A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
What to do a loong grey saturday in February in Copenhagen? You go to watch documentaries at the Danish Film School where EDN (European Documentary Network) per tradition invites professionals and film students to attend a mini-festival with long and…
It must be a good sign for the documentary genre that festivals are starting all over the world. And that the more established ones break their audience attendance records year after year. A Golden Age for the documentary? I think…
Nenad Puhovski is a filmmaker and film school professor and festival founder and organizer from Zagreb, Croatia. His commitment to the documentary is enormous. He has through his Factum delivered several critical films on Croatian politics and action during the…
In connection with the Docsbarcelona Festival I met Pablo Morales Canedo, who is general manager of IDN, that stands for interdocnet. – a new initiative where documentaries and shorts can be watched online or be downloaded. A handful of films…
It is one of those ideas that is so obvious that normally noone takes it! However, Cian Smyth did and put it into practice. To make a documentary film award, and a festival, in the name of The Maysles Brothers…
The new film by Phie Ambo, another strong talent in new Danish doumentary, premieres this weekend in the cinemas in her own country after having travelled already to several festivals. We contributed on the weblog with a review, write the…
The prestigious Berlin film festival, the Berlinale, offers a good selection of documentaries this year. 30 it is according to which is the excellent site of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), that is based in Prague. The Berlinale takes…
My Danish writing blog colleague writes above, under the caption “Oscar kritik”, linking to a group of festival people, who object to the selection of films nominated for this years documentary Oscar. He proudly mentions that two Danish films are…
If you happen to be in Barcelona tomorrow, 1st of February, you could visit Institut Francais at 17.30 to meet two French masters in documentaries – at a masterclass open to the audience. Thierry Garrel is Head of the Documentary…
For four days Barcelona hosts the documentary film festival DOCSBarcelona. This second edition takes place in the Alexandra cinema situated in one of the ramblas of the beautiful city. I am writing this from my hotel room preparing for the…
… and the festival that we have been writing about on this blog every day for a week has had a magnificent start. On saturday the opening Basque film “Nomadak tx” gathered more than 600 people, accompanied by full house…
On this blog we have many times written about the Danish manyfold awarded film by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, “The Monastery”. You can click on the title and read all about it. Now it is to be the closing film at…
I have just left Biarritz after the final session of the archive based documentary training programme Archidoc, where 11 projects from all over Europe (5 of them from Eastern part of Europe) were presented to broadcasters from Belgium, France, Germany…
The sixth film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting tomorrow saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is …
The fifth film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting this coming saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is …
The fourth film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting this coming saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is…
The third film to be shown at the unique festival in Belgrade, starting this coming saturday, under the subtitle “European feature documentaries”, organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and with me taking part in the selection is…
Pollution out, pollution in. I am in Paris for one day passing to the fipa festival in Biarritz. I see all cafés having added an outdoor terrasse for the smokers. And I see – and experience – that it is…
… for feature length European documentaries For the fourth time I have had the privilege to select film for this unique festival together with the two organisers Svetlana and Zoran Popovic THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES Made in a…
This is the fourth edition of a unique festival of only 7 films but with a huge audience and a warm support from its visitors. It is organised by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic and their team, and I have had…
It is one of those films that you hesitate to watch because you think that you have seen them all. So many films have been made about autistic children, young people and grown-ups. Even Dustin Hoffmann personified a grown up…
Following the example of last year’s festival, the international and national competitions are now open to fiction films as documentaries. We said it last year and we repeat it again today: it is not a question of creating a sterile…
For a year I have been following a young Slovak woman, Diana Fabianova, in her struggle to finance a film on menstruation. Diana, who lives in Spain and has a Spanish producer, has done a huge work to promote her…
A small intro to our foreign readers: The Danish DR/TV has always been the flagship when it comes to documentaries on television in Denmark. It might paradoxically enough continue to be so! The paradox is that a move to new…
Been away from Danish December weather and xmas for a long time! 30degrees here in wild Saigon where everyone seems to have a motorbike or to ride on one with the girl- or boyfriend. A lot of energy, but where…
