A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Jørgen Vestergaard er enestående i dansk filmkunst. Lige siden han instruerede sin første film i 1963 er han gået sine egne veje som instruktør af dukkefilm, dokumentarfilm og spillefilm. Og hans egne veje førte ham tidligt tilbage til Thisted, hvor…
It’s from start till end beautiful. It is seldom that form and content go so well together. Because the director succeeds to catch the charisma of Swetlana Geier, the translator of Dostoyevsky (and many other big Russian authors) from Russian into German.…
Filmkommentaren has written much about Nicolas Philibert, French master of documentaries. () I missed his new film at IDFA, but I will catch up asap with a review. In the meantime I have enjoyed reading an interview with the director…
Get up Wiktor, says grandmother, you have to go to school. Wiktor, 12 years old, goes to a ballet school, where the teacher trains him, and when not in school he plays with a friend, or is with the caring…
Jeg har lige set den fine nye kopi af den 35 år gamle Ungdomsbilleder, som nu bliver præsenteret på museet i Randers som en del af Finn Larsens og Lars Johanssons udstilling Ung i Randers 1978-1979, som åbner 4. marts.…
Subtitle: ”Faroese Cinematic Narratives”, that I enjoyed the great pleasure to be with the whole (yester)day. True pleasure indeed and admiration for the work of Ulla Boje Rasmusen and Andreas Fischer-Hansen to have done the fundraising to have a new…
It was a privilege to follow the development and production of Peteris Krilovs ”Gustavs Klucis: The Deconstruction of an Artist”. And it was a privilege to see how the producer of the film Uldis Cekulis fought for the film to…
A press release came in today with quite some news for those who intend to visit the 2015 Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival the coming autumn. The always innovative and sometimes also controversial festival in the Czech Republic – I…
A very special day at the festival! First step was a visit to the fabulous Libreria Altaïr where ”el vermut de los sábados” this weekend was dedicated to a conversation with the DocsBarcelona directors of ”The Final Stretch” (Oscar Perez),…
Had they pitched this project in Europe, producers and financiers would have hesitated committing themselves as the brothers are debutants. And would have continued ”don’t start before you have all the money”. In this respect there is a difference between…
Det drejer sig om et stort anlagt og imponerende biografisk filmessay om skuespilleren, forfatteren, maleren og tegneren Robert Storm Pedersen (1882-1949) og hans kunst. Kunstnerbiografien er en af Jørgen Vestergaards foretrukne genrer, der har været film om malerne Ovartaci, Jens…
FOF-Randers havde bedt mig pege på film til filmklubbens sæson 2014-15. Jeg havde denne gang til fire aftener valgt de fire film, som jeg på filmkommentaren.dk havde givet de bedste anmeldelser, simpelthen. Nogle af filmene havde en længde, som levnede…
Grand old man and enfant terrible of French militant cinema René Vautier died Sunday January 4th in his home in Cancale, Brittany, at the age of 86. Originally from Brittany, René Vautier fought the Germans as a very young member…
I Danmarks Radios arkiv ligger en kopi af en dokumentarfilm fra 1919 med titlen ”Danish Volunteers” (betegnet ”Korps Westenholtz”), som Anton Kjædegård i 1972 opsporede hos et filmselskab i Ontario. Filmen er optaget af den danske fotograf Asbjørn Beck, der…
Tal R får med det samme ordet, og han taler lavmælt og intenst filmen igennem. Denne gennemløbende fortælling rammer mig, overbeviser mig, besejrer mig med sin alvor. Tal R hedder han, og jeg får efterhånden forklaringen på fornavnet. Det er…
På fotografiet er instruktøren på optagelser i en by i Tyrkiet, hvis navn hun og den medvirkende Eva Noer Kondrup øver sig i at udtale. Kondrup fotograferer instruktøren, som til sin films tredje sats skildrer komponisten Kondrup i hendes opsøgen…
Det begynder naturligvis med Mettes stemme, som fortæller om stemmerne, hun konstant har hørt siden, hun var barn. Bebrejdende, truende, foruroligende… Men så kommer en stemme, som jeg kender fra en tidligere film, Katrine Borres stemme. Det er en stemme,…
Det her er billeder fra en hvals biografi. Det første viser vores hval, som dier, det andet er vores hval i parringsdans årtier senere, det tredje still er vist nok fra filmens slutning. Vores hval er nu mere end 200…
Måske er det rigtigt, måske betragter Jørgen Vestergaard sine danskere i sine danske film etnografisk / socialantropologisk, som var det et eksotisk folk, han gennem årene i sit værk er kommet udefra til og har beskrevet. Nu har han i…
Kvinden her hedder Katrin Himmler, hun er barnebarn af Heinrich Himmlers bror, og hun arbejder med slægtsforskning. Men hun har ikke ordningen af stamtræet som mål, det er redskabet til at fatte den forfærdende, men undertrykte sandhed i familien: ja,…
Jytte Rex nåede i tide at portrættere Henning Larsen, og hun binder i kvartetten om kunstnerisk arbejde, hvoraf filmen om ham på alle tænkelige måder er en integreret del, denne kunstnerskildring fuldstændig sammen med de tre forrige: Inger Christensen, Palle…
Vestergaard tager igen simpelthen ordet og fortæller en historie. Den her gang om en stor musiker ude på landet, der hvor de bor. Han gør det på den måde, han kan og altid har gjort det på, i en dokumentarfilm, som…
Does it need an introduction this magnificent achievement in the history of documentary cinema and television? Lucky you who have not seen the series that started in 1964, when the children were 7 and have continued every 7 years until…
Præsten i Vrensted, Karsten Erbs, havde den torsdag i oktober 2012 inviteret pensionistforeningen og alle ældre til en eftermiddag i præstegården. Han skrev på sin hjemmeeside, at noget særligt havde været på færde: ”Vi havde bagt boller og lavet lagkage.…
Eddie Adams fotograferede 1. februar 1968 på en gade i Saigon politichefen i Sydvietnam, som personligt uden videre likviderer en viet cong leder. Det rædselsvækkende fotografi er, som alle i min generation ved, uhyre berømt, det er måske det fotografi,…
