A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Italian Pippa Bacca, peace activist dressed in a wedding gown, decided to travel to Jerusalem. By hitchhiking. She did not make it. In Turkey she was raped and killed. Bingöl Elmas, Turkish filmmaker, decided to finish the travel of Pippa,…
Russian countryside village and a family. Mother and father and 4 children. We have seen it many times before, and we will see it again. With pleasure. You smile, you think ”how the hell can they survive under these poor…
During the Message2Man International Film Festival (se below) I had the pleasure to run a small doxpro workshop for around 10 young and younger Russian filmmakers. Through three hot mornings (July 17-19) the group discussed four projects that had been…
If you are spending time in Paris in August, here are a few ideas, which might not be in your travel guide. The Forum des images (recently renovated and situated down in Les Halles, great cinema and great program) organises…
Two festivals are coming up in Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo: 1) The 16th Sarajevo Film Festival runs from July 23 through July 31, 2010, with eighteen mid-length and feature documentaries from the Balkans, Turkey, Cyprus and Austria competing in the…
An almost two year old boy running around observing what goes on. And touching the Golden Centaur statuettes lined up to be given to the winners. A conferencier shouting Russian words into the microphone trying to make a festive atmosphere.…
The 20th edition of the St. Petersburg International Film Festival ended with an award ceremony yesterday night in the Dom Kino. There were a large number of prizes to be given, I will limit this posting to include those in…
The Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan in Armenia (July 11-18) ended as a triumph for Russian director Pavel Kostomarov, whose fine film ”Together” (reviewed on this site) got the first prize, the Golden Apricot, for the Best Documentary Film…
The international competition included yesterday the film ”17th of August” by Alexander Gutman, reviewed and commented several times in this site. Here is a reprint of the review: This fine Russian director has, apart from the masterpiece ”Frescoes” from Armenia,…
… but there has been time to visit the Hermitage museum and fight one’s way to study the great collection of Rembrandt works (oh, documentarians, go and study how he caught the magical moments when he did his portraits) and…
Mikhail Litvyakov is the director of the festival in beautiful St. Petersburg. He has passed the seven decades of age but there was no sign of lack of energy when he was on stage to welcome guests and audience in…
Young Palestinian filmmaker Nagham Mohanna, who took part in the mediterranean/middle east documentary training program Storydoc (see below) sends this report on her journey back to her home via Egypt. I have made some small edits and language corrections: Hello…
The Danish documentary “Armadillo”, directed by Janus Metz and filmed by Lars Skree, about Danish soldiers in Afghanistan has been running in Danish cinemas for 6 weeks. More than 100.000 tickets have been sold, and the film is still running.…
What a wonderful and well deserved piece of news. The Best Documentary film (category: under 30 mins.) at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival was yesterday given to the Lithuanian documentary ”The River” by Lithuanian filmmaking duo Julija Gruodienė and…
The World Cup final on Sunday with Holland and Spain has English Howard Webb as the referee. For doc-foot addicts he is a very well known person as the main character in the brilliant insight to the world of referees…
While Cannes is still waiting for Godard, we had the great pleasure in Paris to spend the evening of June 18th in his company after a special screening of Film Socialisme in le Cinéma des Cinéastes near Place Clichy. The…
Storydoc is an EU supported training programme ”for filmmakers with Mediterranean projects”. The first 2010 session took place July 5-7 in Corfu, where these words are being written the day after a workshop that was full of heat outside and…
The festival in Budapest ended with the main award being given to Peter Kerekes for his excellent ”Cooking History”, reviewed and mentioned on this site several times. The jury consisted of Bojána Papp director (Hungary), Adina Bradeanu director and film…
The yearly documentary gathering in Bardonecchia in Northern Italy starts this coming wednesday. Bardonecchia is a small winter sport resort that has a fine cultural centre that is used for documentary film screenings, case studies, a so-called matchmaking where directors…
This film is in production. The filmmakers are from the Basque country and were the ones behind the beautiful music documentary Nomadak reviewed on this site. I know Igor Otxoa who fights for his projects and does it with charm…
The director and cinematographer Klara Trencsenyi and her husband, anthropologist Vlada Naumescu made the beautiful documentary Birds Way that was reviewed on this site some months ago. In the review I used the words ”hospitality and openness” and they could…
… is taking place right now in Budapest, last day today for a programme of ”European Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival”. Festival director is Zoltan Füredi, a film director himself, I met him years ago where he was working on…
… takes place July 2-10 and has a fine short trailer with Milos Forman. Take a look at the site below. The festival has through the last years paid more attention to documentaries and this year 16 titles have made…
Italian director Paolo Campana has for years developed a film project on ”vinylmania”, i.e. on people who are addicted to the wonderful old records that many of us still have on shelves in our homes without using them in this…
On this site we have written about Mazia Bahari several times. For readers who have not seen his films here is a unique chance to get to know his work. Idfa, the world’s biggest documentary festival has published this press…
