A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
On 27th January 2014 it was 70 years ago that the catastrophic and tragic siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was lifted. I wanted to watch again the much acclaimed ”Blockade” by Sergei Loznitsa. Deckert Distribution was so kind to…
… while diplomats and politicians talk about Syria these days in Geneva, mentioning Homs in every sentence, news came today about the excellent film “Return to Homs”: It was Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the…
The Magnificent7 festival starts thursday the 30th of January in Belgrade. Opening film is “Leviathan” (photo). From thursday and the following seven days a report will be posted from the festival as well as a presentation review by festival directors…
The Danish Film Institute publishes regularly – in English – its magazine Film. A printed issue is always available in connection with the big festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Amsterdam (idfa), and on top of that you can find digital…
Guldbaggen (The Golden Beetle), the yearly Swedish cinema award ceremony, took place yesterday and again documentaries played an important role – as last year where two films stood out: Palme by Kristina Lindström and Maud Nycander and Searching for Sugarman…
The nominations have been done. At least three of the films deal with current political conflicts (these ones): “The Act of Killing”, Cutie and the Boxer, The Square, Dirty Wars and 20 Feet from Stardom compete for the Best Documentary…
I watched this film online (on the fine festivalscope, link below, subscription-based) after it had been announced as one of the five nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category. The film has this synopsis description on the…
I watched this film online (on the excellent idfa “docs for sale”) today after it had been announced as one of the nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category. The film has this synopsis description on the…
I watched this film online (on the excellent idfa “docs for sale”) today after it had been announced as one of the nominees for the Oscar award in the feature documentary category. The film that runs theatrically in the US…
Yes, it does, ”goes political”, it is to be said after the nomination has been done. At least three of the films deal with current political conflicts (these ones). My source – Realscreen news, this came into my mail box…
Liv Ullmann is a true film star and one of those, who can catch your attention, when she performs ”outside” the films in interviews. Her autobiographical book ”Changing” (1977) is highly praised among others by legendary American critic Roger Ebert…
Jennifer Merin, American film journalist and critic, has again and again written against “The Act of Killing”, some days ago when it was awarded 2 big prizes at the Cinema Eye Honors. Merin is not the only one, BBC Storyville…
They are bent, they have crooked legs, they live in the Pindos mountains up NorthWest in Greece, far away from everything. Most of these old people have passed their lives here for decades. And for decades Nikos Anastasiou, his wife…
Loyal readers will know that football is of great interest to one of the editors of this filmkommentaren.dk – the one to the left on the photo together with another enthusiast, Zoran Popovic from Belgrade, who with his wife Svetlana…
No objections at all to the fact that the most important Cinema Eye Awards 2014 went to “The Act of Killing” by Joshua Oppenheimer and “Stories We Tell “ by Sarah Polley. The latter for “Outstanding Achievement in Direction”, “The…
Here is one more proof that old people (like children) are good for documentaries. This is what I experienced watching this sympathetic, informative documentary that plays with the expression ”böhmische dörfer” – English title is ”Bohemian is all Greek to…
Co-editor of filmkommentaren.dk Allan Berg did not like the still picture that I had picked for the article on the Oscar race for documentaries. I am sure it is because he has not seen this amazingly strong hybrid documentary that…
Louisiana, the Museum of Modern Art, a wonderful place at the Øresund, the strait between the Northern part of Zealand and Southern Sweden, one hour by train from Copenhagen, there are always interesting exhibitions, it is a place for relaxing…
15 films have been shortlisted for the feature length documentary Academy Award. 5 of them will be nominated for the final round by January 16th. In other words – in a couple of weeks it will be decided which 5…
There is a good climate for documentaries in Israel. Broadcasters invest more in the genre than you experience in Western Europe, there is public funding and private funds, there are film schools, the festival DocAviv and the unique CoPro, headed…
All right, here it comes, on the last day of 2013, from filmkommentaren’s travelling observer of the documentary worldwide. The film lists below are based on screenings at festivals, in cinemas or online via vod’s, or via dvd’s. These are…
Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verana Paravel: Leviathan. USA, 2012, 87 mins. Claude Lanzmann: The Last of the Unjust. France, 2013, 220 mins. (photo) Talal Derki: Return to Homs. Syria, Germany, 2013, 87 mins. Rithy Panh: The Missing Picture. France, 2013, 85…
Youlian Tabakov: Tzvetanka. Bulgaria/Sweden, 2012, 66 mins. Aneta Kopacz: Joanna. Poland, 2013, 45 mins. Andreas Johnsen: Ai Wei Wei – The Fake Case. Denmark, 2013, 79 mins. Juan Alvarez Neme: Avant. Uruguay, 2014, around 75 mins. Daria Khlestkina: The Last…
… for the first time. This is how the vod DocAlliance presents its christmas present to us viewers. It is quite a generous offer that comes up in collaboration with the Slovak Film Institute that celebrates its 50th anniversary. If…
