A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
… with the subtitle, The Journey of Muhammad Asad. Who was originally Leopold Weiss, Jewish, born in Austria, but converted to islam in the 1920’s and became, as said by a Palestinian on the West Bank, ”an enlightened Islamic thinker,…
What a charming film, full of Life and Love! Taking place in a small town in Burkina Faso, it is built as a film for cinema release with several parallel stories circling around the St. Valentine´s Day. Old people´s love,…
I write this in a summer house on Bornholm. On this island I met – for ten consecutive years – Henrikas Sablevicius, the godfather of the so-called poetic Lithuanian documentary. I never spoke directly to him (no English from his…
3 new photos on the title page of www.filmkommentaren.dk. All with children, all from masterpieces that have been written about: From left “Ten Minutes Older” by Herz Frank (USSR/Latvia), “Before Flying Back to the Earth” by Arunas Matelis (Lithuania) and…
A short piece of observation that was done by one of Bulgaria´s most talented young documentary directors – in connection with the shooting of a feature film by Stephan Komandarev. The characters are extras from the film, the village is…
Some documentaries get a lot of publicity even before they are ready to be seen. Not surprisingly a film about Barack Obama made by a producer, who is characterised as the direct opposite of Michael Moore, is talked about on…
Just a brief note on this day where Karadzic has been flown to the Hague Tribunal. Actually just a link to the BBC website where you can see not only yesterday’s images from the Belgrade protests against the catch of…
I have just left Vilnius, this beautiful spiritual capital of Lithuania. I had two nights at the Shakespeare Hotel, which I would like to (an exception on this blog) recommend to everyone. Anyway, I can report to you that the…
Riga, the city where came to life so many great documentaries during Soviet times and around the fall of the empire. I was invited to teach at the Discovery Campus session that was held at the coast, 40 minutes from…
I went to Tallinn, Estonia to update my almost 20 year long love story with Baltic documentary. And to watch films for DOK Leipzig. I saw more than a dozen from last year’s Estonian documentary production at the premises of…
This two part series is made by the famous British company Brook Lapping that has made countless high-budget series for television, broadcast all over the world. About the Vietnam war, about the crisis in the Middle East, about many other…
DEN DOKUMENTARISKE FORTÆLLING, SAMLEDE BLOGINDLÆG / THE DOCUMENTARY NARRATIVE, COLLECTED BLOGPOSTS Skabelsen af dokumentarfilmen, sammenholdt med dokumentarprogrammet og fiktionsfilmen / English version after the Danish AF MIKAEL OPSTRUP Teksten her er kommet til på min insisterende opfordring. Jeg har længe vidst, at Opstrup…
CAMERAWORK. “The French preserved the ruins of Oradour just as the Germans left it. The local cemetary held the graves of those who died, their names and photographs set in stone. I walked the length of of the village, deserted,…
NARRATION. “When the day came to record this, Olivier did it very well. Finished, he stood up in the recording booth, respleendent in red braces, and reached for an elegant brown tweed jacket. I joined him in the booth and…
SCRIPT. “Down this road on a summer day in 1944 the soldiers came / Nobody lives here now / They stayed only a few hours / When they had gone, a community which had lived for a thousand years was…
My co-blogger Allan Berg has for weeks followed the re-run of the classic documentary series, A World at War – on Danish television. The series is available in great dvd-editions – buy it as I will do and throw away…
This blog has constantly – through my writing – stressed that originality and creativity in documentary filmmaking of today mostly is to be found in the Eastern part of Europe. When it comes to films for 2008/2009 there are many…
Food for thought: What makes a documentary filmmaker? This German text is written by a student from the Zelig Film School for Documentary at the exam in June after one year of the three year long studies. Milena Holzknecht has…
Food for thought: This text is written by a student from the Zelig Film School for Documentary at the exam in June after one year of the three year long studies. Philipp Griess has chosen camera for his further studies.…
A brief and warm salute to the director of the film from Afghanistan that we sneak-reviewed on this blog almost half a year ago. It will have its international premiere at the prestigious Locarno film festival, see site below. A…
Food for thought. This text is written by a student from the Zelig Film School for Documentary at the exam in June after one year of the three year long studies. János Richter has chosen direction for his further studies:…
I am on holidays in Tuscany, in Montespertoli, a small nice town in the middle of the wine paradise. Yesterday the four of us went for an open air screening of the new, enormously strong quasi-documentary film Gomorra based on the book…
Food for thought. This text is written by a student from the Zelig Film School for Documentary at the exam in June after one year of the three year long studies. George Bocher has chosen direction for his further studies:…
Food for thought. This German text is written by a student from the Zelig Film School for Documentary at the exam in June after one year of the three year long study. Kathrin Dietzel has chosen editing for her further…
The following text was written by a student from the Zelig School for documentary as a motivation from her to go for editing studies in the next two years after the first year of general studies: Editing is like a…
