me to de-personalise the important debate about whether DOX has a future or not. I will do my best to suppress my frustration. Starting with a concrete, constructive proposal: Don’t stop DOX and – inspired by…
Second day in St. Petersburg started with a lovely tour to Russian Museum downtown at the square where a statue of Pushkin stands, always with birds resting on his stretched-out arm. The newly renovated rooms with the Russian avant-garde I…
We already told that for the second time the AegeanDocs festival is running, it opened on the 20th of September (and runs until the 28th) with a screening of “The Act of Killing”. Producer of the festival Chara Lampidou sent…
Do you know the situation for Russian artists, was the first question that came from the audience at the Q&A after Danish Andreas Johnsen’s ”Ai Wei Wei” screening last night at the St. Petersburg documentary festival. The film about the…
I attended the opening of the 25th edition of Nordisk Panorama friday night in Malmö, Sweden. It was a grand event because the organisers had picked the right film to start the festival. Below is the website description of Garden…
There is no photo attached to this post, you have to look up to the right, where you get three of them. Co-editor of filmkommentaren.dk, Allan Berg, suggested that I chose three obvious talents, who have made films which travel…
Emanuele Vernillo, didactic tutor at Zelig School for Documentary, Television and New Media in Bolzano calls the decision “absurd”. Here is his text: I am reading with big interest the discussions about the closing of DOX on paper. I want…
PeÅ Holmquist, director and producer of documentary films, first President of EDN has written a letter about DOX: In EDN Newsletter, week 37, I get the news about our magazine DOX:Doesn’t exist anymore! DOX has been there nearly from when…
Last week Michael Moore, at the Toronto International Film Festival Doc Conference, 25 years after his “Roger and me” (photo) was released, presented 13 rules for making documentary films. A manifesto. He stressed that documentary filmmakers should not be called…
A ”EDN Weekly” newsletter came out. In a subordinate clause there was shocking news: ”… I had to decide to terminate the publishing…” of DOX Magazine. Just like that. Voilà. A big big mistake! After more than 100 issues the…
Copy-paste quote from RealScreen on Martin Scorcese talking about his new documentary “The 50 Year Argument” on New York Review of Books, co-directed with David Tedeschi. A talk taking place in Toronto at the international film festival, read more, link…
“GlobalDoK: Danish Film Institute Present” is the title chosen for a presentation of new Danish documentaries in St.Petersburg at the Message to Man festival (September 20-27). In collaboration with the DFI and with me as a helper for the programmer…
The photo in the post below is a bit small but shows the wonderful screening situation in the house of Uldis Brauns. Here you have him in the garden.
During the many years that I have followed Latvian documentary cinema, the name Uldis Brauns has always been like a magic enigma. Who is he, where is he, what is he doing? The master, that is how he is characterised…
Hotel Metropole, Kuldiga, Latvia. Early monday morning, still wonderful ”indian summer”. I am waiting for my colleagues, to take breakfast before we go back to visit Uldis Brauns, Latvian documentary master, 81 years old, a gentle man. We were there…
Are you on drugs was the question, jokingly asked by panelist Esther van Messel from First Hand Film, when Russian producer Vlad Ketkovich was pitching the project ”My Beliefs” to be directed by Tatiana Chistova. Could be… Ketkovich, wearing a…
It was presented last year at Baltic Sea Docs and there it was on the big screen at Splendid Palace, the film that was made on the occasion of Riga being the Cultural City of Europe. A so-called omnibus film…
Press release (edited) of today from The Flaherty, great initiative: Cinema Guild and The Flaherty announced today an exclusive digital partnership to create a curated series spotlighting the work of groundbreaking artists and filmmakers. Volumes in the series, titled “The…