I am in Hanoi, on vacation going with wife and friends from North to South of Vietnam! Its like going to a place that you think you know a lot about and yet you know nothing. You have seen Vietnam…
The film has its Danish cinema premiere today, so this is a repeat of the review written in connection with the cph:dox festival. Go and watch the film! “This is the director’s point of view on Jacques Vergès which may…
3 project presentations were quite nicely done in terms of verbal and visual pitch – and yes, I am biased, I know the people, I hoped the best for them, but I am also sure that many other will agree…
I was at the IDFA Forum as an observer. Documentary film and tv projects were presented (pitched) to a panel of so called commissioning editors. The pitching time was 15 minutes, 50% to those pitching, 50% to those responding. It…
On the second day of the pitching at the Forum at IDFA Viktor Kossakovski, one of the few stars of the international documentary scene gave the following remark after his pitch: You know what, I remember when it started many…
The 20’th edition of the IDFA festival started yesterday and goes on until the 2nd of December. Fantastic, and what a contribution to the success of the genre, Ally Derks and her committed team has performed during these 20 years.…
It had all that a documentary should have. Conflict, drama, magical moments, excellent observational camera work! The starting point was made clear from the very start: The Croats did not have to win, the English had to win or make…
Phie Ambo is one of the most obvious talents in new Danish documentary film. She showed great observational skills in her last film “Gambler” about the filmmaker Nikolaj Refn Winding (the “Pusher” trilogy), skills she is also using in her…
Another strong story from the Iraqi war. This time about a journalist, Yunis Abbas, who was captured by the Americans accused for being part of a cell that planned to kill Tony Blair when he was to visit his war…
Oh, how joyful it is to discover something new, when you think that you know your documentary film history, have seen it (almost) all, at least what is considered as masterpieces and know where your priorities lie. And there comes…
“This is the director’s point of view on Jacques Vergès which may differ from the opinions of people interviewed in the film”. These words are to be found on screen at the start of this fascinating film about a man,…
One of those films that are hard to watch. A beautiful young girl falls ill and turns into an aggressive young woman full of aggression to end up as a plump adult full of medication that can calm her down,…
Things are moving in the documentary genre. New and original ways of storytelling come out of the blue. Like in this case where British director Brian Hill went to the Downview Prison in Sutton England to make a film with…
It’s countryside again. This time Nicholas Philibert heads for Normandy, where he 30 years ago was the direction assistant of René Allio on the film “Moi, Pierre Rivière”, a “based on a true” story about a young man who in…
An excellent idea. A filmmaker gives a football star a camera and asks him to film from inside during the world cup championship in Germany 2006. And luckily for the film, but bad and sad for the player, he only…
The BBC Storyville documentary strand has been running for 10 years and is being saluted at the National Film Theatre in London in this month. As an introduction to the series of 10 films these fine words are written: “Over…
Yesterday in Prague, I attended a sneak preview of a still unfinished documentary on Vaclav Havel. The version (for cinemas and festivals) I saw was 150 minutes, for me it could easily have been longer, simply because the company of…
I have just finished three days of teaching at Zelig, the documentary film school in Bolzano in the region of Alto Adige in the North of Italy. There are not many European film schools that specialise in documentaries, and as…
On September 21st the awarded Danish documentary masterpiece – after having toured the world – premieres in Danish cinemas. From the DFI magazine FILM (53, November 2006) we bring this extract of an article, written by blog owner Allan Berg Nielsen:…
The good old, well esteemed English film magazine Sight & Sound has just published its September issue with a special focus on documentaries, titled “The Power of Documentary”. I did not buy it yet but will do so from reading…
There he was. Italian writer, professor, translator etc., Claudio Magris from Trieste. In Copenhagen to present his new book that comes out September 20 in a Danish translation: “I blinde”, original title: “Alla Cieca”. A gentle, smiling and passionate man…
I met Ali Zebboudj three times in the company of others. I met him on film, never personally. And yet I have the memory of him very precisely in my mind. I see him in his shop in Epinay in…
ALLAN BERG NIELSEN POSTS IN COLLECTED ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS BALTICUM FILMFESTIVAL (1999) 1990-1999. Nine years of week-long sessions of film and television in Gudhjem, and the tenth festival rapidly drawing nigh. Crème de la crème. Reminiscing: High points? Of course,…
… is a Baltic country, the most southern, and the most exciting when it comes to documentaries. They are mostly short and based on images – the Lithuanian documentarians compose the image and treat the spectator as an intelligent person.…
What a joyful visit to a cemetery! From the very beginning of this film I felt at home in the universe that Heddy Honigmann creates among the dead and the living. She visits some of the famous graves of Père…