48 at Magnificent7
If you click 48 on this site, you will have numerous hits. The film of Susana de Sousa Dias has been given many postings for its innovative, artistic exploration of the documentary language. It was one of the first films…
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
Read More48 at Magnificent7
News from Paris: Armadillo in France/2
Janus Metz’s Armadillo has now been running in theatres in France for over 6 weeks and can still be seen on the big screen around the country until mid-March. So far, the film (originally put out in 26 copies December…
Cinema Komunisto Awarded
Cinema Komunisto, the documentary about Yugoslav film history, made by young Serbian film director Mila Turajlic, had its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam a couple of months ago – and will have its national premiere on sunday at the…
Nicholas Philibert at Magnificent7
The festival opened with an image of Nénette, the more than 40 years old orangutang that since the age of 3 has been living in a zoo in Paris. A close up of someone looking at you and another beautiful…
Magnificent7 Starts Tonight
It is below zero but sunny here in snow-white Belgrade where the 7th edition of the Magnificent 7 European feature length documentary festival kicks off tonight with two opening films on the programme: ”Nenette” (Photo) by French veteran master Nicholas…
DocsBarcelona Programme
Two days ago the programme of the festival part of the DocsBarcelona was published, see site below or click on the links of the following press release: DocsBarcelona is back in full force between 2 and 6 February 2011, with…
Dokumania: Annie Leibovitz
Next week’s Dokumania on Danish DR2 this coming tuesday at 9pm, prime time, is the film about American Photography icon Annie Leibovitz, reviewed on this site. If you can not watch Danish television and want to update your knowledge about…
Månedens Dokumentar i Filmhuset
… i København er “The Parking Lot Movie”, se min anmeldelse nedenfor. Filmen vises fra 18. januar – 23, januar, én forevisning dagligt. Hurra for dette fine initiativ, som siges at være en succes med hensyn til antal tilskuere. www.dfi.dk…
Meghan Eckman: The Parking Lot Movie
At the end of the film a song comes up – called ”Life in a Nutshell” – which is exactly what the director of this classic observational and interview born documentary aims it to be. It takes place in Charlottesville…
Cinéma du Réel 2011
Loyal readers of filmkommentaren will know that both bloggers have a faible for this yearly festival in Paris – next year the dates are March 24 – April 5. Today the programme was announced in overall terms and the appetite…
Sergei Loznitsa In Lisbon
Loznitsa (b.1964 in USSR (Belarus)) (photo) is one of the gurus at the European film festival circuit. Respected for his film language and for his extraordinary use of archive material. His last film is ”My Joy”, a fiction film, the…
Presidential Docs
The trade magazine Realscreen – that calls itself ”the best in non-fiction” – announces the American HBO’s upcoming slate of documentaries. Two interesting documentaries are to be broadcasted, made by well-known documentarians – they deal with JFK and Ronald Reagan.…
Stan Neumann: The Surrealistic Photography
The Czech born, based in Paris, director Stan Neumann is a real auteur, who has been working a lot for the French-German cultural channel arte as one of the directors trusted by Thierry Garrel, when he was leading the arte…
Forgotten Transports in Copenhagen
The Czech Embassy has asked filmkommentaren.dk to announce the screening of one part of the extraordinary documentary series by Lukas Pribyl, previously praised on this site. We do so with pleasure by re-posting the review from 2009 below. The screening…
3 Scenes of Celebration
DocsBarcelona (February 1-6) is under preparation. But today the staff is not working. Last night Executive Producer Elena Subirà I Roca explained in three filmic scenes how Nit de Reis is performed in Catalunya, and she sent a cell phone…
Films to Remember
Tue Steen Müller and Allan Berg, the bloggers of this filmkommentaren.dk met during the holidays and agreed to make a list of films that have stayed in our minds. We have picked films that have been reviewed or noted on…
Magnificent 7 Number 7
The website of the 7th European Feature Documentary Film Festival is up and running. You can now see what films have been selected by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and me, to be screened from January 25 to 29 at the…
Magnificent7 Welcome Words
Welcome to this special edition number seven! Did we really have 7 editions, that means 49 films including those of this year. Wow… And we have had almost full houses in the Sava Centre during most of the years! And…
Yuri Khashchevatsky: The Kalinovski Square
It seems to be a never ending story that comes out of Belarus every time an election is being held: The – it seems – life-time president Lukashenko pushes his gorillas to attack his political opponents, who are being beaten…
DOX – European Documentary Film Magazine
For the readers of this text: I am absolutely biased. I was one of the founders of the DOX magazine way back in the first half of the 1990’es at the time where the EU MEDIA Programme had its office…
DocuNotes 2010: Chile
Chilean documentary is much more than the master Patricio Guzman and his films on Allende and the suffering during the time of Pinochet. There are many talents and many authored voices to keep an eye and ear open for. I…
DocuNotes 2010: Ceausescu
It is 180 minutes long, it is from 2010, the director is Andrei Ujica, if you can talk about a director, when it comes to this amazing work ”The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” that must be obligatory in all film…
DocuNotes 2010: Rabbit a la Berlin
”Yes, this is the way to make a different film for the celebration of the 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Playing masterly with the film language, wanting to surprise us. To tell us the same story…
To Leave a Film School
… after three years of studies having graduated to be ready for real work. Out there in ”the jungle”. This is the situation for 27 students from the Zelig School for Documentaries, television and new media in Bolzano. I was…
StoryDoc – Teargas in Athens
Filmmakers, broadcasters and sales agents were safe at the Goethe Institute in Athens, while riots were going on outside in the streets. While discussing upcoming projects in development, watching films, listening to clever and inspiring lectures or getting concrete information…
Storydoc – Music in Documentaries
Sanna Salmenkallio, Finnish composer, working both in film and theatre, talked to the participants about music in documentaries stating from the start of her lecture that for her there is actually no difference in making music for documentaries and for…
StoryDoc – the Creative Documentary?
