Barcelona Calling
This is not a neutral text. I have been part of the DOCSBarcelona team from the very beginning, and have seen how Joan Gonzalez and his team at Parallel 40 over a period of 15 years has built up a…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Articles/Reviews ENGLISH
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IDFA Awards
From press release of IDFA: The winners of the various IDFA competition programs were announced Friday, November 25 in Escape, during the awards ceremony of the 24th IDFA. Seung-Jun Yi’s Planet of Snail (South Korea) won the VPRO IDFA Award for…
RIDM Awards
The documentary film festival in Montréal RIDM sums up its activities and awards like this, with the DOKLeipzig winner “The Tiniest Place” again very much presented. More information, and trailers to be watched, by clicking on the titles below. To…
Idfa – film about Michaël Meshke
This is what is (also) nice about going to idfa – you meet directors and producers, whose work you have seen and appreciated before. Viktoria Szymanska made the wonderful “Themerson & Themerson” (photo) about the magic work of this British…
Idfa – Weijun Chen
Breakfast meetings in the hotel. This morning I was lucky to meet Chinese Weijun Chen, the director behind the international successes “I Will Vote for You” (photo) and “The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World”. He was in Amsterdam to…
Idfa 2011
It is a bombardment of impressions to be at the biggest documentary film festival in the world. Films, meetings, receptions, ”hello, how are you”, ”nice to see you again”, people with badges walking in the streets around Rembrandtsplein, the square…
Wajda Studio celebrates 10 Year
The Polish tradition for high quality documentaries is very much kept alive by the Wajda Studio, which formerly was called The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Especially the short documentary has had and has a strong home at…
Anonymous: The Weather Balloon
What constitutes a documentary film? When is a documentary most trustworthy and/or true to actual facts? Can we depict reality without interfering? Do we WANT to depict reality without interfering? We will never stop argue about these things, but allow…
IDFA – Watch Films for Free
The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) started two days ago and runs until November 27th. If you are not there, you have the chance to watch a fine selection of films, primarily from previous editions, offered for free…
A New Wave for Arab Cinema?
17th floor of the Hotel Africa in the capital of Tunisia. Early morning, the city prepares for a new day. Sunshine. To the right the beautiful clock with the sea behind it, to the left a look down the Avenue…
Vinylmania – They Made It!
Filmkommentaren.dk has followed the ”kickstarter V for Vinylmania” initiative, where Turin-based film company Stefilm called for help through a crowdfunding campaign and succeeded to collect $37.173 from 395 backers. The money will be used to make an international version by…
Werner Herzog: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
What does a cave being enclosed for thousands of years sound like? Or smell like? This film actually tries to tell us, but first of all it shows us what it looks like. Or to be more precise, it shows…
Documenting the Revolution/ 1
The cph:dox festival deserves credit for (also) putting a focus on the changes in the Arab world. With the support of IMS (International Media Support, Danish state supported organisation), no less than a dozen screenings and debates, entitled ”Free Radical”,…
Documenting the Revolution/ 2
Two films at cph:dox dealt with the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia: Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim’s “1/2 Revolution” and Elyes Baccar’s “Rouge Parole”. The latter about Tunisia, the first shot in Egypt. “1/2 Revolution” (PHOTO) was made by…
cph:dox Awards
Awards were given at the cph:dox festival in Copenhagen and juries motivated their choices, this is the press release from the festival: In the main competition, DOX:AWARD, Ben Rivers’ ‘Two Years at Sea’ was awarded for its convincing depiction of…
Pedro Urano & Joana Traub Csekö: Hu Enigma
I like it when a film slowly seems to get a hold of itself before your very eyes. Like it’s getting smarter as it goes along. That’s how I felt watching this depiction of a huge hospital complex in Rio…
Fia-Stina Sandlund: She’s Blonde Like Me
CPH:DOX on a November afternoon. I am watching a filmmaker’s film about her filmmaking and herself. Afterwards, I watch the filmmaker telling us about her film about herself and her filmmaking. I’m always interested in the creative process so I’m…
