A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The Baltic Sea Forum in Riga – September 5-9 – includes several interesting film projects from the Baltic countries, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine plus some Western producers with themes relating to the East. The 16th edition of this classic forum that…
The Danish director behind ”The Invention of Dr. Nakamats” and ”My Playground” was praised by filmkommentaren last year through the words:”A multi-artist, an original talent, who also makes films… definitely a refreshing new talent in Danish documentary”. In his new…
The text about Docs for Education (see below) made Scottish filmmaker Nick Higgins draw attention to a Scottish initiative that could inspire filmmakers in other countries to do the same. Here are some text clips from the website: … This…
Icarus Films in New York has a strong, high quality catalogue, including several works by Chris Marker, who died end of July this year. This week the company pulished the good news that it has acquired North American distribution rights…
Every year late August the French documentarians go to Ardèche to discuss and to watch, and have a good time. This year (August 19-25) the seminars include themes like ”The Necessity of Criticism?” and how to ”build a Political point…
Israeli director and editor Erez Laufer gave me a link to his father’s film website, Docs for Education, an amazing initiative, in Nahum Laufer’s own words ”devoted to distributing high quality creative documentaries suitable for educational purposes”. For those of…
Pierre Bergé, the life long partner of Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008), is the one that tells the story about the artist and his troubled life as the fragile and modest designer, who – helped very much by Bergé’s organisational and financial…
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 trilogy ”Megacities”, ”Workingman’s Death” and ”Whore’s Glory”. The latter, ”Whore’s Glory”…
A great director, not very well known today, but for this film blogger his “Le Sang des betes” (1949, 22 mins.) from a slaughterhouse in the Parisian suburb, is a unique masterpiece in the history of documentary films. The film…
It already created problems at the premiere at the idfa (Amsterdam) festival in November last year, and now Danish newspapers reveal a new controversy around the Danish documentary “The Ambassador” by Mads Brügger, who appears in his film as the…
Five years ago Allan Berg called me to pitch an idea he had: Should we make a film blog where we could express opinions and spread information on our common passion: Films. Allan (who lives in Randers in Denmark, whereas…
Info to our film professional readers: The 16th edition of DocsBarcelona will take place May 28 – June 2. In other words, the event will be moved away from the freezingly cold weather in Barcelona in February 2012, where the…
The fine documentary festival in the capital of Portugal celebrates its 10th edition this year, October 18-28. There are changes in the direction, which is now a collective, and there are exciting novelties in the programme. Here is the press…
… yes, what does that stand for? The answer is Festival International du Film Insulaire, taking place on the island of Groix that lies in France in Brittany. From August 22 to 26 the 12th edition of this festival takes…
From a Syrian FB page accompanied by this text: Al Atareb Olympic Games 2012 Al Atrareb, Aleppo, Syria.
Chris Marker died today, filmkommentaren has written far too little about him, but here is a quote from the obituary of today in Guardian, please read the whole article and below also two links to what we have written about…
… will be revealed tomorrow, according to Realscreen, TIFF being Toronto International Film Festival, prestigious and like other big festivals (Berlin, Cannes and Venice) nowadays putting a good focus on documentaries, or as they call it in the trade magazine,…
A tour down memory lane. And can’t help it – It still brings a tear to the eye to watch Jean-Pierre Léaud run towards the sea, stop and look at us in the end scene of ”The 400 Blows”, the…
A newspaper page: ”American Zero. South African Hero”. The South Africans were right, Rodriguez, the musician the film is about, was/is a song writer and singer on the level of Bob Dylan, but he never made it in the U.S.,…
After the original, masterly done ”Life in Loops”, the remix of Michael Glawogger’s ”Megacities”, accompanied by music by the Sofa Surfers, Austrian Timo Novotny has gone underground to investigate the magic of the subways and metros of – again –…
The BFI (British Film Institute) has been running a retrospective (ends July 26) with films by Patricio Guzman, having ”Nostalgia for the Light” as the recent highlight of the Chilean master director. In an article to be read on the…
The film is made together with Freud’s biographer Willam Feaver, who voice-off introduces the method of the film up-front: We will go to the people he has portrayed to get an idea of who this genius artist is – the…
It started yesterday and runs until July 27. It is the fourth edition of DocMontevideo in the Uruguayan capital. And it has a very professional approach to why and how to reach a goal that is both regional and international.…
In the four years it has been in existence DocMontevideo has established a space in the continent for contacts and reflection using the information and communications media. Our mission is to contribute to constructing a market in Latin America that…
… and this one accompanies the photo below.