He was Ulysses and Zorbas, a traveller of the world and a man who enjoyed Life. This is the way, a Greek summarizes the legendary Ferenc Puskas in this entertaining and informative documentary about him. And the Greek loved him…
Subtitle: In Search of a Budapest Girl… Take a look at the photo and read this text presentation of the film taken from the IDF website, address below: “The November 10th, issue of Paris Match in 1956 featured a report…
They launch it as “From Yamagata through IDFA to Oscar”, the documentary section of the 32th Moscow International Film. They are Russian documentary director Sergey Miroshnichenko and producer Grigory Libergal. The two competent people make the selection for the fifth…
The DocWeek 2010, see below, organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute, hosted a one day pitch event that included 11 documentary projects, presented by American, UK, Chinese, Irish and Spanish filmmakers. In the panel to react to the pitches were…
It takes place at the same time as the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It is organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute that ”run annual programmes which develop filmmakers and producers such as Bridging the Gap (previously written about on this…
This photo was sent to me two hours before World Cup in football kick-off in South Africa. By Don Edkins, producer and distributor and promoter of documentary films in Southern Africa, and a dear guest of all important film events.…
There are many reasons why a documentary tradition grows or is being established. In the posting below you can read about some interesting people and companies. The one that produced the City Veins film is called BabyDoc and that characterises…
… is the beautiful Italian title of a film that is about to be completed. I saw it in Turin in connection with the first session of the DocuRegio training session and it is as beautiful visually as the title…
More than a museum. Indeed it is. It can only be described as magnificent the National Film Museum of Torino. I was there for hours and want to go back as soon as possible. To visit the fine collection of…
In the name of the Father, the Son and Diego Maradona. Amen… is the subtitle of this new Danish film that for a football addict, who will spend hours watching the coming World Cup, was a gift to watch at…
Good subject: Old (some of them veeery old) people who are still fit for life and take part in an athletic World Champions competition in Lahti, Finland. But what about the treatment of the subject, can this sustain a feature…
For viewers worldwide and for free – IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival in the world, based in Amsterdam, invites you to go online with IDFA TV, where there is an excellent selection of excellent documentaries. IDFA staff is at…
MakeDox is inspired and financed by people who love documentary film. People with a great desire to make their own festival, the kind of festival that I would like to visit myself. Petra Seliškar, Programme Selector.. I graduated in social…
More than 35 years ago, I broke my cousin’s Contaflex. Why? I wanted to see how that fascinating “eye” worked. I fixed it and ever since then I have been seeing with only one eye. I lived to be fascinated…
Wonderful. Well done and good luck are the best words to congratulate the organisers of a new documentary festival in Macedonia. It starts tomorrow. My text –The following is taken from the IDF site: As nutritious and beneficial as the…
In France kids have Wednesdays off from school. For those who have the possibility, it is a day to discover the multiple activities Paris has to offer children. Le centre Pompidou, Beaubourg to Parisians, holds every Wednesday of the school…
The Danish documentary “Armadillo” which premiered in cinemas last friday is a huge audience success. 22.282 tickets have been sold in three days, which is absolutely unusual for a documentary in Danish theatres. Earlier this month “Armadillo” by Janus Metz…
This is first of all information for those of our readers who are active filmmakers and producers. Given to you by someone who worked in EDN (European Documentary Network) from the beginning in 1996 until 2005, so I am totally…
Under the headline “Nordic ‘arte’ Channel Closer to a “Go””, the excellent newsletter FkN Newsletter, published by Filmkonakt Nord (in English, free subscription) gives hope for quality television: The talks of establishing of a joint Nordic TV channel based on…
Filmkommentaren.dk has recently written about the digital plans for documentaries in Lithuania and Denmark. Now a piece of text taken from the newsletter of Filmkontakt (see above) demonstrates that some countries also have throughts for the screening of films, at…
Sorry, your English language blogger goes national again… but he has to tell you that from today a website on the most esteemed Danish film director ever, Carl Th. Dreyer (1889-1968), is available. Go to the site address and check…
Our Paris correspondent has previously (search Godard) dedicated a posting to the one and only JLG, Jean-Luc Godard, whose ”Film Socialisme” was screened in Cannes. I found this clip from an overall festival article by Jason Solomons, The Observer, May…
Good news from one the most interesting countries for documentary cinema, Lithuania, whose post-independence documentaries have been and are awarded everywhere. Names like Sharunas Bartas, Audrius Stonys, Arunas Matelis, Rimantas Gruodis, Janina Lapinskaite and Giedre Beinoriute (photo from her 2005…
… and it is a road movie that talented Zeljko Mirkovic has made. Informative and done in an unpretentious way, this tv documentary takes the viewer from Austria in the North to the border between Macedonia and Greece in the…
The news agency AFP reports tonight from CANNES: A controversial Danish movie set in Afghanistan and a first feature from a Vietnamese director on Thursday scooped awards in Cannes’ Critics Week section… “Armadillo”, about the growing cynicism and adrenaline addiction…