A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The festival ended this evening with the prize ceremony in the huge Kijew Kino. The jury, of which I was the chairman, judging 20 international documentaries, made the following decision – quoting the short motivations, reviews of three main prize…
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…
I want to be seen, says one them. I want to be conventional, says the other. Both of them took a very unconventional decision, to change from being a man to being a woman. The title says that they have…
From a filmic point of view it has everything, it is so well done: strong characters, who are developed, as a similar strong story is being unfolded, with conflicts, dramas, emotions, intimacy, closeness. The style is aggressive, the camera goes…
It is so natural that Krakow has been a Cultural Capital of Europe. It has history, beautiful buildings, an active outside life with loads of cafés – yes, we are many visitors in this city and the Main Market Square…
Vera and Marcel, brother and sister. Marcel, film director. They sit together around a table. They do so to recollect and remember Tonia, the mother of the siblings, a woman who was in jail and a woman who was filmed…
In the old festival hotel Cracovia, next door to the Kijow Cinema, where the main programme of the festival is running, there is a so-called Industry Zone, where festival people meet and talk to filmmakers in an informal atmosphere about…
The Polish Film Institute runs an honorable dvd publlishing policy. Previously I have reported on very good director boxes with films by Kieslowski, Karabasz, Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski – and now, here in Krakow, at the hall of the Kino…
Richard Raskin, Aarhus University, is the short film expert and editor of “Short Film Studies”. Raskin calls for papers for volume 2 number 2. Click below, to know more about the editor and to have the presentation of the film…
First an introduction taken from YouTube, where the Krakow Film Foundation has posted videos and some trailers from films taking part in the 51st (!) edition of Krakow Film Festival, 23rd – 29th May 2011: KFF is one of the…
The Copenhagen documentary audience gets spoilt. First the professionals were invited to watch it at the yearly Maraton Dok, organised by EDN (European Documentary Network) and now Cinemateket at the Danish Film Insttute has chosen the film as the ”documentary…
For many of us it never goes beyond the words, when it comes to put into reality all the good intentions about the promotion of the documentaries. Few have had the strength and courage to link all the elements of…
Documentary of the Month is a unique distribution initiative, run by Parallel 40 in more than 40 cities, not only in Catalunya and Spain, but now also in Latin America – in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. It was born out…
The way to the audience can go through the showing of documentaries on a regular basis as Parallel 40 has initiated with the ”Documentary of the Month”, see above. Or it can be through festivals, the more and more popular…
Moderna Museet in Malmö, Sweden hosts an exhibition of 14 works by Marcel Duchamp. This one everybody knows, signed by Duchamp under the name of R. Mutt, from 1917. He chocked the world with this work, later to be nominated…
It is good and bad at the same time. Bad because it reflects that international cooperation for the production of non-mainstream documentaries no longer happens between the national film funds and/or the national broadcasters, good because it reflects that festivals…
The French based (in Marseilles) promotion and distribution mechanism Aflam, which has its focus on Arab cinema, pays a tribute to the late Syrian documentary film director, Omar Amiralay, who died in February this year. Amiralay was a persona non…
Quite a different text has to be written under this headline – compared to the one below from Egypt. From the atrocities in Syria, let us call it as it is, a massacre by the government on its own people,…
I was watching the Danish news magazine Horisont (modelled after the BBC Panorama strand) last night, prime time on DR, our public service channel. They had 25 minutes on Egypt. I sat down with some expectation that was competely let…
Tommy Seebach, popstjerne, vinder af det danske melodi grand prix adskillige gange, blev 53 år gammel. Han var, som det vist hedder, hård ved sig selv, knoklede for at få anerkendelse for sit talent, nåede toppen, faldt dybt, druknede sig…
Danish documentary master Jørgen Leth was challenged by his admirer von Trier in the very succesful film The Five Obstructions, that gave Leth a very well deserved international breakthrough outside the world documentary circles. Retrospectives of his work were arranged…
Wonder how many documentaries will be screened in Cannes this year? The stars are there, the most fascinating is Faye Dunaway on the gorgeous poster of this year.
