Allan Berg om Jon Bang Carlsen
IT’S NOW OR NEVER OG HOW TO INVENT REALITY (1996) Når Jon Bang Carlsen i It’s Now or Never lader de medvirkende i Vestirland spille løs, ikke deres egne liv, men digtede liv, ikke i deres egne huse, men i…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Essays
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Baltic Sea Docs Riga 2024/ 2
One afternoon – a tradition – I left the pitching venue at the Baltic Sea Docs to have a couple of hours with Davis Simanis Jr, documentary and fiction director, and now also rector of Latvian Academy of Culture. We…
Audrius Stonys on The Baltic Way
The Baltic Way for me and for my whole generation, those who survived this event, will remain as a genetic code that is deeply and substantially engrained in the consciousness. As a believer, I see this event from a theological…
Kumjana Novakova: Silence of Reason
I have done some copy-pasting to give you words about the masterpiece that is Silence of Reason, watched tonight at ZagrebDox, having missed it at IDFA and Sarajevo FF: Foča is a municipality in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina where women…
Anca Păunescu: Eyal Sivan at One World Romania
Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker, theoretician, and lecturer, renowned for his uncompromising political stances and for using cinema as a tool to question and review dominant narratives of the past and present. A noteworthy figure among politically engaged filmmakers,…
Max Kestner Opens CPH:DOX
We’re thrilled to announce that Max Kestner’s ‘Life and Other Problems‘ will be the opening film at the 21st edition of CPH:DOX. The opening gala will take place on March 12 in Copenhagen at the Conservatory’s Concert Hall, where director…
Finn Larsen: Hække og Stativer
… English title Hedges and Stands… Larsen’s first topographic project, photographed in Randers in the late 1980’s, as it is said on the cover of the impressive book, one of three, two more with focus on Greenland, will come back…
2023 Online Meetings
Of course the best is to meet face to face onsite but I have got used to online meetings via zoom. To say good morning “how are you” or “where are you”. I prefer the mornings and I also like…
2023 – On the Road Again
Every day of the Christmas/New Year holidays, my wife and I enjoy a wonderful book “Solisterne” by Joakim Garff, where the author brings our Danish literary heroes, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen together on a trip down Europe with…
Giedrė Žickytė: Both of Your Mothers
This is a copy paste of an article in FilmNewEurope of today: VILNIUS: Lithuanian director/writer/producer Giedrė Žickytė is currently in postproduction with her long documentary Both of Your Mothers, which is a Lithuanian/Estonian/Bulgarian coproduction. The film follows the last years of professor…
Peter Mettler: While the Green Grass Grows. A Cinematic Diary
No doubt, Swiss/Canadian Peter Mettler is a great filmmaker. With a long and interesting filmography (8 of his films are to be found here: ). Always searching for new ways of approaching important themes from the life we live, asking…
Olya Chernykh: A Picture To Remember
Hello Olya, how are you sweetheart? The voice of Babuschka Zorya from Donetsk, the hometown of Olya, who is now living in Kyiv with her father and mother. The film is built in a way that I as a viewer…
Guy Davidi: Innocence (Uskyld)
Instruktøren: “Det er en film om, hvad det betyder at blive soldat i Israel, og hvordan samfundet i Israel lægger pres på børn og unge fra en meget ung alder, frem til at de melder sig til militærtjeneste. Med filmen vil…
Veronika Lišková: The Visitors
Oh, what an intelligent film with many layers, was my thought after the 85 minutes in company with Zdenka and her family in Svalbard. Including not only the young Czech social anthropologist going to the Arctic with her family to…
IDFA Opening film
The artistic director of IDFA Orwa Nyrabia announced yesterday what will be the opening film of the 2023 festival: A Picture to Remember. Here are the words about the film from IDFA’s website: Olga Chernykh spent her childhood in Donetsk…
DOKLeipzig Awards 2023
Last night the DOKLeipzig awards were distributed – and there were many. The festival has always been good at finding sponsors for the awards to their sections of long, short and animations films. Here is a copy paste of the…
Ramallah – Documentaries from Palestine
This text was written by Tue Steen Müller in 2010 after a stay in Ramallah meeting Palestinian filmmakers including those in Gaza, with whom we tutors from Western Europe met to select makers to come to Corfu in Greece to…
2012: Emma Davie, Scottish filmmaker and teacher at Edinburgh College of Art, and tutor at numerous workshops for filmmakers from Europe and elsewhere, was in Ramallah at the Storydoc/Ramallah.doc workshop. She has given us permission to re-post this beautiful text. When I asked her for permission, she said “Go Ahead, Words fail for what is happening but good to remember the historical context of this brutality.
