Festival

Well, I have to confess that I was not at the cinema this year at DOK Leipzig! Shame on you, many will think and right they are. There is nothing but sitting in a big cinema with big screen with…

You meet colleagues in Leipzig. Of course, a banality. But when do you meet a man with the first name Teddy from California, who starts to speak good Danish to you… We had been in contact before and he had…

I was lucky to meet Greek Dimitra Kouzi again at DOK Leipzig. She is a journalist, former ERT, now in various jobs where her skills can be used, and they are many. Her love for documentaries is evident and if…

DOKLeipzig director for 10 years Claas Danielsen made, as he always does, a welcome speech that went far beyond the usual thanks to sponsors and audience and guests. I have taken a couple of sequences from his German language speech:…

Sevara Pan is in Leipzig for the festival and writes with enthusiasm about one of the so-called industry activities: Spanned over 3 days, Leipzig Networking Days celebrated its finale on the warm Sunday afternoon of October 27th. Initiated by Documentary…

In times where festivals for documentaries aim for bigger and bigger numbers of audiences, ranging from 50.000 to more than 200.000, it is refreshing to read that much smaller numbers can make the organisers happy like the ones who stood…

Yesterday midday I mailed Joanna Solecka from Wajda Studio. I have known Joanna for some years and she was the one, who sent me the link to watch their 45 minutes long documentary ”Joanna”, a film about a mother who…

The 1st International Documentary Festival in the Caucasus is going towards its end. Today the awarded films – and others – are being screened and last night the award ceremony took place in the Rustaveli Cineme. I was member of…

The Main Award at the 1st Cinedoc Tbilisi festival went to Lina Luzyte for her ”Igrushki”. The motivation of the Jury of the International Competition THE FIRST PRIZE IS AWARDED – BY A UNANIMOUS JURY DECISION – TO A DOCUMENTARY…

The Jury Mention at the 1st Cinedoc Tbilisi festival went to Julia Panasenko for her “Outro”. The motivation of the Jury of the International Competition: A DOCUMENTARY THAT HITS THE VIEWER LIKE A ROCK: PUNK DOCUMENARY FILMMAKING! ONE OF THE…

It was too much, something had to be done so I asked one of the staff members of Cinedoc here in Tbilisi to ask the audience to refrain from talking on their phone and send text messages during the screening.…

It’s one festival after the other publishing its programme. Lisbon, Leipzig, Amsterdam and today there is a programme party in Copenhagen for cph:dox… Idfa programme yesterday, the biggest festival in audience numbers and considered to be the most important –…

Big numbers in the press release of DOK Leipzig, sent out yesterday with an announcement of the so-called official programme. 56th edition, ” a total of 88 films from 34 countries will compete in the five competition categories. While there…

The programme of the 11th edition of the DocLisboa, that starts October 24 and ends November 3, was made public yesterday. Again you just have to say Respect! For the quality of the selection and for side programmes like ”Research”,…

It is not only in Colombia – see below – that festival organisers play with the word closeness between docs and dogs, when a new fest is to be launched. Look at the logo for a festival that starts today…

… which (Medellin) is a city in Colombia that October 15-20 will have its first documentary festival, built on the DocsBarcelona model with film screenings and industry activities, all thought out by Joan Gonzalez from Parallel40 in the Catalan capital,…

The following text was sent to filmkommentaren.dk by the organisers of Doclisboa’13: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is barred from leaving his country, he will not be able to attend Doclisboa’13. Mohammad Rasoulof has been invited to chair the Jury of…

The 1st international documentary film festival in the Caucasus runs from 15-20 October. The organiser is the Noosfera Foundation supported by – among others – the Idfa Bertha Fund and Georgian National Film Center. The festival has an International Competititon…

The IDFA Academy which I can highly recommend – I attended as observer last year – has asked me to help find young talents, who could qualify for their 2013 training programme. Here is the text, I am sure that…

No surprise in Malmø where the The Best Nordic Documentary Award was given last night to ”The Act of Killing”. Here is the motivation of the jury (Christian Bonke (director), Cara Cusumano (Tribeca Film Festival), and Kate Townsend (BBC Storyville)):…

Voilà, there you are in Malmø so close to Copenhagen, the home city of your correspondent, who after a good half hour of train trip took the escalators up from the deep Triangle Station to be at a square named…

I asked film director Mikhail Zheleznikov to explain to me what lies behind the section In Silico at the festival, for which he works. He answered like this: About In Silico. It’s the newest competition at Message to Man, and…

Scroll down some days of this blog and you will find a general presentation of the film programme at the festival in St. Petersburg that starts this coming Saturday. The festival has a fresh look, as you can see on…

I was there two years ago and was impressed of a good programme and had it not clashed with other obligations, I would have enjoyed to go to wonderful Vilnius for some days during the festival, that runs from September…

The Baltic Sea Pitching Forum ended Sunday afternoon. On the second day the hall on the 11th floor of Hotel Albert in Riga was again full of filmmakers, observers and a panel of tv editors, fund people and sales agents…

Full house for the opening film of 2013 Baltic Sea Docs, “The Act of Killing”, director’s (Joshua Oppenheimer) cut (editor Niels Pagh Andersen), 158 mins. The film was screened not only in Riga but also in three other Latvian cities/towns:…

Taken from the website of the festival: Jury members were Joslyn Barnes, Writer and producer (USA),  Jasmin Basic, Film historian and Curator (Switzerland), Vibeke Bryld, Director and Writer, editor of DOX Magazine (Denmark). HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM:…

Here are the descriptions of the five films that took part in Rough Cut Boutique session in Sarajevo: Baglar – Turkey, directors and producers Berke Bas, Melis Birder, Inhouse projects 

An underdog basketball team from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern…

And here they are, the awards from the workshop for projects at a rough cut stage, text taken from the site of the festival: Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Documentary Center proudly announce official awards for the 3rd edition of…

The easy solution for a blogger… to bring the brand new press release of a festival. On the other hand, this is an important festival and the attention it attracts from documentary film people around the world is significant and…

Realscreen, the trade magazine on non-fiction programmes and documentaries, focused July 22nd, in its newsletter, on the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival, September 5-15) 2013 documentary highlights. With no confirmation from the festival itself, the new film by Errol Morris,…

The festival in Sarajevo is first and foremost a festival for feature films. Big names – actors and directors – have during the years visited the city’s festival that this year can celebrate its 19th edition. However, due to hard…

It was the Bulgarian documentary, produced by the active, renowned with several award winning documentaries on its filmography, Agitprop, that took the main prize in Jerevan’s Golde Apricot festival, documentary competition. I have not yet seen the final film but…

You arrive in Yerevan, Armenia early morning. The taxi is taking you to the hotel, you enter the lobby and the music that meets you sounds familiar. Yes, Charles Aznavour sings La Boheme, wonderful, and a reminder of the singer…

The festival presented the Paradise-trilogy of Ulrich Seidl: Love, Hope and Faith. And the fine Golden Apricot Daily brought an interview with the director (online, see link below), from where I have taken the following: Seidl told the Daily that…