My story has no importance, there is nothing special about me, says one of the characters in this fine social story set in Sibiu, Romania. The filmmakers have got the permission to film a group of citizens, who all come…
Just one small note on the Euro 2008. Which included many fine matches, some drama, but first of all the return of elegant fast forward – let the ball do the work – football. We saw it with Holland, we…
Surprise me, please, it is often said to filmmakers when films are to be thought of, written, pitched, filmed and put together. Nothing is worse, or more boring, than the predictability in narration where you know where it goes, from…
The start is wonderful. Young runners on the road in sunset light, in the middle of the car traffic. The narrative follows one of them home, Fassika, 14 years old – she wants to run for fame and to get…
Thierry Garrel, who has been head of Arte France’s documentary department, has quit the channel after 21 years. He is taking up a job in a multi media project. I have interviewed and discussed the state of the (documentary) art…
There are loads of documentaries about the changing China made by Westerners and/or by the Chinese themselves. This one is made by French filmmaker Camille Ponsin, who unlike several Western crews got access to the University of Nankin and took…
I was in Galway, Ireland twice this spring. And had a chance to combine with a couple of days at the sea near Clifden. Yes, sheep and stone walls, small winded roads, pure pleasure to visit. I met Johnny White,…
Here everything is complicated, says one of the women in the film. It is Cuba she talks about, and she and the 11 other interviewed women in the film both talk about and demonstrate what a life means where you…
In the middle of the Euro 2008 I take time to watch a documentary by talented Latvian director Robert Vinovskis about football, seen from an original angle far away from the banality of the commentators that fill my ears every…
A documentary animation film. Quite innovative. Based on a visual diary made by Latvian Irina Pilke, an old woman, who has drawn episodes from her life since 1947. Made into a film through the script and interview from writer Nora…
The biggest part of this hommage to Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the US and nobel prize peace winner for his tireless international work for peace in the world, is about his promotion of the book ”Palestine. Peace not…
Dont we too often think that documentaries should have simple narrative plots: a lead character, a conflict and the Aristotelian three-act structure? Doesn’t that easily lead to documentaries that are cheap imitations of fictional movies – minus the big screen?…
The subtitle of this book is ”the making of the Steps for the Future documentary series”. The writers are the two key initiators of this, the most important international documentary coproduction and training initiative, I know of. To remind you…
This film is funny, clever and makes you think. If it makes you (=me) change lifestyle, is another question. Could be, let’s see. The synopsis of the film taken from the website: Director JW convinces his wife and two small…
I am on the West coast of Ireland not far from the islands of Aran. Tomorrow I am going to talk with Mac Dara Ó Curraidhín about a brilliant proposal for a film on Flaherty. Here is a small quote…
I am in Ireland, in Galway, for the workshop DOCURegio, where a dozen of documentary projects from regions of Europe are to be discussed and adviced on further development. I take the opportunity to watch a film that I was…
You watch this film with a smile on your face. You do so because you like the characters and you like them because the director likes them and is able to convey her feelings to the audience. We meet them…
Miriam Lichterman lives in Cape Town with a view to beach and sea. Jon Bang Carlsen lives in a farmhouse with a fine view to a beautiful landscape in Denmark with family, cat and dogs. She is a holocaust survivor,…
The crimes committed in the name of Marx and Engels are of the same infamous character as those performed by the nazis. The two regimes, nazi Germany and communist Stalinistic Soviet Union worked together, and learned from each other when…
Lamartine Silva is the main character in this committed road movie that takes us around Brazil to discover what MHHOB is doing. Lamartine is one of the hip-hop musical artists, who dedicates energy and time to this activist movement that…
Short documentaries of international quality are hard to find. The television stations have long ago given up slots for shorts, with a few exceptions like Arte, and the film institutes and the public funding systems do the same – because…
Classical documentary approach: Something is wrong, we have to tell about it, let’s go and get the facts and convey them to the world. That’s what Arto Halonen, Finnish documentary director, and journalist Kevin Frazier decides to do. With a…
It starts as a film about a third ”…wood” after Holly- and Bollywood: Nollywood from Nigeria. But it takes place in Antwerp, where a young man, John, wants to be a superstar in this kind of right-to-the-heart, often moralistic, home-movie…
Tuesday evening May 6, Riga, the old fine cinema in the middle of the city. I am invited to the premiere of a film, that I have had the privilege to follow for a couple of years. The director Peteris…
I don’t need to write a lot about this film, do I? The winner of IDFA 2007, screened and awarded at an enormous amount of festivals, broadcast all over, including in Denmark. A well constructed dramatic story with a wonderful…