Emma Davie, Scottish filmmaker and film teacher at the Edinburgh College of Arts did a brilliant lecture on what a creative documentary can be. She was adressing her colleagues with advice and reflections that came from the clips from the…
StoryDoc – Storytelling
Film is an emotional stream, Niels Pagh Andersen said, Danish editor, living in Finland, and working with films from many different countries. TV documentaries, feature duration docs for cinemas. Andersen has a long and strong cv. And he delivered an…
Steadywing – the camera choice of Helmrich
Below you find the praise of the camerawork of Dutch director Helmrich, who won the main prize at idfa for his “Position among the stars”. He and many other masterclasses are to be found and looked at on idfa.nl –…
Idfa Winners/2
Even if not having seen all films in the main long feature documentary section at idfa, it is clear that the good choices of the jury appear to be based on artistic quality and subject relevance. Where nobody has waited…
idfa Winners
At the end of last week the winners of the 23st idfa festival were announced. From the site of idfa I have taken this press report with easy references to content description of the films awarded, many of which will…
Idfa Docs for Sale
Many visitors to the festival in Amsterdam (November 17-28) are there to look for films to buy for their national television channels. The buyers sit in their booths and choose among more than 500 films, as do festival representatives from…
Lithuanian Documentaries – for free
An early christmas present for documentary lovers: The offer to watch artistic short documentaries from the country of filmmakers who, if any, master the poetic film language: Lithuania. In times where these kind of films have problems in getting to…
Idfa Festival Nominations
The festival in Amsterdam has a nomination system like the one used at the Oscars – three films in each category of competition are shortlisted – and the directors have to wait until saturday night to hear if they are…
Idfa Forum: Justice for Sale
I post this article from the idfa site to higlight one of the most appreciated documentary projects that was pitched at the Forum 2010: Twin sisters Ilse and Femke van Velzen, filmmakers and human rights activists, returned last week from…
Idfa Forum/1
The Forum for International Co-Financing of Documentaries holds its 18th session. There is a friendly atmosphere at the round table where tv commissioning editors sit to comment on the projects that are pitched. Maybe too friendly for a veteran participant…
Idfa Forum/2
The Forum is half way through and my general impression is that 2010 selection has been good. There are many creative documentaries, and they are well received. It started strongly with Romanian Florin Iepan’s project ”Odessa” (PHOTO), his short catalogue…
idfa Audience Top 10
Of course idfa with an audience of more than 100.000 must have an audience award parallel to the awards given by juries of film professionals. If you go to the website you will find an updated list that goes by…
Oscar Shortlist for Long Documentaries
The long-awaited Short List of feature-length documentaries in consideration for Academy Award nomination was finally released, and here are the lucky 15: Client 9:The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Dir.: Alex Gibney; ES Productions LLC) Enemies of the People…
Ally Derks: Screaming Out for Culture
Ally Derks, director of the idfa festival, held a strong speech at the opening of the festival Wednesday night. Here is the text of the strong cultural political appeal: Dear friends, tonight we are launching the 23rd edition of IDFA…
Buried Alive – The Chilean Mine Rescue
I did not get the name of the director of this Channel4 production but it does not matter as the film was without any authored point of view – a mere report about what happened, chronologically structured with interesting and…
News from Paris: Armadillo in France
The Danish documentary Armadillo, Grand Prix at la Semaine de la Critique in Cannes this year, is getting ready to take in France. Distrib Films is in charge of the distribution and the film will be launched December 15th with…
Cinema Vérité in Iran – Winners
We have written about the Cinema Vérité documentary film festival, held in Tehran from November 7-12 under the slogan “Reality for All” – see below. The winners of the festival have been announced like this: Iran’s 4th Cinema Verite International…
IDFA Starts Today/1
The without any doubt biggest in audience and most important documentary film festival for the professional community kicks off today in Amsterdam and goes on until November 28. Edition number 23 it is, that will welcome an audience with more…
IDFA Starts Today/2
Many of the 300 films at the festival in Amsterdam have been noticed or reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk. From the programme of today ”Armadillo”, ”Steam of Life”, ”Last Train Home” and ”Erotic Man” can be mentioned… But if I were at…
IDFA Starts Today/3
… and is, as mentioned above, also the place to go for professionals who are looking for films for their tv channels, or for festival programmers. Around 500 films are available for the accredited guests, who are there to select…
Camera, Laptop, Action: The New Golden Age of Docu
… is the headline of a long, interesting article in the Observer sunday November 7. It serves as a follow-up to the Sheffield Doc/Fest that has been covered excellently by the Guardian, see site address below. The Observer article (written…
Godard Discussed Again Again…
We have posted several texts on the ever original and non-conventional 79 year old Jean-Luc Godard, especially in connection with his newest film ”Film Socialisme”. This sunday (November 14) Guardian has an interesting article that starts like this: It should…
News from Paris : Le Mois du film documentaire
November is the month of documentary films in France, Le Mois du Doc opens this weekend for the 11th time: More than 1200 sites, nearly 3000 showings and an audience of around 150.000. This event was created by the association…
Cinema Vérité in Iran
Last year 142 Iranian filmmakers appealed to the documentary community worldwide to boycott the festival Cinema Vérité, see below. Yesterday EDN (European Documentary Network) posted the following text on its site: ”EDN will be present at the The 4th annual…