Let the photo talk for itself, this cover photo from the FB page of Orwa Nyrabia.
arte has declared “Summer of Rebels” and post-euro championship in Ukraine/Poland a 90 minutes long documentary is being broadcast on the German/French cultural channel and published on dvd. Eric Cantona, in his career himself quite a controversial, and brilliant, football…
Classic Italian town: Piazza Duomo, with the dome on the main square surrounded by cafés, meeting points for locals (only 3000 outside the season) and in July tourists like us, who enjoy the overwhelmingly bella vista to the Amalfi Coast.…
Filmkommentaren received this fresh and happy summer report from the Magnificent 7 team, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, in Belgrade – after the open air screenings at the Belgrade Fortress, July 9-11: Dear Tue. We had three wonderful evenings with films…
The Centre for Production and Research of Documentary Film at University of Westminster, long name but good that it exists, writes the following on its website, address below: “We all have our favourite cinema magazines and academic journals, but for…
The festival in neighbouring country to Georgia, Armenia, started yesterday. This 9th Yerevan International Film Festival runs until July 15 and has a fine international documentary competitive section within its red carpet profile programme that has Agnieszka Holland and Alexander…
Young Georgy Molodtsov, participant at the first session of DocStories, film director graduated from VGIK 2008, took the floor on the last morning to – with great commitment and energy – introduce the work that is being done to promote…
There are often too many viewings, too many opinions which can make the directors confused trying to please everybody and thereby losing their own voice, said Menno Boerema, Dutch editor, at the first session of the DocStories Black Sea workshop…
During the first session of the doc storytelling workshop DocStories Black Sea presentations were made. One was – naturally – about the Georgian National Film Center, whose director Tamara Tatishvili (photo) came up with a very clear and encouraging status…
The first session of the new documentary storytelling workshop DocStories with around 20 participants from the countries surrounding the Black Sea is coming to an end in wonderful Tbilisi, Georgia. Films have been screened and discussed and analysed, and the…
I tend to avoid topical documentaries with no artistic purpose of its own, so why do I want to see a documentary about Woody Allen? Furthermore, I believe I know most things about Allen so a biographical film would almost…
On the 9th, 10th and 11th of July the Belgrade feature documentary film festival Magnificent7 organises a high quality programme of music documentary films. This is how it is announced on the website: ”“The Magnificent Seven” at BELEF is an…
Legendary Estonian documentarian, artist, politician etc. Mark Soosaar lives in Pärnu at the Baltic Sea, and has since 1987 been, he calls himself so, “the chief” of Pärnu Int. Documentary Film Festival, the oldest film festival in Estonia. According to…
Two of his films have been reviewed on this site (”I will Marry the Whole Village” and ”The Long Road Through Balkan History”). I have known him for a decade, admired his commitment and seen his strong development as a…
The excellent French-language Le Blog Documentaire (more about that on a later occasion) has published an interesting interview (this time in English) with the director of the Sunny Side of the Doc that opened yesterday in la Rochelle: Here is…
If you happen to be in Edinburgh today read what you should do to watch films, have a drink, eat some takeaway and go to tango nuevo… If you are not in Edinburgh, well enjoy the tone of this text…
The innovative festival in Skopje is over and awards have been distributed. Apart from two of the films, frequent readers of filmkommentaren.dk will know the winning films very well from reviews and notes. Here you are, and below you get…
June 26-29, la Rochelle, the 23rd edition of an event that used to be in Marseilles but now has moved to the Bay of the Bascay on the Atlantic Coast. Among professionals it has been stated that the Sheffield DocFest…
Miff stands for Moscow International Film Festival that started its 34th edition last night, again with a strong documentary element. For the second year the MIFF has a documentary competition programme with 7 films plus a section with 18 long…
A small afterthought to the fine pitching session in Edinburgh, see below, related to comments to one of the films presented on this occasion. Comments from a panel with good people from good tv stations and distribution companies. But also…
”Make Docs Happen” on the catalogue and on the posters surrounding the theatre where the pitch of 11 projects from all over Europe – to a panel of 11 broadcasters and distributors – took place. And make docs happen is…
It is the third edition, it takes place in Skopje, it goes on until June 22nd, it is a festival with its own, original profile and a special communication strategy – subscribe to its free newsletter, from where the following…
The work of the Polish master of documentary (born 1940) is being very well introduced in an article by Katerina Surmanová on the website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film). And for newcomers to the impressive filmography of Lozinski it…
Emanuela Macchniz, student at Zelig School for Documentary, Television and New Media, placed in Bolzano Italy sent this report to filmkommentaren.dk: Last April (25 – 30) the Association Ness El Fen organized for the seventh year the new documentary film…
The British newspaper, always strong on cinema, has launched a series of (sponsored) articles named “Destination Docs”, published in connection with the Sheffield DocFest. The headline goes like this, “Despite new documentary formats, traditional fact-based films still attract impressive audiences…