A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
At the DoxPro workshop in November 09 in St. Petersburg I met many talented Russian documentary directors, who deserve more attention from Western European broadcasters and festivals. I took several dvd’s back home to watch and comment, and I still…
The title of the film indicates where the director stands. As does the building of this observational documentary from one of the patriotic youth camps in Georgia. With a fine eye for details young director Salome Jashi (previously written about…
I got this dvd by Slovak Marek Sulik, the editor of the two original documentaries by Peter Kerekes, ”66 Seasons” and ”Cooking History”. Sulik has obviously enjoyed this new job of making the impressive b/w photos of Lida Suchy into…
The director of the banned film ”38” (see below) touches upon another black spot in newer Turkish history with this enormously touching documentation of the horrible atrocities that took place in the Diyarbakir prison in the military coup period 1980-84.…
The old man asks for the camera to be turned off. He has a lot to say but he is worried. No broadcasting, he almost shouts loudly… no broadcasting, the voice behind the camera assures him, but turn it off,…
Here follows what were the best 10 documentaries in the world according to what I saw and reviewed in 2009. In alphabetical order. All reviews can be found by writing the titles in ”search”. Happy New Year! Cash and Marry,…
A quote from my welcoming words for the Magnificent7 Festival: What is a good film festival? You will not be surprised when I answer that question by saying: Come to the 6th edition of Magnificent7! Again we – Svetlana and…
January 21-25 2010 are the dates for the 6th edition of Magnificent 7, the European Feature Documentary Film Festival. A unique festival with a selection of only 7 films that are shown once in the Sava Center in Belgrade, Serbia.…
Jeg ser på det her still, og jeg ser straks, at det er Vilby i baggrunden. Pålideligheden og engagementet og videnmængden personificeret. Dola Bonfils og Lise Lense Møller har sendt ham til New Delhi for at møde en berømt miljøforsker. Det er…
There are many ways to greet each other. Some fine documentary filmmakers in Ukraine sent me this spelling of Christmas – thank you Ella Shtyka and Dmytro Tiazhlov from New Kyiv Production: C – Creative directors H – Human rights…
Niels Pagh Andersen vil have ballade. Den er jeg med på. Så jeg fortsætter med mit højtravende intellektuelle snak, som det er blevet kaldt. Jeg finder lige et citat igen, jeg faktisk fandt for nogle uger siden. Og nu nægter…
The prominent Uzbek documentary photographer and director Umida Ahmedova has been charged with defamation and damaging the country’s image because of the content of her photos and videos, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reports. (RFL/RL = Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty). Ahmedova took…
The CMCA (Mediterranean Centre for Audiovisual Communication) has finished its 14th festival edition, and the publicity around the awards, the juries (2, one for documentary, one for reportage) and the films have never been bigger. The awards were given in…
The 12th edition of a festival that has grown in volume and importance. You felt it immediately when you were with the Turkish organisers and their young group of volunteers – all together people from or linked to the Association…
Learning by watching – still the key quality challenge for the documentary film maker. At the festival in Istanbul your film-journey constantly took you to places, where you could not go yourself or where you would never dream of going…
“VTR Film Directing Research Production” is run by director Enis Rıza and executive producer Nalân Sakızlı. Husband and wife. Around them they have young committed and skilled women – the festival director of this year, Bahriye Kabadayı, the conference director…
In the framework of the festival a Congress was organised on the Saturday December 12 at the Galatasaray University that is situated wonderfully at the Bosporus. The Congress, organised for the 9th time (the festival for its 12th time), had…
no-one, when it comes to the exclusivity rules of film festivals! There is nothing new in the fact that major festivals insist on having premieres (world, international, European or whatever they want to call it) and therefore block for screenings…
My co-blogger Allan Berg has put on three new photos, as our loyal readers might have discovered. The actuality comes from the publishing of a beautiful new book, amazingly well illustrated, as the book is about 100 years of Danish…
The premiere of a new documentary by Nino Kirtadzé, ”Something About Georgia”. High expectations after her award-winning documentaries ”The Pipeline Next Door” and ”Durakovo: Village of Fools”. And big disappointment, I have to say. Pure propaganda for the politics of…
The Pitch.Doc day included 10 projects to be pitched after a couple of days of training done by Georgian filmmaker Salome Jashi and me. The public pitching panel, arranged and organized by Anna Dziapshipa, had around 10 people to react…
The short name is ”Nationality: Human”, the long one is the South Caucasus Documentary Film Festival of Peace and Human Rights. The festival is supported by the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros) and partners and the woman running it is…
The Pitch workshop has started. 10 projects have been selected from 5 countries: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbjadan, Ukraine and Moldova. A diversity of themes were presented by filmmakers with a different background. They met each other, heard about the state of…
Arrived early morning in Tbilisi coming from Copenhagen via Istanbul. Turkish Airlines, to be recommended for its service. Drove on George Bush Street to the hotel, yes, George Bush Street! Says something about in which direction Georgia wanted and wants…
It is the 10th edition of the international film festival that starts tomorrow in Tbilisi, capital of Goegia. And goes on until the 6th of December. Mike Leigh is guest of honour and makes a masterclass and there is an…
