A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Another press release from idfa (see below) refers to the now finished Summer School, where projects at different levels are being tutored. Some are still on paper, some are bringing rough cuts to experienced editors. One of them was ”Ollie…
Copy-Paste quotes of a press release of today from idfa and its IDFA Bertha Fund, whose action one can only applaud: The IDFA Bertha Fund has concluded the May selection round of 2014. Nineteen documentary projects from countries like Nicaragua,…
So many documentary films have been shot in Africa, but very few have been seen by African audiences. This heralds a new era of distribution for the continent… words by Don Edkins, who is the Executive producer of AfriDocs and…
In the post about the Moving Docs project that will take off next year, supported by Creative Europe, I wrote “”Brave New Culture” from Cyprus is also on board. Regret to say that I have never heard about it before…”…
… is the name of a new support scheme from EU’s Creative Europe – Media Programme. Its task is ”To stimulate interest in, and improve access to European audio-visual works, in particular through promotion, events, film literacy and festivals. Film…
With EDN (European Documentary Network) as the natural umbrella organisation for a project concepted and developed by Rea Apostolides, strong and visionary Greek producer and member of EDN’s Executive Committee, the ”Moving Docs” project was, by Creative Europe, granted 150.000€,…
I like this tradition so much – the plaques that are put on the walls of the houses, where great artists have been living and working. To honour them and remember. They do so a lot in the Baltic countries…
A triumph for the young Polish director Jan Matuszynski in Moscow yesterday where the Best Documentary Award was announced, given to him for his ”Deep Love”. I have seen this film twice before, read what I wrote from the American…
Short enough for an overview – detailed enough for your co-production strategy… this is the one-liner from EDN about the new baby of the organisation: A Co-Production Guide which is available online for the members of an “… organisation for…
This is a sentence I have used again and again when talking to film students, who are still in their film school protected environment… and then suddenly they have finished their studies, want to work, want to learn more, want…
The Austrian Film Museum (celebration of its 50th year) has a present to all who are interested in film history and Dziga Vertov and history of course, read here, click and watch, it is so well presented: The Kinonedelja (Kino-Week)…
I am sure that many readers of this review do not really know anything about Abkhazia… I was in the same situation until I came to Georgia, saw terrible archive images from the war in 1992-93, where Abkhazia broke away…
Many years ago, at my time in EDN, I asked Hans Robert Eisenhauer to come to Italian Bardonecchia to the yearly Documentary in Europe session as a keynote speaker on the theme ”public service television”. I had known him from…
Below, Yves Jeanneau, CEO of the Sunny Side of the Doc welcomes the delegates to the 25th edition of an event this blogger has visited numerous times, when it was in Marseilles. Now the location is in la Rochelle and…
15 films from 12 countries, 15 world and international premieres… that is what the FID (Festival International de Cinema) in Marseilles presents in the international competition programme, when it takes off July 1 and runs until July 7. The festival…
Big words from the two curators of the documentary programme at MIFF, Moscow International Film Festival, whose 26th edition includes a competition of 8 films and a panorama of 15 films under the label ”Free Thought”. Sergey Miroshnichenko and Grigory…
It starts today, the yearly Flaherty seminar at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York and runs until June 20. Programmers are Gabriela Monroy & Caspar Stracke – you can read more about them on the website of Flaherty, link below. Here…
”You’re nobody till somebody loves you” is the well known song that, among others, accompanies the visit to one of Japan’s 37.000 love hotels, the one in Osaka, Angelo Hotel. This song underlines the tone of a film that works…
… is the title of a film made by Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova. It was on its way for several years and is now out and has raised strong controversy in the country of origin, Bulgaria. But I have…
For the seventh time the Documentarist festival is running in Istanbul – until June 12 – under the leadership of, among others, director Emel Çelebi. There is a Turkish Panorama, a focus on Syria, a tribute to Johan van der…
I have posted several texts on Ukraine and the brave filmmakers there. Here is one more after contact with Dar’ya Averchenko and Roman Bondarchuk. The two of them have taken part in the admirable work “Euromaidan. Rough Cut”, which is…
It was quite moving to be an observer outside the Aribau Club on the closing night of the DocsBarcelona festival. Syrian refugees lined up to hug the director Talal Derki, who got the main award for his ”Return to Homs”.…
Festive closure of DocsBarcelona 2014. The film ”Five Days to Dance” by Rafa Molés and Pepe Andreu were shown to a full house. The film that was pitched at the festival 2013 describes how two dancers are able to get…
Sunday morning in Barcelona, last day of the festival, awards to be given tonight. Walked home to hotel from the Aribau Club Cinema around 1am after quite a long festival evening. Accompanied by Irina Shatilova, whose film ”Linar” had been…
Looong, well deserved applause to Talal Derki last night when ”Return to Homs” was shown at CCCB. The director, who is now living in Turkey and Berlin – all his family is out of Syria – talked with the audience…
