A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
As always perfectly organised by the team at the National Film Centre of Latvia, and supported by the EU MEDIA Programme, the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries was held in Riga September 7-12. There was a festival programme of new…
The Baltic Sea Forum 2010 was very much a place for new talent to present their ideas at the same time as it was refreshing to see an old master like Ivars Seleckis, in this mid seventies, come forward with…
Alina Rudnitskaya has previously been praised on this site – for her fine films ”Civil Status” and ”Bitch Academy” that have travelled the world festival circuit with success making her name mentioned as a big talent. Last year she pitched…
The Latvians write history with their films. Below a description of the ambition of Ivars Seleckis to make the third part of the epic about the Crossroad Street in Riga. A work that will cover more than 20 years of…
There is a street in Riga. A quite extraordinary street inhabited by ordinary people like you and me. I know them very well. Through films, of course. Actually I have known them for more than 20 years. Skersiela is the…
Today the audiovisual trade magazine Realscreen brings an article that informs about a new documentary coming out about Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg, a controversial character in Denmark – though one of former prime minister Anders Fogh’s experts – but a…
Idfa – International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam – asks every year a prominent director to choose her/his 10 Best Film list, whihc are then screened at the festival. This year the director is Finnish Pirjo Honkasalo and her list goes…
We have written about it since the start of filmkommentaren.dk and we will continue to do so as this excellent initiative is exportable: You find a documentary and short film addict – and connaisseur – with a wide network and…
Richard Leacock, 90 years old in 2011, a master of cinema vérité, always energetic and inspirational… finally gets a filmic homage. It happens now at the Telluride Film Festival and it takes place in association with the first public screening…
Autumn is coming and the documentary festival season opens. The festivals start to announce their programmes. DOKLeipzig is one of the bigger – this blogger will be there to report and be in a jury – that at this time…
Good news for a good film reviewed on this site a couple of days ago, edited from the press release of the festival DOK Leipzig: “All That Glitters” by Tomáš Kudrna, developed at the Documentary Campus Masterschool 2007, has been…
The 25th edition of the festival in Odense, Denmark takes place 23-28. August. There are many reasons to congratulate the municipality of Odense for keeping alive this film festival for all these years in spite of constant battles to raise…
En lille tur ned ad Memory Lane: Klokken er fem, sagde festivaldirektøren, så er det tid til en kold øl. Der havde vi 4-5 udvælgere siddet fra morgenstunden i et af kommunens mødelokaler og set bunker af kortfilm tilsendt fra…
Documentarians meet in Riga at the beginning of September. The Baltic Sea Forum includes a meeting for professionals – film projects will be presented to broadcasters, mostly by filmmakers from the region. But the Forum – organised by National Film…
The tenth edition of the festival “Flahertiana” takes place in Perm, Russia October 14-20. The selection for the competition programme (including of course several “Nanook” prizes) has been announced, and it is a pleasure to see a list of films…
The International Documentary Competition jury at Dokufest in Prizren, Kosovo, composed of Pamela Cohn (USA), Sonja Henrici (Scotland), AJ Schnack (USA), Adriatik Kelmendi (Kosovo) and Doug Block (USA) awarded the Italian film La Bocca Del Lupo (The Mouth of Wolf)…
The International Documentary and Short Film Festival in Prizren, Kosovo ended two days ago with an award ceremony – The Balkan Documentary Competition Award went to Romanian film The World According to Ion B. (photo) by Alexander Nanau. The jury…
The Toronto International Film Festival (September 9-19) is first of all known for its high quality feature film programme focusing on originality and innovation but due to the renaissance of the creative documentary, the festival now also treats that genre…
One year ago the humourous ”Disco and Atomic War” by Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma, a mix of archive material and reenactments, charmed the audience at the Baltic Sea Forum due to its originality and the story about what it…
Russian countryside village and a family. Mother and father and 4 children. We have seen it many times before, and we will see it again. With pleasure. You smile, you think ”how the hell can they survive under these poor…
During the Message2Man International Film Festival (se below) I had the pleasure to run a small doxpro workshop for around 10 young and younger Russian filmmakers. Through three hot mornings (July 17-19) the group discussed four projects that had been…
Two festivals are coming up in Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo: 1) The 16th Sarajevo Film Festival runs from July 23 through July 31, 2010, with eighteen mid-length and feature documentaries from the Balkans, Turkey, Cyprus and Austria competing in the…
An almost two year old boy running around observing what goes on. And touching the Golden Centaur statuettes lined up to be given to the winners. A conferencier shouting Russian words into the microphone trying to make a festive atmosphere.…
The 20th edition of the St. Petersburg International Film Festival ended with an award ceremony yesterday night in the Dom Kino. There were a large number of prizes to be given, I will limit this posting to include those in…
The Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan in Armenia (July 11-18) ended as a triumph for Russian director Pavel Kostomarov, whose fine film ”Together” (reviewed on this site) got the first prize, the Golden Apricot, for the Best Documentary Film…