THE FREEDOM TO SEE by Emma Davie It’s a bar in Ramallah called Beit Aneesh. Apparently named after an old lady that lived there. A laid back place with posters from the history of the struggle of the Palestinian people.…
Mikael Opstrup: The Uncertainty
Subitled: «A book about Developing Character driven Documentary» ”I am painfully aware that this book is risky business. I am trying to rationalize the irrational, to break down the bumpy documentary film process into conscious decisions and structures, yes even…
Mogens Brejnholm Nielsen: Faktatjek
Alle var dette mærkelige år, et århundredes sidste, efterhånden enige om, at Randers ikke mere var, hvad byen havde været. Sådan skrev jeg 2004 til Mette Lundens og min bog Randersbiografi. Og jeg selv begyndte dengang tilmed at spekulere på,…
Letitia Popa: What is documentary
This essay is written by Romanian film student Letitia Popa. It follows essays written by students from Zelig Film School in Bolzano according to the same exercise described below: What is a documentary? A few weeks ago, me and my…
Grand Hjemmebio / Gensyn
GRAND HJEMMEBIO Kim Foss meddelte for noget tid siden at biografen han leder, Grand Teatret i København ”udvider paletten og nu også tilbyder ’udbringning’ af film til din egen skærm. På Grand Hjemmebio kan du fange nogle af de gode…
Uldis Cekulis – Conversation
Feature length conversation with Latvian producer and cameraman Uldis Cekulis. It took place during the Baltic Sea Docs 2020 earlier this month. Clips and words about Uldis Brauns, “Bridges of Time” and “235.000.000”, about filming in Georgia, drinking chacha, the…
Dealing with the Past
…Subtitle: Are there Good People in Terrible Times? In these unprecedented times, when it seems that the world we used to know will not exist in the future, truth-seeking and fact-checking are more important than ever. But the anxieties of…
The Digital life of the Documentary Industry
Zane Balcus wrote this essay: New features of something to come were felt in February during Berlinale. Then only a few people were seen on the streets in face masks, but hand disinfectants were regularly provided in the toilets of…
Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 3
In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY. We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom…
Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 2
In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY. We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom…
Zelig: Essays on What is a Documentary/ 1
In November I was at the Zelig Film School in Bolzano to meet the new students. I organised a small game: Which three words come to your mind, when I say DOCUMENTARY. We put the words on the whiteboard: Freedom…
Ingmar Bergman 100 år /8
Jeg sidder ved skrivebordet, der står midt i værelset. En rødbrun soldatertæge kravler tøvende op over bordkanten. Der står helt afgørende nogen bag min ryg, selv om døren hverken er blevet åbnet eller lukket. Der står altså nogen bag min…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /9
“…A documentary work is not intended for the esthetic connoisseur or the preoccupied consumer, but rather for people in vital need of increasing their knowledge: of transforming communicated environments, epochs, nature scenes into personal experiential substance – something with which…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /8
… they had plenty of time – the ultimate documentary resource – they themselves became something of experts in geography and agriculture. They were also sensitive and capable of the profound empathy with the subject matter that transforms certain photographers…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /7
… Knowledge also affords artistic freedom. Experienced and versed, the author can move within his subject matter. His depiction of reality then becomes “macro realistic” – that is, a concrete expression of an inner reality. NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th By…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /6
… The ideal situation, of course, is that in which the photographer is his own client. Then the assignment is a vital function of the photographer himself; then his depiction of reality will occur at that point where he himself…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /5
… The verbal accompaniment must create new relationships and angles of approach to the pictorial material (even laconic): … Småbrukaren och kyrkogårdsarbetaren Hjalmar Nyberg, Nyåker, gräver grav för avlidne banmästaren Henrik Carlsson (Sune Jonsson) NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th By…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /4
… Their documentation is a distillate of reality itself. Their pictures are freed of all ephemeral, fashionable, and sentimental trappings. They nakedly describe universal situations that are allowed to speak right into the camera. (Sune Jonsson) NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING…
Sune Jonsson: Nine reflections /3
… One thereby denies that photographs can represent a pictorial manifestation of experiences and personal views, that photographs can be personal messages having aesthetic qualities of communication. (Sune Jonsson) NINE REFLECTIONS CONCERNING 1/125th By Sune Jonsson (1978) 3 In the…
Sune Jonsson: Nine Reflections /1
“The reportage confrontation is a fragile method of documentary work. But even so unfavorable an assigment situation can be transformed: if the photographer is given sufficient time, if he is given time to gain a knowledge of the environment that…
Til lykke med fødselsdagen JØRGEN LETH
… ønsker vi her fra Filmkommentaren. Vi gør det med et af vores yndlingsportrætter af dig, det er godt nok dit, fra din blog, men vi tilegner os det lige, for det er et af de mest inspirerende, et af…
Lars Movin versus Jørgen Leth
MOVIN MØDER LETH, Lars Movin meddeler det på sin Facebookside, og jeg skynder mig at meddele videre, især at det er NU! NU I AFTEN I ÅRHUS! Movin skriver: ”Så er det i aften, at jeg har den ære at…
Tue Steen Müller: Lithuanian Docs
LITHUANIAN DOCS – collected posts by Tue Steen Müller on Lithuanian documentaries, directors, photographers and producers Lituania is a Baltic country, the most southern, and the most exciting when it comes to documentaries. They are mostly short and based…
Ugis Olte : Double Aliens
In early August Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis sent me a link to this co-production between Latvia and Georgia. The film won an award as best documentary at the BIAFF, the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival, it is in the Focus Caucasus competition…
News from Paris: René Vautier 1928-2015
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…
Kosmorama: Body Language in the Moving Image
Denmark’s oldest film journal Kosmorama (first issue in 1954) presents a slate of articles (online and in English as well) that could interest the true film buffs among our readers. The articles are written by film historians and academics. The…
Does a Festival Critique Exist?
As a follow-up to the post below… here is a personal essay that I wrote for an academic book on festivals. It did not fit in, so here it is for you, a reflection on what is written on documentary…
Nordisk Panorama 25!
Nordisk Panorama 25! – a documentary tour down memory lane. Yes, the first one was in Grimstad, this idyllic and romantic spot on the South coast of Norway. I was there and so was she, with whom I have shared my life…
Translations
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,…