A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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…
… 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…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Read MoreThomas Heise: Material
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…
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…
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…
”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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A short piece of info for our Danish and Swedish language readers about the Swedish cultural tv channel Axess. In Danish: Den svenske kulturkanal Axess – som i øvrigt også er et kultur- og samfundstidsskrift og som byder på en…
Beautiful name for a festival… this one in Armenia that started yesterday and goes on until July the 19th with an interesting documentary competition programme. Several films have been written about on filmkommentaren.dk, like ”Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev,…
This is a brief hommage to Jørgen Leth, the Danish documentary filmmaker, who this year has made a comeback to be the TV2 Tour de France commentator. In Danish: Så sad jeg der igen det meste af søndag eftermiddag foran…
Selection has been done for the Nordisk Panorama documentary competition that takes place in Reykjavik September 25-30. 21 documentaries compete and several can be read about on this site: Ada Bligaard Søby’s Black Heart (photo), Anders Østergaard’s Burma VJ, Nanna…
On this site, not long ago, you could find a review of ”Cooking History” by Slovak director Peter Kerekes. During the last year you have had the chance to read several enthusiastic words about Slovak director Juraj Lehotsky’s ”Blind Loves”.…
Just some useful information for those of you who could be interested in following a course on the creative use of archive material in documentaries. The French film school, la femis (), runs Archidoc that is an English language three-session…
Serbian filmmaker Zeljko Mirkovic made this interview with me for a Serbian film magazine. He was so kind to have it translated into English and has offered it to sites like docuinter.net, reelisor.com, miradox.ru. Here it is for the readers…
Chania, Greece, the old town, very hot, should be forbidden to work in that weather, but this is what the 2009 Documentary Campus Masterchool participants have done for a week under the usual professional and warm guidance of Peter Symes,…
I am in Crete for a session of the Documentary (formerly Discovery) Campus. I run into Vardan Hovhannisyan with whom I have spent many fine moments around the films that he was/is producing or directing for his company in Jerevan,…
It has been done before: The filming of people in a park put together in a mosaic structure as a warm hug to people, to us all, with our joys and worries, dreams and sorrows. Polish Marcel Lozinski did it…
Gode nyheder til danske dokumentar-seere: Summer time… and the Danish television traditionally shows fine documentaries. On the only channel worth watching in Denmark nowadays: DR2. On tuesday (7.7 8.30pm) on Dokumania, the neo-classic by Werner Herzog ”Little Dieter needs to…
For the 13th time the small mountain town Bardonecchia in Piemonte hosts the Documentary in Europe, 4 days of market talks, case studies, film screenings, pitching, a matchmaking seminar for directors and debates around documentary matters. Dates: July 8-11. There…
Finnish filmmaker and teacher at the film school Helsinki Polytechnic, Heikki Ahola, brought some student films and a couple of his own films to the summer camp. They were, as Ahola, very Finnish if I may put it like that.…
Jurga Ivanauskaite is a cult figure in Lithuania. Born in 1961, the writer died young in 2007 leaving behind her a strong reputation as a writer with star quality, a writer who did not only write beautiful books and poems…
I was on a tour today. A magnificent tour. To the place of a film to come, and to the people who are characters in this work under development. It may sound like a kliché film, one of many about…
Screening day of Lithuanian documentaries for eventual recommendation for DOKLeipzig. 5 films to watch since my visit one year ago. Public funding for film is minimal in Lithuania at this moment. So competition is strong among the established filmmakers and…
Statement of Iranian Documentary FilmmakersIn the Name of GodWe are documentary filmmakers. Our work is to discover and tell the truth. Truth can only be found when all aspects of reality are told. In the course of recent events in…
One of the participants at the workshop, Italian Davide Mastropaolo, asked me for advice on a film that a friend had made with himself involved as co-producer. The film is about to be finished but – have you heard about…
I showed a clip from ”Citizen Havel” yesterday here at the Summer Film Academy in Lithuania, as an example of how important it is to have access and to have time to follow a character, who is known widely by…
Audrius Stonys made a lecture this morning. I have heard him doing so many times and have written several praising sentences on filmkommentaren.dk – about this filmmaker who is for sure to be considered as a national poet in his…
I am in Vilnius for a summer film school where students from countries all over Europe have gathered to make short documentary films about or rather from the 2009 European cultural capital. 10 films are to be made, research is…
This brief intro comes because a documentary neo-classic is broadcast on Danish television tonight, on DR2 in prime time (8.40pm). It has been in Danish cinemas, it is available from the DFI, and if you have already seen it, take…
Well known and respected documentary filmmaker and journalist Maziar Bahari was arrested yesterday morning in Tehran according to Newsweek, that he works for. This is the start of the article of Newsweek: Among the dozens of people arrested overnight in…