Wednesday night, full house in the Aribau Club cinema, where Israeli Shirly Berkovitz (photo) showed her amazing ”The Good Son” and told the audience how the film took off: A young man contacts her with some video tapes that he…
Colombian director Juan Pablo Rios was the first of three filmmakers coming for the rough cut sessions of DocsBarcelona 2014. The concept of the sessions is very simple: the filmmaker turns up with his work at a rough cut stage,…
I am in Barcelona. The DocsBarcelona festival and its associated activities for professionals start today. I am in the Pulitzer Hotel next to Plaza de Catalunya, nice room with a look to a street wall covered by a photo of…
The Czech production company Film&Sociology was so kind to send me a vimeo link so I could watch Janek’s film on Olga Havlova, which I had read about passionately because of ”Citizen Havel”, where she is very much present with…
The website synopsis is precise so I quote that: “Every day in Finland alone, two people commit suicide. Thousands of people are affected by suicide yearly. Once I Dreamt of Life is a feature length documentary film about suicide —…
The press kit for this film makes a point out of that this is no conventional sports documentary. It is true that the actual boxing scenes are quite limited and maybe the film makers find this fact as radical as…
At DocsBarcelona 2013 Michael Glawogger asked me if I could write a piece on ”Megacities” and the remix of it done by Timo Novotny, ”Life in Loops”. Compare the two, he said, and he gave me the dvd’s of the…
Have to confess that I did not know about the online documentary film magazine DOK Revue. Now I do, and it is no surprise that this fine initiative comes out of the Czech Republic, this time from the Jihlava International…
… will be shown on Danish Dokumania (DR2) tonight. It was written about on filmkommentaren last August with a quote from NY Times critic A.C. Scott: ”Apart from some old news clips, most of the images come from Super-8 home…
This is a film, that I can’t wait to see. The main character is Olga Havlová, the director is Miroslav Janek. It guarantees the quality. Janek made “Citizen Havel” into an unforgettable film, when he took over the material that…
It’s on the political agenda in most countries, it is being discussed in the EU – undeclared work – and of course it is also the case in Turkey. When it comes to the profession of domestic workers, which does…
with the subtitle ”The Sumo Wrestler’s Son” – is a fine documentary for children. The production company Final Cut for Real estimates the primary target audience to be between 6 and 12, but it is also one of those films…
The timing is fine, it’s a warm-up for the World Cup in Brazil. 4 days of football films in wonderful Grand Teatret in Copenhagen after an American concept, if I get it right – over there they call it soccer.…
Again a generous offer from DocAlliance, concerning Gianfranco Rosi, Italian documentarian, who won the Golden Lion in Venice last year with Bernardo Bertolucci as chair of the jury. This is the text from the vod and view the three great…
DocsBarcelona includes for the second time webdocs and interactive productions in its programme. This is how it was announced in a press release of today: Find out about the latest developments in research and production of webdocs. Do not miss…
National Film Board of Canada/Office National du film du Canada is the oldest national film institution in the world, as far as I know. It started in 1939, and is being celebrated in and outside its own country because of…
Young directors, fresh views and interpretations of the world today, resistance movements, new ways of storytelling – it is a golden age of the documentary and that is strongly reflected in the programme that the DocsBarcelona festival has just published!…
Citat fra pressematerialet: Essensen i Bayaka kultur er deres ældgamle polyfoniske sang. Louis Sarno har gennem sine indspilninger af Bayaka folkets musik sikret en af verdens vigtige kulturarve; i 2003 fik Bayaka folkets musik UNESCO World Heritage Status. Louis Sarno…
This new film by Latvian film and opera director Kairiss will have its international premiere tomorrow at Visions du Réel in Nyon. Here is an article I wrote for the promotion of the film: The first film work I met…
The EDN website is a rich source of general information for documentarians around the world. Available, even if you are not a member – which you definitely should be to get all the service provided by the organisation. For instance…
”A World of Troubled Beauty…” HEADLINE NY Times brought the most precise headline to an article about the films of Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger’s impressive work: A World of Troubled Beauty – referring to his…
Shocking news – Michael Glawogger has died from malaria during the shooting of a film in Africa. So young! My deepest condolences to family and the many, who were close to him. In June last year I had the privilege…
Is this a wise decision, I wondered, when i read a text on “Film New Europe” a couple of weeks ago: Governmental bodies in both Latvia and Lithuania have banned broadcasts of Russian state TV channels. A three month ban…
Danish DR/Dokumania shows tomorrow the American tv (NBC) documentary “Erasing Hate”. I got a link to watch it for a review, I could go through the first third of the film then the link went on strike. So no points…
Louis Andriessen, charismatic Dutch composer, and Mariss Jansons, charismatic Latvian chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. The two characters in the fascinating observational documentary drama, which is very well told, interesting and entertaining. The drama evolves as…