Scene efter scene stilles i kø i disciplineret række og forbindes kontrapunktisk med interview- og dialogmateriale, dokumentariske beretninger i løsreven fastholdelse. Det er meningsfuldt i en ganske anden form for filmfortælling end den normale danske tradition; og det er befriende,…
Icarus Films in New York has a strong, high quality catalogue, including several works by Chris Marker, who died end of July this year. This week the company pulished the good news that it has acquired North American distribution rights…
Israeli director and editor Erez Laufer gave me a link to his father’s film website, Docs for Education, an amazing initiative, in Nahum Laufer’s own words ”devoted to distributing high quality creative documentaries suitable for educational purposes”. For those of…
Pierre Bergé, the life long partner of Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008), is the one that tells the story about the artist and his troubled life as the fragile and modest designer, who – helped very much by Bergé’s organisational and financial…
Det er en rent ud bevægende film om et smultronställe, et sted at høre til. Det er en film om en personlig erindring om et sted i fortiden, som ikke er mere, men som så er her igen. Her i…
The film is made together with Freud’s biographer Willam Feaver, who voice-off introduces the method of the film up-front: We will go to the people he has portrayed to get an idea of who this genius artist is – the…
Jacquy Pfeiffer til venstre vil gerne være MOF, have ret til tricoloren i kraven ligesom vennen og kollegaen Sebastien Canonne til højre. For at få den skal han deltage i Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, en konditorprøve, som afholdes hvert fjerde…
Barak Goodman har med sit selskab i Brooklyn, NY lavet en lang række arkiv-baserede, historieformidlende, ”i dybden”, som de selv skriver, tv-dokumentarer: Mai Lai (2010), The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (2009), The Lobotomist (2008), Kinsey (2005) og en række flere.…
The work of the Polish master of documentary (born 1940) is being very well introduced in an article by Katerina Surmanová on the website of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film). And for newcomers to the impressive filmography of Lozinski it…
The British newspaper, always strong on cinema, has launched a series of (sponsored) articles named “Destination Docs”, published in connection with the Sheffield DocFest. The headline goes like this, “Despite new documentary formats, traditional fact-based films still attract impressive audiences…
Anatomy of a mass grave…Al Houla, Homs, Syria, Earth… today, 2012..The grave of over 100 killed today in the small town, half of which were under 10 years old. From the FB page of Orwa Nyrabia, Dox Box festival director,…
Det begynder med et citat af Victor Klemperer: ”Ord kan virke som bitte små doser arsenik. De sluges ubemærket, de synes ikke at have nogen virkning, men efter nogen tid viser giftens virkning sig alligevel.” Måske skulle der være gjort…
The Summer 2012 issue of the European Documentary Film Magazine DOX (number 94!) is out. The editor-in-chief Truls Lie uses his editorial to point at the values of the short documentary, which is forgotten by many. His starting point is…
It is still pure pleasure to watch the 17 minutes long short masterly montaged documentary masterpiece by British Jennings, the first of his war-time trilogy. And bravo for the BFI (British Film Institute) for publishing the film, and other films…
In Danish language as this is about primarily Danish documentaries that are sold through the online shop of the daily newspaper Information. Vi hører det tit på redaktionen: Åh, men hvor kan man få fat i alle de film, som…
Twenty years ago. The fall of the empire, USSR and the communist regimes in the East bloc. Time to look back. And time to use different media to approach the huge overall theme from many angles and with many eye-witnesses…
Jeg glædede mig vildt til at se den film, og jeg må skrive lige med det samme: Det gik ikke så godt. Måske godt nok, faktisk fint i begyndelsen, men så blev jeg efterhånden tøvende til det afvisende, selv om der er…
A couple of days after the death of Vaclav Havel, you sit down and watch a documentary on the French president Nicolas Sarkozy – what a quality step down – set up through a mix of archive material and comments…
Filmkommentaren.dk has followed the ”kickstarter V for Vinylmania” initiative, where Turin-based film company Stefilm called for help through a crowdfunding campaign and succeeded to collect $37.173 from 395 backers. The money will be used to make an international version by…
Jeg har det med filmen, som jeg har det med ordet drejebog, som jo betyder to ting på dansk. Naturligvis er en drejebog en plan for en film, men det er i nutidssprog også en plan for en hvilken som…
Help, there is only 7 days to go to reach our goal. These are the words from filmmaker Paolo Campana in Turin, Italy. It is all or nothing, he says, as it is with the crowdfunding done through Kickstarter. I…
It is a pleasure – again – to be able to promote the quality vod Docalliance. Not only is the selection of films for the catalogue excellent, the prices are very low and the texts are free from normal site…
The Polish Film Institute runs an honorable dvd publlishing policy. Previously I have reported on very good director boxes with films by Kieslowski, Karabasz, Marcel Lozinski, Pawel Lozinski – and now, here in Krakow, at the hall of the Kino…
It was a scoop that DFI (Danish Film Institute) had invited James Roberts, assistant director general from National Film Board of Canada (NFB), to come to the Danish DOK-dag (Documentary Day, see more below) to talk about the online film…
I have been surfing around on the site of NFB for an hour now. I have seen some trailers, I have seen clips from some of the films that I remember from a long festival life, and from the imports…