The Syrian Revolution/ 9
Text taken from Facebook, announced publicly in Copenhagen yesterday at the cph:dox festival by film producer and festival director Orwa Nyrabia from Damascus: Syrian filmmaker Nidal Hassan disappeared in Damascus on Thursday 3-11-2011, no information about him has come to…
Greek Festival Opening in Moment of Crisis
The 52nd edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has started and runs until the 13th of November. In a newsletter issued by the festival, under the headline “a modest ceremony raised the curtain of the festival”, the festival director…
Nelson Pereira: The Music According To Tom Jobim
The opening is splendid: Old b/w footage from the 50’s of an aircraft flying into Rio de Janeiro and an orchestral rendition of “Garota de Ipanema” on the soundtrack. I want to go to Rio and I want to see…
Boycott Iranian Cinema Vérité Festival
IDFA (the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) put a text on its website the other day with an appeal to ilmmakers with a film selected for the Cinema Verité Festival to seriously consider withdrawing their film and decline any invitation…
Vinylmania – Support the Campaign
Help, there is only 7 days to go to reach our goal. These are the words from filmmaker Paolo Campana in Turin, Italy. It is all or nothing, he says, as it is with the crowdfunding done through Kickstarter. I…
Omar Amiralay: Everyday Life in a Syrian Village
In Danish as this is about getting Danes to come and watch the forbidden masterpiece of Omar Amarilay, Syria’s most important documentary filmmaker, who died this year in February, a month before the Syrian revolution started: Tabet af den syriske…
Bonke & Koefoed: Ballroom Dancer
Cph:dox opened with an entertaining documentary with Russian Slavik Kryklyvyy, Latin American dancer, as the main character, who tries to make his way back to the top, where he was the best in the world – 10 years ago. The…
CineDoc in Athens
When noone else does anything to bring good documentaries to Athens, you have to do it yourselves! This is what three film people, all women, decided to do and if you have a look at their programme, you can only…
Danfung Dennis: Hell and Back Again
Dokumania, DR’s flagskib for dokumentarfilm, hver tirsdag på DR2, i morgen kl. 21, viser den prisbelønnede amerikanske dokumentarfilm “Helvede tur-retur”, som har vundet flere første-priser og er med i køen til at blive Oscar-nomineret. Helt fortjent. Jeg var i juryen…
Awards at Jihlava 2011
… at the International Documentary Film Festival was given out last night. Twelve awards. The best World Documentary, Opus Bonum, given by a one person jury, James T. Hong, was ”Lost Land” by Belgian director Pierre.Yves Vandeweerd, whereas ”Bakhmaro” by…
East Silver Awards 2011
Alina Rudnitskaya is a very talented filmmaker from Saint Petersburg. Her newest 25 minutes long documentary from this year, ”I will forget this Day” (photo) has already been awarded at several festivals for its stylistically strong vision of women and…
Shatz & Barash: The Collaborator and his Family
It is quite an achievement by the filmmakers to establish and keep a tension the whole way through a feature length film, where actually nothing happens in a classical action sense. And yet a lot happens, small banal events and…
Magnus Gertten: Harbour of Hope
One thing is that the launch of this Swedish film has been more than noticeable with constant updates on screenings and screening events, links to history, funding campaigns and much more – look at the Facebook link below – but…
RIDM Edition 14
RIDM… stands for Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal… its 14th edition takes off November 9 and runs until November 20. A small festival compared to the ones in Europe right now (Leipzig, idfa, cph:dox) and to HotDocs in Toronto,…
ITVS
stands for The Independent Television Service’s (ITVS). It supports documentary projects for broadcast in the US – subject-wise from all over the world. 8 films have been supported out of ITVS International Call for 2011, where 476 submissions were received…
Phil Cox: The Bengali Detective
This documentary of Phil Cox, that has done and is still doing the international festival circuit, is the Documentary of the Month at Cinemateket, The Danish Film House in the centre of Copenhagen. The film will have six screenings, the…
Prix arte – European Film Awards
The European Film Academy has announced the nominations in the category European Film Awards Documentary 2011 – Prix arte. A committee consisting of Nik Powell, director of the NFTS and deputy chairman of the EFA Board, EFA Board Member Despina…
