A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
The important documentary film festival in Nyon, Switzerland takes off in two days, April 15 and goes on to April 21. As usual a huge programme is offered, an emphasis is put on the authored documentary, a strong collaboration with…
Festival director Jean Perrret leaves the festival after this edition. Here are his fine words of goodbye: It is comforting to feel the quietness emanated again by the films selected for this 16th edition of Visions du Réel. Not that…
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (April 29 – May 9) has introduced an interesting category in this year’s festival programme: Ripping Reality. Ten films have been chosen that in each their own way have added something new to…
There are many films the career of which we have been following with great pleasure. Another Planet by Hungarian Ferenc Moldovanyi is one of them. The film has won the Special Award from the Ukranian Helsinki Human Rights Union at the 7th…
Soccer Cinema is a real dream come true. A travelling cinema, bringing some of the world’s best soccer documentaries to 50 small towns, villages and townships, spread across all 9 South African provinces. The journey begins on 6 April 2010…
It’s the Maysles! At this years edition of Cinéma du réel, the festival paid tribute to Albert Maysles. The Maysles Brothers: the late David on sound and Albert behind the camera, classic direct cinema. As was the case two years…
Palestine, 4 days, end of March 2010. It’s blue sky but still a bit chilly in Ramallah, where I have been for a couple of days. Lively activity outside in the streets of a nice and calm city, 40.000 are…
Filmkommentaren.dk welcomes Sara Thelle as our Paris correspondent. She will (see below) keep the readers informed about film events and issues from the French capital. Sara Thelle, Danish origin, has a BA in study of Religions from Copenhagen University and…
And the festivals continues… The festival Cinéma du réel is almost over for this year, but Paris still has more to offer. As every year following the Cinéma du réel, the Festival International Jean Rouch sets for the 29th time…
Awards have been given at Cinema du Réel and congratulations to the winners and to the festival to have a international jury that did not go for compromises but honoured originality and non-mainstream filmmaking. The two films awarded have both…
From today and until April 2 the film interested audience in Kiev, Ukraine is given a treat with the Documentary Days – the International Film Festival, theme Human Rights. A variety of films are sectioned in a ”Human Rights Competition”,…
This is gonna be a bit longer blog text than usual. Simply because this is an extraordinary film that calls for more than an ordinary review. My co-blogger Allan Berg wrote – in Danish and after having seen 30 minutes…
You plan and plan for weeks and months, you make the schedule, you ask the directors to be there for the screening, you sell the tickets… and then it all have to be changed, at least for a handful of…
Painters have done it for centuries – chosen their motif literally close to themselves. ”View from my window”. Not many filmmakers have done the same. Kossakovsky did it with Tische! He looked out of the window from his appartment in…
At Cinema du Réel 2009 Jorge Léon’s ”10 min.” was shown, and reviewed on this site (search: Jorge Léon). Subject: Prostitution. This year he continues his social documentary line with a story about Indonese young women, who are being trained…
Asliuk is a veteran at Cinéma du Réel. He has won prizes at the festival for his lyrical short documentaries from the countryside of Belarus. It is therefore only natural that he is invited back with his new one-hour long…
In his Danish language texts from this year’s Cinema du Réel, my co-blogger Allan Berg reveals avec plaisir that his prejudice about the festival being for the pure observational documentary maybe is wrong. It is indeed, both because the development…
It is such a good story carried by a charismatic old man, who is full of humour and charm. You are simply entertained contrary to what you thought when reading that this was one more holocaust survivor documentary: Elie Buzyn…
A graduation work from the film school HFF in Potsdam. Respect for the ambition: to describe the Vietnamese countryside life through a family that fights to build a new home in an area where the flood has spoilt their old…
The director has made two films before but is more known in Italy as an actor and theatre director. The French Forum des Images gave him a mobile phone with camera and said to him: do what you want. He…
It was on my list over the best 10 documentaries in 2009 – and I am not the only one, who wants to point to the film and its director. Pawel Lozinski got the prize as Best Director at the…
EDN (European Documentary Network) has announced that The EDN Award 2010 is presented to IRDFA – Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association. IRDFA receives the award for their outstanding contribution to the documentary culture. More text from the EDN site: EDN has…
Koepp is, if anyone, the chronicler of life in the former GDR. In numerous films he has described the work and the social conditions of ordinary people in the GDR that he was born into – in Stettin in 1944.…
“(…) Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant…
The director of this impressive documentary is also the director of the impressive drama therapy project at the Roumieh prison in Lebanon. Zeina Daccache worked for more than a year “inhouse” with a group of inmates – and her work…