MOMA in New York needs no further introduction as the museum of modern art. Less known – at least in Europe – is it that this museum, often much more precise and professional than festivals all over, put together interesting…
From the press release of idfa, impressive numbers, yes, the interest in documentaries is huge, bravo: Although the festival runs until Sunday, we can already cautiously say that the festival has once more received more visitors than last year… If…
For our Danish and Swedish readers, be aware that this film will be shown on SVT1 monday November 30 at 10pm. Here is a re-post of our review from a year ago: I had hoped for more from this film…
”L’aventure du théatre du Soleil” is the subtitle of the film on Ariane Mnouchkine, the founder of Théatre du Soleil (in 1964), indeed an adventure it is, and very competently conveyed through wonderful archive from her work as the innovative…
There you go, a real camera stylo personal essay film with an original, personal style. I was completely taken in by the beauty of the film, “The Edge of Dreaming”, of Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie. It touched me, made me…
I saw two films supported by the Jan Vrijman Fund. ”For Home Viewing” by Mikhail Zheleznikov is a half hour, wonderfully controlled, cinematically original and funny first person story by the director, who tells about his view from his home…
Second day of the Forum, better atmosphere, better projects in general and a proof that the pitching sessions in a smaller room with around 10 broadcasters and film funders around the table, that this extra-to-the-big-room-format work well and can give…
And there you are again at the world’s biggest documentary festival! You carry your festival bag to the hotel – film catalogue, catalogue for the project Forum, a so-called industry guide with photos of broadcasters and film funders, market catalogue,…
This prestigious festival that honours the art of cinematography introduces now – in its 18th edition – a competition for documentaries, feature and short. 12 films are nominated in the feature category, among them several that have been reviewed or…
On the site of idfa, the world’s biggest documentary film festival, that is running right now, you can download the English version of the idfa daily, called ”the international voice of idfa”. There are articles about the films, interviews with…
If anyone deserves to be honoured for his life long oeuvre it is Frederick Wiseman, who yesterday at the opening of idfa in Amsterdam received an award, specially created for the occasion, including €5000. An example for all documentary makers,…
Maziar Bahari, who was arrested and imprisoned in Teheran, and has recently been released will Sunday, 22 November, from 15.30 to 17.30, be present at idfa in the Escape Lounge, where he will be talking about his recent experiences and…
All awards are welcome to honour and support documentarians, who make an effort to focus on important issues. This time – according to the EDN website today – there is a call from TV3 Catalunya: Enter your human rights documentary…
Here follows a list of films that an idfa visitor could watch on this blog writer’s recommendation. Goes without saying that I only know a few of the films that have their premieres in Amsterdam. I mention 20 titles and…
The biggest documentary film festival opens in a couple of days. If you attend you will have an enormous lot of choices. Here is the introduction from the organisers: From November 19, Amsterdam will once again be the focal point…
Especially for our Danish readers: The masterly done documentary ”Another Planet” by Hungarian director Ferenc Moldoványi will be presented in Copenhagen on November 20 in connection with the celebration of the 20 year birthday of the UN Convention on the…
HotDocs festival director Sean Farrel reflects on what festival director Claas Danielsen expressed in his opening speech: The tag line for DOK Leipzig this year was “The Heart of Documentary,” and while the competition and survey programmes showed plenty of…
The dedicated people behind the Russian documentary site miradox.ru takes one step further and launches DOXPRO. Ludmila Nazaruk and her colleagues in St. Petersburg targets professionals with the ambition to integrate Russian documentary in European cultural space, to develop a…
Claas Danielsen is festival director of DOKLeipzig. His opening speech of this year’s festival is a high quality personal hommage to the documentary and to an audience that by public television is increasingly being treated as ignorant and unintelligent. Read…
A bit post festum an extract of the awards at the DOK Leipzig 2009. Several of the winners have been mentioned or reviewed on this site: The International Jury for Documentary Film awards: for Documentary Films and Videos / Long…
It’s November 9 and it is 20 years after the fall of the wall. Broadcasters programme accordingly, festivals as well, let me re-mention one of the most interesting documentaries from that time that totally avoids all the clichés and is…
The festival in Reus ended last night. The jury chose ”Of Time and the City” by Terence Davies as the best film, honouring the personal courage of the director not to forget his personal commentary and creative use of archive…
Director Josep Rovira and researcher Montserrat Bailac told me that I would probably not really understand their ”Dear Dona Elena”, as there was no contextual information given in the film that makes a focus on the fifties of a Spain…
The festival invited producer and director Edmon Roch to present his ambitious docu-spy film ”Garbo – the Man who Saved the World”, which is the story about Juan Puol, the double agent who during WW2 for the Germans was Arabal…
Reus, town of Gaudi in Catalonia, a couple of hours from Barcelona. For the fourth time the city hosts a film festival that deals with memories and presents films that work creatively with archives. It is a small festival with…