A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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…
29.07.2007 BBC’s dokumentarproduktion er truet. Internt i BBC foregår der pt en evaluering af forbindelsen mellem omkostninger og ratings, som kan betyde at det betydningsfulde dokumentarprogram Storyville, som har stået bag snesevis af fremragende film, ikke alene engelske men også…