A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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…
A copy-paste from the fine Cineuropa of today: Just the Right Amount of Violence (photo) Denmark Written and directed by Jon Bang Carlsen Produced by Helle Ulsten and Jon Bang Carlsen Master of the Universe [+] Germany/Austria Directed by Marc Bauder…
Is the headline of the generous invitation made by unique vod DocAlliance, that until November 9 (you better hurry up!) offers excellent documentaries, all nominated for the Silver Eye Award, read more about it on the site that you have…
THE LOOK OF SILENCE by Joshua Oppenheimer It’s horrifying, it hurts to watch the scenes that shows these brutal perpetrators re-enact their killings committed around 1965 in Indonesia, where the slaughtering of communists were performed by a…
Scenes to remember… one of the many good things about being at a festival is the conversations you have with colleagues in the breaks. Conversations that very often bring up scenes that have impressed you, scenes that will stay in…
Here follows the jury motivations for the main competition winners and for the German competition winner, Domino Effect, a film that has been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk Golden Dove: Claudine Bories und Patrice Chagnard (Frankreich) for the film Les règles du…
The winners have been found. And apart from “my” main prize the juries agreed with me, awarding “Les Regles du Jeu” and “Toto and his Sisters”. Here is the press release and notice that you can find the motivations on…
The title refers to the 9th of May, where Russians celebrate the end of the WW2, the nazi capitulation, a day that is not celebrated by the gay and lesbian couples in the new film of Rudnitskaya. Maybe that angle…
Allow me to be nostalgic – this film brings me back to my days at Statens Filmcentral (National Film Board of Denmark), where brave women were sitting in a row, repairing the 16mm copies that had been returned from screenings.…
Your filmkommentaren.dk correspondent has seen the 12 long documentaries in the Dok International Competition 2014. He thinks it would be fun to make HIS list of winners for that category. I.e. a main prize and two honorary mentions. The films…
I have just left a nice chat with a former Zelig film school student – one of a handful who go to Leipzig to watch films and meet people, build contacts and enjoy masterclasses. It helps that Leipzig is such…
Czech Andrea Prenghyova, the founder of DOK.Incubator, was on stage to welcome the participants to the presentation of the 2014 film projects that had been developed during half a year with the help of Claas Danielsen and Ilo von Seckendorff…
Copy-pasted press release from the festival: The documentary film CITIZENFOUR about the NSA scandal and Edward Snowden’s revelations was awarded the “Leipziger Ring” on Wednesday night. US American filmmaker Laura Poitras received the film prize of the Peaceful Revolution Foundation,…
In his opening speech to the audience of DOKLeipzig Monday the 27th, departing festival director Claas Danielsen reflected on ”freedom” and gave good advice to the public broadcasters! I have copy pasted some sequences of the speech, the whole one…
Time runs. From Jihlava to Leipzig monday, from one documentary film festival to the next one with a special bus, a symbol of festival friendship, this initiative has been called. And we were many, who accepted the generous offer of…
The website of the Jihlava IDFF announced last night: OPUS BONUM – Best World Documentary Film Award Best Film: Je suis le peuple (I Am the People), dir. Anna Rousillion Special Mention: 20 Centavos (20 Cents), dir. Tiag Tambelli and…
News taken from the website of the IDF (Institute of Documentary Films): For the sixth time at Jihlava International Film Festival, Institute of Documentary Film announced Silver Eye winners at the Closing Ceremony. The holders of the awards are three…
Take a look at the photo. It’s about Love, isn’t it? It comes from the film of Polish Wojciech Staron, ”Siberian Lesson”, that he made in 1998. On film stock. Here is the Jihlava catalogue description of the film: In…
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…