The international competition included yesterday the film ”17th of August” by Alexander Gutman, reviewed and commented several times in this site. Here is a reprint of the review: This fine Russian director has, apart from the masterpiece ”Frescoes” from Armenia,…
… but there has been time to visit the Hermitage museum and fight one’s way to study the great collection of Rembrandt works (oh, documentarians, go and study how he caught the magical moments when he did his portraits) and…
Don’t say that films are not being made… the selection committee of the festival watched 2853 films from 83 countries. 73 were selected for the international competition (documentaries, animation, short fiction) and 24 for the National Documentary Competition, ”Gateway to…
Mikhail Litvyakov is the director of the festival in beautiful St. Petersburg. He has passed the seven decades of age but there was no sign of lack of energy when he was on stage to welcome guests and audience in…
Young Palestinian filmmaker Nagham Mohanna, who took part in the mediterranean/middle east documentary training program Storydoc (see below) sends this report on her journey back to her home via Egypt. I have made some small edits and language corrections: Hello…
What a wonderful and well deserved piece of news. The Best Documentary film (category: under 30 mins.) at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival was yesterday given to the Lithuanian documentary ”The River” by Lithuanian filmmaking duo Julija Gruodienė and…
Storydoc is an EU supported training programme ”for filmmakers with Mediterranean projects”. The first 2010 session took place July 5-7 in Corfu, where these words are being written the day after a workshop that was full of heat outside and…
UK based Saeed Taji Farouky came to the workshop with his story about ”The Runner” (photo), the activist athletic who wants, through the running, to raise awareness about the non-recognition of his country Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco. Salah Ameidan…
There were three inspirational lectures at the workshop in Corfu. Louise Rosen, American (from her cv) ”media executive in the international television and film business, project development, production and distribution”, talked precisely and inviting about meeting the audience and urged…
The festival in Budapest ended with the main award being given to Peter Kerekes for his excellent ”Cooking History”, reviewed and mentioned on this site several times. The jury consisted of Bojána Papp director (Hungary), Adina Bradeanu director and film…
The yearly documentary gathering in Bardonecchia in Northern Italy starts this coming wednesday. Bardonecchia is a small winter sport resort that has a fine cultural centre that is used for documentary film screenings, case studies, a so-called matchmaking where directors…
The director and cinematographer Klara Trencsenyi and her husband, anthropologist Vlada Naumescu made the beautiful documentary Birds Way that was reviewed on this site some months ago. In the review I used the words ”hospitality and openness” and they could…
… is taking place right now in Budapest, last day today for a programme of ”European Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival”. Festival director is Zoltan Füredi, a film director himself, I met him years ago where he was working on…
… takes place July 2-10 and has a fine short trailer with Milos Forman. Take a look at the site below. The festival has through the last years paid more attention to documentaries and this year 16 titles have made…
On this site we have written about Mazia Bahari several times. For readers who have not seen his films here is a unique chance to get to know his work. Idfa, the world’s biggest documentary festival has published this press…
They launch it as “From Yamagata through IDFA to Oscar”, the documentary section of the 32th Moscow International Film. They are Russian documentary director Sergey Miroshnichenko and producer Grigory Libergal. The two competent people make the selection for the fifth…
The DocWeek 2010, see below, organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute, hosted a one day pitch event that included 11 documentary projects, presented by American, UK, Chinese, Irish and Spanish filmmakers. In the panel to react to the pitches were…
It takes place at the same time as the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It is organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute that ”run annual programmes which develop filmmakers and producers such as Bridging the Gap (previously written about on this…
In the name of the Father, the Son and Diego Maradona. Amen… is the subtitle of this new Danish film that for a football addict, who will spend hours watching the coming World Cup, was a gift to watch at…
For viewers worldwide and for free – IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival in the world, based in Amsterdam, invites you to go online with IDFA TV, where there is an excellent selection of excellent documentaries. IDFA staff is at…
MakeDox is inspired and financed by people who love documentary film. People with a great desire to make their own festival, the kind of festival that I would like to visit myself. Petra Seliškar, Programme Selector.. I graduated in social…
More than 35 years ago, I broke my cousin’s Contaflex. Why? I wanted to see how that fascinating “eye” worked. I fixed it and ever since then I have been seeing with only one eye. I lived to be fascinated…
Wonderful. Well done and good luck are the best words to congratulate the organisers of a new documentary festival in Macedonia. It starts tomorrow. My text –The following is taken from the IDF site: As nutritious and beneficial as the…
Our Paris correspondent has previously (search Godard) dedicated a posting to the one and only JLG, Jean-Luc Godard, whose ”Film Socialisme” was screened in Cannes. I found this clip from an overall festival article by Jason Solomons, The Observer, May…
The news agency AFP reports tonight from CANNES: A controversial Danish movie set in Afghanistan and a first feature from a Vietnamese director on Thursday scooped awards in Cannes’ Critics Week section… “Armadillo”, about the growing cynicism and adrenaline addiction…