A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The night of making some people happy, others disappointed. The award ceremony to hand out more than 70.000€ and statuettes. Speeches and clips. Main prize, The Golden Dove, went to the Swedish film “Vodka Factory” by Jerzy Sladkowski (PHOTO), The…
Every monday the opponents to the GDR regime met at the Nikolai church in Leipzig. With candles in their hands – speeches, “stille und schweigend” as said one of the leaders, former priest at the church, Christian Führer, who also…
He has only made 5 films, Sergey Dvortsevoy, but he is one of the most wanted documentarians for the so-called masterclasses. His popularity is huge as the attendance proved at the festival, where the room was packed for the 2…
For those who are interested in following the news in France, particularly these days, here is an excellent opportunity online. The French Internet news-site Mediapart now has an English version. Mediapart was founded in 2008 by a group of journalists,…
… and a jury member means that you are treated well, very well indeed. You are in a nice hotel, you get a per diem so you can go and buy yourself a wienerschnitzel or a curry-wurst, and a beer…
The opening of film festivals is something that veterans like me normally avoid because of boring official speeches and/or a moderator trying to be funny and/or blonds or brunettes in high heels being there for their looks, knowing nothing about…
… and the local Leipziger Volkszeitung has an interview with festival director Claas Danielsen, who stresses that the 53rd edition of the festival could need a couple of days more for a festival that he predicts will have many full…
Ken Loach, no introduction needed, gave a strong speech the other day at the opening of the London Film Festival. According to the Guardian, that brought an excerpt of the speech (Saturday 16 October) the veteran director, who has made…
It was a person in the audience, who appealed to the panel: We are world famous for our writers – Joyce, Beckett etc. – now it must be time to become known for our films. He, and around 100 other…
Oh, what a medium television can be as we have experienced during the last week! Direct tv. Cinema verite. I refer to the rescue operation of the 33 miners in Chile, even more emotional for me, who was in the…
The Tafaseel web documentary magazine, see below, asked me to write an article for their first edition. Here it is: 3 months per year I am away from home. I travel in and outside Europe to talk about documentaries, the…
A new, very interesting, well edited documentary web magazine, tafaseel-mag.net, published by Syrian filmmakers and festival organisers of Dox Box has been launched. No.1 includes a lot of interesting articles and comments and reviews and news, that I am looking forward…
… is one the best progrqmmed festivals in Europe. The 2010 edition goes from October 14-24 and has several interesting film historical highlights parallel to the international and Portuguese sections. The directors who are presented to the local and international…
The upcoming festival in Leipzig (October 18-24) has an interesting retrospective with films from the conflict zone in Caucasia. Here is the site introduction text: “Eight programmes with some twenty films will give you sufficient opportunity to deal with a…
Saturday in Buenos Aires. Sunshine. Spring has come to the wonderful city of Argentina. We (my wife and I) have just come back from some days in Chile. I met filmmakers who are going to DOKLeipzig and to idfa. The Chileans…
The Danish audience, at least the one in Copenhagen, centralised Danish cultural policy, but that is another story, will have the possibility to watch one of the most awarded and spoken about documentaries from the recent years, “Cooking History” by…
The festival has a fine offer for – taken from the presse release – ”all those who are so excited they can hardly contain themselves. They can now (re)discover outstanding, award-winning filme even before the festival is underway! From 12…
Breathless is the word that characterises the feeling you get when you browse through the site of the upcoming DOK Leipzig programme that was published a couple of days ago. 12 cinemas, more than 300 films to choose from, lots…
The great art documentary film about avantgarde pioneer photomontagist and Stalinist propagandagist Gustavs Klucis, mentioned and presented on this site several times during the last couple of years, has received the first prize of the 40 year old International Film…
Want to see, for free, one of the most charming and creative documentaries from the first decade of 2000? You can do so by very simply making a click on the website of idfa.tv. Here is the description of the…
There were 24 film projects to be pitched to the panel of tv representatives, see below. And on top of that the organisers had reserved two mornings, where another 40 projects and their producers/directors could have one-to-one meetings with tv…
”The first step for your doc” was the slogan for the very succesful pitching forum and conference held in Buenos Aires during the last three days. And for many of the film projects that was presented it was a very…
The first spring day in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Cool it is, was much warmer yesterday, and rain will come, says the receptionist of the hotel. I am here with Danish colleague Mikael Opstrup to tutor at a workshop for 24…
What a show! Film producer and organiser of the DocMeeting Argentina, Rodrigo Vila, has invited me to go and see a match at the home ground of the football club with most caps in the world, Boca Juniors. The name…
Brassaï, original name Gyula Halász, is on exhibition in Buenos Aires. The photographer was one of many famous artists, who lived and worked in Paris, more specifically in Montparnasse (he lived from1899-1984). The National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos…