British Film Director in Syria
Journalist witnesses Syrian authorities torturing activists – this is headline of an article of today brought by Channel 4 News, accompanied by an interview with the internationally renowned film-maker Sean McAllister, who describes what he saw and heard while detained…
The Syrian Revolution/ 8
Unfortunately and tragically, we have to return to Syria again. Orwa Nyrabia, filmmaker and co-director of the Damascus-based Dox Box Festival, that filmkommentaren.dk has reported from the very beginning of its existence, reports daily on facebook, several times, from his…
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
I don’t want talking faces, you often hear documentary filmmakers say. To be understood: it is boring television stuff. In this case, and in many other, of course, the talking faces, at least most of them, are interesting to look…
Young Filmmakers Festival in Palestine
At a moment where European documentary film festivals are gathering documentarians and a local audience in big crowds to present huge numbers of film (DOK Leipzig, cph:dox, Jihlava, DocLisboa, idfa etc.) it is wonderful to see that other smaller, but…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Awards
Tonight the awards of the 54th DOK Leipzig festival were announced. A new record total of 74,500 euros (!) in prize money was granted to a total of 17 awards. The total prize list follows below. The three international competition…
DOKLeipzig 2011 – Atmosphere and Profile
In the train for Copenhagen after 5 days at the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. I had my currywurst mit scharfe sauce a while ago and am ready for the train ride home via Hamburg. Gives…
DOKLeipzig 2011 – DOK Fund Wanted
Festival directors must have visions and points of view. DOK Leipzig festival director Claas Danielsen has. The following is taken from the press release of the festival after the opening of the festival: Claas Danielsen held a very personal speech,…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Vivan Las Antipodas!
Please surprise me, give me time for reflections, to smile, laugh, cry, tell me something I did not know in beforehand – or show me something that I have not seen before, or make some unpredictable montage of location connections…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Special Flight
This is where our civilisation has brought us! Is my first thought after this heartbreaking documentation from a rich country in the middle of Europe, Switzerland. A documentary that without doubt will get award(s) at the DOK Leipzig. Deservedly. It…
Dok Leipzig 2011 – At Night, they Dance
Subtitle: ”Reda and her 3 daughters”, a very well told human story from the crowded Cairo, about women who earn their money as belly dancers in more or less obscure locations for entertainment, dominated by and set up for men.…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Other Films
Above I write about films that impressed me mostly, but there were others that deserve mention for the good or for the bad. So here comes some name dropping. Finnish Anu Kuivalainen’s ”Aranda” about people and research on board the…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Arabien
Obvious to make a series of films from the Arab countries – Arabien as the organisers called it, and it sounds much nicer in German. I saw a couple of them, ”Tahrir 2011”, ”I am in the Square” and ”No…
DOK Leipzig 2011 – Helena Trestikova
The industry part of DOK Leipzig introduced a session with three works in progress. I was asked to be one of the commentators of the first film to be presented, which was with Czech Helena Trestikova as the director, well-known…
CPH:DOX November 3-13
It is impossible – with a short text – to introduce the programme of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It is overwhelming to sit with the newspaper catalogue in your hands, putting small X’es for what you want to…
Jan Banning: Bureaucratics
It is such a good idea: To travel to many different countries and take photos of bureaucrats. Dutch photographer Jan Banning did so together with colleague writer Will Tinnemans. Together they made a book – you can browse through it…
Doc Discussion Translated into Russian
Ludmila Nazaruk, who runs the Russian documentary website www.miradox.ru informs filmkommentaren that text entries from our Doc Discussion have been translated into Russian. She writes: Nice and initiative filmmakers from Moscow – here is their blog in the live journal http://albatrossdoc.livejournal.com/78661.html translated…