AFAC is the name, it is based in Beirut and “The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) is an independent Arab initiative established by local cultural lobbyists and a group of international donors in 2007. AFAC funds individuals and…
I have written about and praised the DOX magazine a couple of times as the magazine for the creative (artistic, authored, call it what you want) documentary. But if you want to follow what happens in the more commercial sector…
He lives in Bulgaria in Svishtov a town by the Danube. He is a building worker. And a fan. Of Manchester United. He orders a visit card that says “fan” as occupation and he wants to change his name to…
For the second year the Balkan Documentary Center organises a workshop for 7 creative documentary projects from the region. During one week the participants met tutors like Aleksandar Manic (”The Shutka Book of Records”), Boris Mitic (”Goodbye, How are You”),…
I felt priviliged to attend the so-called demo screenings of the first 3 films under “the informal label “buldoc”. Arranged in connection with the first session of the Balkan Documentary Center, and created by Martichka Bozhilova from the documentary production…
Syrian human rights activists disappear… The statement below was originally issued as an online petition, but for safety reasons, this petition has now been closed down. Around 1000 film people from all over have signed. However, you can still show…
What do you do when you sit in an airplane, don’t want to read any more newspapers or have done enough mails for today? Well, I was lucky to have received the new DOX magazine, summer 2011, the 90th edition…
Zanda Dudina from the National Film Centre in Latvia read my text about the film on Rudolf Ming, see below. She tells me that Rudolf – 13 at the time of the film, 16 today – now have a real…
It seems to be in the middle of nowhere, and isolated it is, what was meant to be (25 years ago) a place to live, in noble decency, planned to house the Romas by the socialist government. Today block 20…
Good news it is that this Latvian documentary, produced by the studio that carries the name of documentary legend Juris Podnieks, has made it to the Hot Docs festival (see below) and will have three screenings in Toronto in the…
Want to share this beautiful photo from Belgrade, from Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, Magnificent7, European feature documentary festival, next edition January 2012.
Good news for the documentary interested audience in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Monthly Documentary in May at the Film House is Leonard Retel Helmrich’ masterpiece “Position Among the Stars” that runs every day from Thursday May 5 till Wednesday May 11.…
Conversations with documentary filmmakers from Italy is always full of head shaking over the situation in Italian television, which is basically run by the main character in Italian documentary of today: Silvio Berlusconi. There are public funding mechanisms, and they…
If idfa in Amsterdam is the biggest in Europe, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market. It returns for its 18th annual edition from April 28 to May 8, 2011. Showcasing the…
Well, it is first and foremost for us Northeners, who can read Swedish… but I write this text in English anyway to praise the documentary profile, quality and volume of the SVT, Swedish public broadcaster, that publishes a very good…
The excellent vod (video on demand) portal DocAlliance, set up by five European film festivals, makes a generous offer: to watch five films by Polish documentary master Marcel Lozinzki. The five films, including the masterpiece ”Anything can Happen”. Here is…
Nothing happens. Or a lot happens. Up to you as audience. It depends on how you define ”a story”. In mainstream definition terms one would say that there is no story, and yet here is an outline of the short…
It is not unusual that we do proper promotion for events that we are involved in ourselves. This is no exception! Loyal readers have read my texts from Israel and Palestine – where a workshop was held that ended up…
It was a scoop that DFI (Danish Film Institute) had invited James Roberts, assistant director general from National Film Board of Canada (NFB), to come to the Danish DOK-dag (Documentary Day, see more below) to talk about the online film…
I have been surfing around on the site of NFB for an hour now. I have seen some trailers, I have seen clips from some of the films that I remember from a long festival life, and from the imports…
Twice per year the Danish Film Institute (DFI) invites the national documentary filmmakers, distributors, promoters and bureaucrats, including television people, to meet for information and inspiration. The first meeting took place on monday this week, a so-called ”DOK-dag” (Documentary Day)…
From the DOK Dag (see above): Could have listened to and watched much more of the work of multi artist Kaspar Schröder, an original talent, who also makes films and has got a lot of well deserved praise for his…
Below is a text about a new Danish television documentary, ”The President”, which describes the absurd process that lead to the nomination of totally unknown haiku-poet and politician, Belgian Herman van Rompuy, as President of the EU – according to…
I met Pawel Lozinski at DocsBarcelona, I have known him for many years, appreciating the films he has made (in Barcelona was shown “Sisters” and “Chemo”). He told me about the film project he and his father, Marcel, is working…
20 years after the change – in Romania after the end of the Ceaucescu regime. How would he, Ceaucescu, look upon/see his country today, if he came down from the skies? Solomon, experienced Romanian director, lets the dictator come back…
The director of this film used to be a strong and passionate commissioning editor at RTBF, the French language Belgian public broadcaster. He left when the channel decided to be less active in the commitment to the creative documentary. Le…
It is not the first time a film about a village with unmarried singles is being made these years. Seems to be a trend! And as the Greek one (”Sugartown”) and the Serbian one (”Village Without Women”) this one from…
His name was originally Stephen Apostolof, but having fled communist Bulgaria, entering the American Film Dream factory, Hollywood, he changed to an artist name, A.C. Stephen, which is not and will not become a big name in film history, apart…