Niall McKay: The Bass Player – A Song for Dad
It is one of those films where you wonder if this is going to be private OR personal = something that would have been better to keep in the family circle OR a film with a universal appeal. The latter…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Articles/Reviews ENGLISH
Read MoreNiall McKay: The Bass Player – A Song for Dad
The Danish Roos Award
The award, named after the documentary film pioneer Jørgen Roos, was established in 1995 for the purpose of rewarding outstanding efforts in Danish documentary filmmaking – went this year to director Anders Østergaard and producer Lise Lense-Møller, the duo behind…
Sergey Dvortsevoy – Letter to the Director
Dear Sergey. Around 10 years ago you were in Copenhagen to present your film school diploma work, ”Paradise”. You declared yourself as a dedicated documentarian, and you proved to be one of the best with the films that followed: ”Bread…
Cinemateket i September
2nd message to the lucky Copenhageners about a film offer – presented in Danish: Så kom der endelig en lejlighed til at glæde læserne med et foto af Juliette Binoche, den fremragende franske skuespiller, hvis evner kan nydes i 11…
Mandagsdokumentar
1st message to the lucky Copenhageners about a film offer – presented in Danish: Så er det sæson for MandagsDokumentar. Utrættelige Ebbe Preisler inviterer som sædvanlig og han insisterer vanen tro på at det er en god idé at filmskaberne…
Karin Westerlund: God, Smell and Her
My colleague, Allan Berg, has posted two texts in Danish about the new film by Karin Westerlund, Swedish visual artist and filmmaker, based in Denmark and Cairo, Egypt. I saw the film yesterday, it is as Allan Berg writes, quite…
Lukas Pribyl: Forgotten Transports 1-4/ 1
What an achievement! I don’t recall, when was the last time that I witnessed so captivating a historical documentary, here told by Czech Jewish survivors of the holocaust. They were interviewed between 2000-2006 by Lukas Pribyl, the researcher, writer and…
Lukas Pribyl: Forgotten Transports 1-4/ 2
I had an email contact with the director of ”Forgotten Transports”, Lukas Pribyl. Here follows some quotes from his side – and please do also go to the very good site of the film: How did you make the people…
Film Programme at Baltic Sea Forum
It is a high quality film programme that the organisers of the coming Baltic Sea Forum offers its local Riga audience and the visiting filmmakers and tv editors. Under the title ”Revolution starts at Home” (and from September 2-6) you…
Odense Film Festival 2009
The national Danish film festival in Odense is over. Under the competent leadership of Cecilia Lidin a big competitive international programme of short fiction films supplemented the competition of new Danish short films and documentaries. The Grand Prix for the…
Docu Awards in Sarajevo
What a pleasant surprise and a well deserved prize from the Sarajevo Film Festival audience – to nominate ”Sevdah” by Marina Andree as the best film of the festival. I have previously introduced the film, that had its premiere in…
Sheffield Doc/Fest new Initiative
Here is a follow-up to the text about joiningthedocs, quite interesting and if I get it right, you don’t have to travel to Sheffield (which by the way could be quite nice!) to watch a selection of the films in…
Iranian Filmmakers: Boycott
142 Iranian filmmakers have issued a boycott of the 2009 edition of the (Iranian) Cinema Vérité International Documentary Film Festival, that is scheduled for October 2009. The Iranian filmmakers express that in the current situation of the country, there are…
D-Word 10 Years!
A worldwide community of documentary professionals it is, the D-word that announces that by September 3 it has existed for 10 years. As a place for documentary people from all over the world to talk to each other, as colleagues…
The Beetz Brothers
The Beetz Brothers … sounds like a film title but is the name of a very active independent production company in Germany, which I would like to draw your attention to as an example of a production company that not…
Glawogger Masterpiece Available
Time for a commercial – to illustrate through just one example that many of the creative documentary films reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk are available to be watched whenever you want and for little money: “joiningthedocs.tv is a new documentary channel offering…
Paul Pauwels Interview
He is now the head of The European Television & Media Management Academy in Strasbourg. Before he was a documentary film producer, one of the best in Europe, and for a short while a commissioning editor at the VRT in…
Football Referees get their own Film
According to the newspaper The Guardian (August 13) a new documentary about football referees has been premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Director is Yves Hinant and the film runs time-wise a bit less than a football match: 77 mins.…
Muslim Cinema Festival
The city of Kazan in Tatarstan in Russia, around 800 km East of Moscow, hosts the 4th International festival of Muslim Cinema, ”Golden Minbar”, taking place September 30 to October 4. 14 films have been selected for the documentary competition,…
Latvian Film 3
… and as a follow-up this mail from Ilze Gailite Holmberg, managing director of the National Film Centre of Latvia, to the big amount of European colleagues and film funds/centres/associations/institutes: Dear Colleagues, This is to thank you for all your…
Latvian Film 2
I received this mail from Latvian Lelda Ozola last night, and got her permission to publish it like this: Dearest Tue, this is a deja vu situation of some 5 years ago … I start thinking why me, why again,…
Shocking Film News from Latvia
”National Film Centre of Latvia is under the threat of reorganization” was the headline of this morning’s daily news from ”Film New Europe”, continued by these lines: ” The financial crisis in Latvia has triggered a chain of reorganization of…
Luis Bunuel: Un Chien Andalou
Just this short note to accompany the posted still photo that everybody knows… it is 80 years ago that Bunuel made this 16 minutes long masterpiece with help from Salvador Dali. Lucky you who has not seen the film yet,…
Maziar Bahari on Trial
Joint Appeal from DOK Leipzig and DOK.FEST Munich: The Iranian documentary filmmaker Maziar Bahari is currently enduring a show trial in Tehran. In the morning of July 21, Iranian militia arrested Maziar Bahari at his mother‚s house. He has been…