As always perfectly organised by the team at the National Film Centre of Latvia, and supported by the EU MEDIA Programme, the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries was held in Riga September 7-12. There was a festival programme of new…
The Baltic Sea Forum 2010 was very much a place for new talent to present their ideas at the same time as it was refreshing to see an old master like Ivars Seleckis, in this mid seventies, come forward with…
Alina Rudnitskaya has previously been praised on this site – for her fine films ”Civil Status” and ”Bitch Academy” that have travelled the world festival circuit with success making her name mentioned as a big talent. Last year she pitched…
The Latvians write history with their films. Below a description of the ambition of Ivars Seleckis to make the third part of the epic about the Crossroad Street in Riga. A work that will cover more than 20 years of…
There is a street in Riga. A quite extraordinary street inhabited by ordinary people like you and me. I know them very well. Through films, of course. Actually I have known them for more than 20 years. Skersiela is the…
Today the audiovisual trade magazine Realscreen brings an article that informs about a new documentary coming out about Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg, a controversial character in Denmark – though one of former prime minister Anders Fogh’s experts – but a…
… with the subtitle: Tim Rushton’s Enigma… is a making-of-film, a fascinating observation of the process of setting up of a contemporary dance performance conceived and conducted by Tim Rushton. When the producer of the film – Ole John –…
Idfa – International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam – asks every year a prominent director to choose her/his 10 Best Film list, whihc are then screened at the festival. This year the director is Finnish Pirjo Honkasalo and her list goes…
We have written about it since the start of filmkommentaren.dk and we will continue to do so as this excellent initiative is exportable: You find a documentary and short film addict – and connaisseur – with a wide network and…
Richard Leacock, 90 years old in 2011, a master of cinema vérité, always energetic and inspirational… finally gets a filmic homage. It happens now at the Telluride Film Festival and it takes place in association with the first public screening…
Deadline on Monday, September 6, for applications for the unique European training programme Archidoc for filmmakers with archive based documentaries. I have been working with this training programme for many years and have with great pleasure seen fine films come…
In 1995 a special Danish documentary award in the name of documentary pioneer Jørgen Roos was initiated. For 2010 the award (as of tonite) was given to the cameraman Lars Skree, who together with director Janus Metz created the mega-success…
Autumn is coming and the documentary festival season opens. The festivals start to announce their programmes. DOKLeipzig is one of the bigger – this blogger will be there to report and be in a jury – that at this time…
As of August 13 2010 this Finnish documentary had sold around 63.000 tickets in national cinemas. An amazing number for a documentary film about a drug addict, I thought, before watching it. How do you pitch that to friends… want…
This film insists on being a Film. From the very start. This is a story to be watched – it follows the old mantra: don’t talk about it, show it. No commentary. No formatted tv. And oh yes, they succeed…
Good news for a good film reviewed on this site a couple of days ago, edited from the press release of the festival DOK Leipzig: “All That Glitters” by Tomáš Kudrna, developed at the Documentary Campus Masterschool 2007, has been…
Our American readers can watch (on PBS, 10pmEST) Amy Hardie’s great film tonite. If you live outside the U.S. you can watch it online for free from tomorrow and for the next three months. On the site mentioned below. I…
Energetic festival director (ZagrebDOX) and producer (Factum) Nenad Puhovski is also a film director, and a very committed one. With his new film he has for years been following people who – with his words – ”were, are or wish…
Den danske dokumentarserie, bestående af fire film med hver deres egen stil og ”håndskrift”, bliver nu vist på DR2’s tirsdags-strand ”Dokumania” den 24. august og 31. August klokken 21.30. Jeg skrev en artikel til tidsskriftet DOX om serien, her er…
The 25th edition of the festival in Odense, Denmark takes place 23-28. August. There are many reasons to congratulate the municipality of Odense for keeping alive this film festival for all these years in spite of constant battles to raise…
I have never heard about Kalmykia before. Have you? I checked it: An autonomous republic it is, member of the SNG, close friends to Russia with ONE leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who himself was a chess champion and wants to turn…
If you think you have read about films by Mirkovic from Serbia before, you are right! He has developed a special touch in documentary filmmaking and he chooses subjects that appeal not only to a local audience but also internationally…
It is a very rich film that Czech director and journalist Kudrna has made from post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. From the gold mine Kumtor, co-owned by a Canadian company. The creative documentary elements are obvious. Cinematography is stunning – there is a…
The Danish Cinemateket, that is part of the Danish Film Institute, and works from the Film House in the centre of Copenhagen, shows many documentaries (at one or two screenings) in their fine monthly programme. Recently, Cinemateket, the festival cph:dox…
The importance of the EU MEDIA Programme for the creative documentary can not be underestimated. Since 1990 the countries, who are members of the EU (plus now also countries like Norway, Switzerland and Croatia), have been able to achieve funding…