“It has a story, a point of view, a humanistic approach and a director, who is also the cameraman and who has the skills to catch magical moments as they happen in life. A decade ago the director made ”Siberian…
“There is a choice”, was the slogan expressed in connection with the DocuDays UA festival in Kiev in March 2013. I was there as member of the jury and enjoyed a very professional and committed reception from the filmmakers behind…
It is such a good beginning of the film. A family gathered around food, eating, discussing, among other matters the usual one, you think, about man/woman, boy/girl in a society with pretty conservative traditions, seen from our part of the…
Dubai International Film Festival is running right now. It has several documentary sections in its extensive programme even if it indeed is red-carpet festival for feature films with hommage(s) to stars of the cinema world, this year Martin Sheen (Apocalypse…
If you want to know who I really am, go to facebook… was the comment from one of the participating filmmakers at the workshop for Saudi filmmakers in Jeddah. It was on the second and last day we spent together…
Yes, ”we were blown away” as Kirsten Johnson, American filmmaker and tutor at the workshop, said on the second day, where several of the young visual reporters and artists, who took part in the workshop, presented their projects of online…
So now the list is down to 15 films that compete for the nomination of the Oscar. Several online sources have published it, the guessing about the winner has started. The 3 films Filmkommentaren has reviewed, we have put first…
So, see below, the juries have made their choices at the idfa 2013 edition. In most of the sections nominations had been made in beforehand with 3 films competing. It is a good rule as it means something for a…
The English version of the idfa press release arrived this morning: Michael Obert won the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (€ 12,500) for Song from the Forest. The film focuses on American Louis Sarno, who has lived for…
I heard about it when at the idfa festival from Dox Box Guevara Namer, herself an excellent photographer, and now I read about it and want to share it with you: Lebanese The Daily Star brings an important article under…
… the headline could also have been ”3 Days at idfa”, with the subtitle ”personal small talk”, so now you are warned about this piece, written at Schiphol airport waiting for the SAS 548 to take me home to Copenhagen.…
I met Talal Derki at a workshop in Athens a couple of years ago. He showed me some footage with Basset, the young revolutionary leader – and talented football goalkeeper – from Homs, fighting Bashar and his gang. What I…
Dismounted and suspended, the dusk recklessly creeped in, enveloping the theatre, it played out a little, easing out the way just before plunging into the rawness of the reality of those who call streets home. Agonizing and discomforting, Sickfuckpeople is…
The news about the death of Peter Wintonick (see below) (photo) made me sit down with DOX 100 that was in the mailbox the day before. The issue is built up as conversation pieces between documentarians who talk professional matters…
Peter Wintonick has died. FB pages, newspapers and websites are full of warm words and sadness from the documentary community. My former colleagues at EDN wrote these fine words: It is with great sorrow that we, at EDN, have received…
The film of Lanzmann is extraordinary in all aspects: The story about how the film was made and why it did not come out before now has been dealt with in numerous interviews with the author, journalist and film director…
We got this press release from Copenhagen. CPH:DOX is still running today and tomorrow, and due to a huge audience interest, the festival adds a couple of days of screenings. But awards have been distributed: On Friday, November 15th, CPH:DOX…
Last night I suddenly remembered that during an animated dinner at a seminar at The European Film College, my business partner accidentally poked the eye of director John Akomfrah while stating a point in some mindless discussion. John had earlier…
… English title: Two Raging Grannies. It’s easy for this reviewer to identify with Shirley (born 1923) and Hinda (1929) in their search for an answer to why we always must believe in economic growth as the answer to the…
Richard Misek’s film ”Rohmer in Paris” will be screened at CPH:DOX November 14th and 16th. At a certain point while watching this film I considered to call it ”Murder on Rohmer”… as the director has no reference to what was…
Karen Stokkendal Poulsen’s film The Agreement will be shown at CPH:DOX on the 11th, the 13th and the 17th of November. EU chief negotiator Robert Cooper (photo) is the main character of a film that follows the negociations between Kosovo, delegation…
Anna Odell: ¨The Reunion (Återträffen), seen at CPH:DOX, november 2013. – Hello? – Yes, hello. Is this Anna Odell speaking? – Yes? – Hi, you don’t know me but I have just seen your film… – Okay – [awkward pause]…
The festival in Copenhagen has started. For Copenhageners it started a long time ago with prologue events, the programme newspaper in cafés, banners and posters in the streets… the organisers are masters of marketing… but now the festival programme runs…
The nomination games continue as the year gets closer to its end. American POV is the next (after Cinema Eye, see below) and this is how they introduce their list of Best 10: “From Sundance to the Oscars — and…
It’s a rather complicated nomination system that the Cinema Eye works with, but the people involved (taken from the website that explains all in details, link below) are all names that guarantee for quality. But what is Cinema Eye: “The…
Well, it did get no awards at the DOK Leipzig. The jury chose the docudrama/neo-realistic/hybrid ”Stop the Pounding Heart”, another art house film from the US. Beautifully made, but not very original as is this work of Razbezhkina, known for…