Documentary and Trains
… is a genre in itself and perfect for film, as trains are movements from one place to another, a change in time or destiny, an escape from something or a journey to a better life, or a trip to…
Sergey Dvortsevoy: Tulpan
The Danish Cinematheque, situated at the Film House in Copenhagen, launches from this month a new and very welcomed initiative: ”film of the month”, where a film – contrary to the normal 2-3 screenings – gets a Danish premiere and…
Sarajevo Film Festival
The beautiful city of Sarajevo hosts its festival August 12-20. Selected by competent film director, tutor and consultant Rada Sesic there is a strong competition programme for documentaries from (and about) the region. Among them a wonderful film, Sevdah (photo)…
Flahertiana
The Russians respect film history. At least, this is what the organisers of the international documentary film festival Flahertiana do. October 15-21 they organise the 9th edition with the reference to Robert Flaherty (1884-1951) and with prizes that are named…
Film News from New Europe
Supported by the MEDIA Programme of the EU ”Film New Europe” brings daily news from the range of primarily Eastern European countries that joined the Union in 2004, plus Croatia and Turkey. The language is English but if you prefer…
Vitali Manski: Sunrise/Sunset
There are loads of films and programmes about and with Dalai Lama. Here is one more by Russian star director Manski. He had 24 hours with his protagonist and made a film in two parts, the first one (a televison…
Linda Jablonská: Welcome to North Korea
After many journalistic documentary investigations into politics and suppression in North Korea, it is refreshing to watch this work from the hands of Czech director Linda Jablonska, who joined a group on its totally controlled tour to Pyongyang. As no…
Jana Boková: Bye Bye Shanghai
Czech film director Jana Boková lives in Buenos Aires, in a chosen exile as many of the friends she visits in this film about what exile means and about whether you can return and find your roots and yourself at…
Miroslav Janek: The Confessions of Kataryna K.
Three persons in one room. Plus a film crew. Not a lot of space but the great Czech director and cameraman Mira Janek manages to move around to observe and catch the intense atmosphere of quite a unique family: blind…
Thomas Heise: Material
Read MoreThomas Heise: MaterialShort Film News
In a very professional set-up the site ”Short Film News” offers you – with a daily update – news from the film world in Asia, and the rest of the world with a strong focus on North America. Being based…
Maria Kravchenko: Body Parts
This film has a powerful rythm that you seldom meet. It is not the MTV-style that is so much present in modern documentaries, it is more carried by an expressive associative editing that could be compared to a Russian tradition…
Dokumania: Stranded
First in Danish: DR2 Dokumania, tirsdag den 28.7 kl. 20.30 leveres en gave til danske dokumentarelskere: Gonzalo Arijon’s “Stranded. I’ve come from a Plane that Crashed in th Mountains”. DR2 introducerer således: Den 13. oktober 1972 fløj et rugbyhold fra…
Masterpiece Docs for Free
”Watch hundreds of films, anytime, anywhere, for free. Documentaries, animations and alternative dramas on the web, on your personalized home page, or on your iPhone. Also, watch trailers, upcoming online releases and playlists.” This generous offer comes from the National…
Istanbul Calling
The 12th International 1001 Documentary Film Festival takes place in Istanbul December 4-11. But if you have a film to offer, you better hurry up with your application as the deadline is close. Your screeners and connected material should be…
Cineuropa
The publicly funded film site Cineuropa – published in English, French, Spanish and Italian – for free – brings every day news about films in Europe. But not only news, also longer interviews, festival reports and you can watch trailers…
Jukka Kärkkäinen: The Living Room of the Nation
Could it be everywhere? Yes, the film has many layers and thus a universal appeal. Is it very Finnish? Yes, it has this special feel of Finnish humour and treats its theme with both tough directness and tenderness. Is it…
Jan Vrijman Fund on Tour
Another (see below for Sundance Institute) very important supporter of the non-mainstream, non-anglosaxon documentary production and distribution is the idfa-associated Jan Vrijman Fund. Bravo for a new initiative from JVF: ”Starting the end of July, ten JVF films will tour…
Sundance Documentary Film Program
OSI stands for Open Society Institute, that was founded by George Soros and has – among many other things – been very important for the documentary sector all over the world. In the mid 90’es and up till 2002 a…
Pavel Stingl: The Baluty Ghetto
I owe Pavel Stingl an apology. I never believed that it would be possible to combine his moving story about the Czech Jews who were deported to the Lodz ghetto with the story about the people who live there today…
Bartek Konopka: Rabbit a la Berlin
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…
11 Short Documentaries/1
Is it possible to make 11 short documentaries in two weeks? By film crew members from several European countries, from Spain and Bulgaria in the South to Latvia and Lithuania in the North. Young people who had never seen each…
11 Short Documentaries/2
I advocated for fun and the upcoming European filmmakers in Vilnius had fun as you can see in the film about the workshop, ”2 Weeks in 10 Minutes”, that is full of ideas and playfulness in storytelling. Time was limited…
Audrius Mickevicius: Man-Horse
In the best Lithuanian slow-pace, spiritual documentary tradition this is a film that puts total trust to the image. And to the fact that an old man and his horse living in the countryside is a story that includes sufficient…
Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund
I read about completion funding from Gucci Tribeca. For documentaries that ”promote social change and illuminate issues in need of deeper coverage currently missing from mainstream media”. 350 submissions from 41 countries – and 7 projects received funding. A total…
Yamagata 2009
Some festivals make a selection very early. YIDFF – that stands for Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival – does so. The festival that has a strong reputation for high quality selection, and that operates only every second year, yet including…