The 12th edition of the Greek festival is running since the 12th of March and goes on until the 21st. Under the leadership of Dimitri Eipides you will find a high quality programme accompanied by debates like “The Earth after…
A classic theme: A father invests all energy and passion into the education of the son to make him do and be, what he himself never achieved. Anas Romdhani (born 1995) is a violin virtuoso, and the father a mediocre…
Clip from press release: The third edition of DOX BOX, the independent documentary film festival in Syria closed its curtains on the evening of March 11th, 2010 in Damascus. With over 65% rise in audience numbers (+7000 first edition, 12000…
“The idea was developed by Don Edkins, a renowned film producer, who’s involved with different social projects through Steps for the Future and Day Zero Films. Basically, we want to create awareness and a hype within different communities in South…
Summing up this morning in the lobby of the Fardoss Tower Hotel before colleague Mikael Opstrup and I return home from a Syrian capital, warm as an extraordinary Danish summer would be. Summing up after a breakfast chat with Omar…
Saw two films – one about older people, one about children. One with Bari in Italy as location, one taking place in a quarter in Damascus. ”Housing” by Federica di Giacomo is a film about people, who – as said…
I was surprised when I saw that ”The Moon Inside You” by Diana Fabianova, a film and a director that has been written about several times on this blog, was selected for the Dox Box Festival here in Damascus. Surprised…
Nagi Esmail from Egypt made a 9 mins. long city film during a workshop in Cairo, the title is ”171”, which refers to the steps you take from the train platform in the metropole until you are in the street.…
A film that has been reviewed and noticed several times on this site, has finally got the national recognition it deserves. Here is the posting from the IDF site – se address below: On Saturday, March 6, Forgotten Transports to…
Patricio Guzman in Damascus. The great director behind the film historical classic ”The Battle of Chile” from the beginning of the 1970’es met the audience of young wannabee filmmakers and older people, who remember the dramatic period where the government…
This is one of the highlights of Dox Box 2010, Orwa Nyrabia said as a proud and enthusiastic introduction to the masterclass with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, moderated by idfa director Ally Derks. And it turned out to be…
We have heard it for so many years, and we have seen films, fiction or documentary, that informs about or interprets the life in GDR (German Democratic Republic). But they – the Syrian young filmmakers-to-be – had not. That was…
The excellent website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) has moved to a new address with a new layout (black on white) and as usual loads of information to get on Eastern European documentary matters in particular and world documentary…
Mail from the producer of the film of Sergio Basso, English title: “Made in Chinatown”, reviewed on this site not long ago: You can see our new web-documentary MADE IN CHINATOWN (the first in Italy on the web-site of one…
4 Polish documentaries and a Syrian. And again bravo to the organisers for putting an emphasis on the short documentary which is of course well targeted in a country with limited funding possibilities – where short film can be made…
German cameraman Peter Badel is one of the mentors of the Campus – together with Dutch producer Joan Morselt, Danish colleague Mikael Opstrup and myself. The participants in the workshop are aspiring young filmmakers, who have been grouped according to…
Bravo Dox Box, was the shout from the last row of a full cinema on the opening night of the festival. And ”Shout” was the title of the opening film, from the Netherlands, directed by Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Ester…
”To our guests who come here every year and fill our hearts with pride and support: we promise to surprise you with our imperfections just the way we like our life, and cinema, to be!”. These catalogue sequence taken from…
A very banal and normal story that all families have experienced: Old age hits grandmother or grandfather, or mother or father, who have started a life of forgetfullness, as is the case with Maja, the mother and grandmother of this…
What a pleasure it is to watch short documentaries. Even more so because they have run out of slots for that classic genre on public broadcasting in Europe. The short films are still being shown in festivals all over but…
It is difficult to dislike Daniel Ellsberg, and why should you? An important name in new American history, a whistleblower, a man who was among those whose job it was to provide Robert McNamara with plans for an efficient war…
3 stronger characters and some accompanying. Not unusual. And three characters with the same in common: the desire to gamble; driven by an addiction that has heavily influenced their lives. One is no longer alive, the father of the filmmaker,…
A text quote from the site of an amazing film festival that has it all – a thematical focus, a distribution strategy, debates, and a catalogue full of strong films: “Over 100 films, dozens of foreign guests – primarily film…
I was in Edinburgh this weekend to meet the 12 candidates for the 2010 Bridging the Gap production scheme, headed by SDI, Scottish Documentary Institute. Pure pleasure it was to listen to and comment on the presentation of the 12,…
From February 28 March 7 the sixth edition of ZagrebDox will take place in the capital of Croatia. I have attended previous editions – but have other obligations this year. But this should not refrain me from making publicity for…