Festival

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I did not watch the final film yet but followed the film project, when it was developed at the Ex Oriente workshop in Czech Republic and when it was presented at the most important market place for new documentary projects,…

Every year in Cannes, at the opening of The Director’s Fortnight, la Quinzaine des réalisateurs, the international society of filmmakers, la Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF), hands out the award The Carosse d’Or to honour “the innovative qualities, courage…

Take a look at the boy. Look at his eyes. See the fear of a soldier. A very young Danish soldier who has just been hit. He serves in Afghanistan, he fights Taliban. He is caught at that very moment…

This spring Paris is under the sign of Kitano. Japanese filmmaker (Sonatine, Hana-bi, Zatoichi a. o.), actor, TV presenter, comedian, painter, singer, poet and writer Takeshi Kitano (born 1947 in Tokyo) is everywhere. He has a big exhibition at le…