A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
It was a proud Joan Gonzalez, director of DocsBarcelona, who texted me this morning. In the newspaper Vanguardia, page 2, Gonzalez was given a ”GreenLight”, a tribute that is given to people, who has done something special for their profession…
It was the first time that DocsBarcelona included awards. At the fifth edition of the festival statuettes and cash prizes were distributed. €6000 was given to the film “Foreign Parts” (photo) by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki. The description of…
… hopefully, because there were many talented directors with interesting and intriguing project proposals at the 14th edition of the Pitching Forum in Barcelona, see below. This posting does not allow to mention all the 23 projects which were presented,…
… edition number 14 it was on February 3 and 4. For those readers who are not familiar with the terminology – pitching in the film world is about filmmakers throwing film ideas and proposals to broadcasters, film funds, sales…
Greenaway needs no big introduction and no need to stress his importance for European cinema as a master constantly searching for new possibilities for expression. I was not able to attend (with 300 others) his masterclass, that he – taken…
… indeed they are, as it was proved at the 14th edition of the DOCSBarcelona pitching forum section. With the help of Ibermedia, a financial support mechanism that links the Iberian countries Spain and Portugal with countries in Latin America,…
It was one of those evenings that you will never forget – and that Mila Turajlic will never forget. A totally packed Sava Centre in Belgrade gave her a minute long applause for her great work on making the 100…
”Look at this landscape, it makes you want to film it”, he says, Mark Cousins, film historian and writer and with ”The First Film” also a brilliant essayistic filmmaker. With his wonderful Scottish accent, or is it Northern Irish, that…
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…
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, 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
… 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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
”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…
… 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 –…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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, 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…
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…
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…