A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Taking place in Amsterdam June 11-14 at the Film Museum this international festival for films on art presents an exclusive selection of films, with Agnès Varda (photo) as honorary guest meeting an audience that has the possibility to watch a…
I do consider the film of Gideon Koppel as one of the most important in the last couple of years. It has been written about on filmkommentaren.dk several times (use the “search” button). I saw it on dvd in Lisbon…
Of course it needs to be celebrated, the 20 years of Sunny Side of the Doc, now in la Rochelle for a couple of years, before in Marseilles with a prologue in Lyon. Lots of memories for someone like me…
Great to see that documentary festivals not only grow in Europe. For the second time an international documentary festival will take place in Agadir in Marocco November 10-14. For long documentaries, i.e. film that are longer than 52 minutes produced…
Readers of filmkommentaren.dk will know that I consider the international documentary festival in the capital of Portugal as one of the leading when it comes to quality in selection and side programme policy. The programme for 2009, the festival takes…
The film about the Indian boy Bilal has previously been reviewed on filmkommentaren.dk The idfa festival and the connected Jan Virjman Fund has followed “the carreer” of the film and has posted this small sunshine story about a film, its…
For those who read Russian there is a very fine new website to visit that includes good and relevant info on what is going on in Russia in the field of non-fiction and documentary. The site is independent and is…
Kim Longinotto is an amazingly productive film director, who has a slate of important films in her filmography (among them masterpieces like ”Divorce Iranian Style”, ”Runaway”, ”Gaea Girls”, ”Sisters in Law”), and she is a director that with her subjects…
The festival in Warsaw is over and the many prizes have been awarded. The following films awarded at Planete Doc Review are to be found reviewed or noted on filmkommentaren.dk: Geoffrey Smith: The English Surgeon. Anders Østergaard: Burma VJ. Peter…
Danish born Henning Albert Boilesen was a succesful businessman during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 60’es. He went to the top, had close contact to the rulers of the country, and as many other industrialists in Sao Paulo,…
The title of the film is actually ”Pale Peko Bantu Mambo Ayikosake” which in swahili means ”Where there are people there will be problems”. And problems there are in Katanga, the location of this fresh and direct film that manages…
For readers of Swedish language there is a fine service provided from Lars Säfström, documentary head of svt Malmö. Säfström writes about what he has seen and about the discussions at the public broadcaster’s yearly gathering that this year takes…
Film History – The Finnish film critic and historian Peter von Bagh is the artistic director of this exciting week in June: Il Cinema Ritrovato, the festival sponsored by the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero and the Cineteca del Comune…
For a documentary veteran viewer it is pure pleasure, when you watch a film that gives you surprises you in structure, narration and content. I knew that Slovak/Hungarian Peter Kerekes after his wonderful ”66 Seasons” was working on a big…
Best international feature Documentary at the Hot Docs was announced yesterday night and the winner was the Lebanese filmmaker Simon El Habre with this ”The One Man Village”, well deserved for a charming and well constructed film. Here is the…
It is one of those films where you are attracted by the visual and the tone of the film and the words, in other words by the film, and still feel like you want to watch and listen again. Because…
This is a clip from a text made by the director, to be found on his website in full length: … I myself have systematically collected aphorisms for the last ten years. Whenever I wonder why I am still living…
For the 6th time this international documentary film festival takes place in Warsaw at the Kinoteka. The programme is overwhelming in volume AND quality. No wonder that the festival two days ago received The Main Award at the Polish Film…
Honour your master… this is what four young Polish filmmakers do. They have all come out of the Andrzej Wajda Master School in Warsaw, and their names are already known outside their own countries in festival circles and as participants…
The festival includes no less than 6 competition sections with the Millenium Award as the main one. 19 films compete for the 6000€, several of them known to readers of filmkommentaren.dk. Like ”Kites” (photo) by Polish Beata Dzianowicz, ”Burma vj”…
The big international documentary festival in Toronto is running now and until May 10 and they do a wonderful promotion and information work for the audience and for us who are not there. Annotations on the film, written interviews, it’s…
The Documentary Film Centre at the University of Westminster in London arranges in May 5 screenings and filmmaking discussions under the headline: The Factual and the Fictive: A series of screenings/talks exploring hybrid fiction/documentary film-making. One session is dedicated to…
1989 will be remembered in festivals and on tv. And documentaries will be a strong visual element to show the changes that took place when the Berlin Wall went down, followed by the decline of the USSR. The following text…
472 pages. Full of illustrations – still from films, photos from award ceremonies at festivals all over the world, the 45th edition of the International Film Guide is available. With ”Directors of the Year”, a ”World Survey”, info/reports/highlights country by…
Wow, they deserve it! Atanas Georgiev, director and his team, who can add one more acknowledgement to the one they got at ZagrebDox some months ago at the world premiere: Last night they were awarded the ”Regards Neufs Prize” at…
Morgane turns 18. She lives with her father and brother. Her mother lives somewhere else. Morgane still keeps her teddy bears lined up at her bed, but she is also the young girl on her way to adulthood caring about…
Still photos from a prostitution environment, without any persons pictured, accompany the words from a witness statement to the police. It is a alarming declaration read by a male voice, straight forward and neutral without any attempt to touch the…
A minimalistic film school diploma work, full of tension and importance, with a terrifying story told through staged interviews with the director’s parents, a sister and a boyfriend. Intertwined to these fragments of words that carry the narrative – about…
A piece of promotion for a serious and competent publishing house with an excellent newsletter with links to events (conferences like the one below about Pasolini and Fassbinder, and festivals) and first of all info on new books on the…
URTI stands for Université Radiophonique et Télévisuelle Internationale, and for the 28th time the organisation will give an award, the International Grand Prix for Author’s Documentaries (what is equivalent to ”creative documentaries” or ”author driven documentaries, ed.) in connection with…
The ECCOS (European Cultural Capital On Screen) organised by Belgian Associate Directors has this year a focus on Lithuanian documentaries to celebrate that Vilnius is Cultural Capital of Europe. In connection with the filmfestival Open Doek in Antwerp a masterclass…
From without and from within the cinema is dying, if not already dead. You shoot a dinosaur in the head on a Monday but the goddamned animal is so big and clumsy and stupid it will not roll over till…
It is huge in content and very professional in communication. The festival in Toronto gets closer as does the parallel TDF, Toronto Documentary Forum: April 30-May 10 for the festival, May 6-7 for the forum. A newsletter comes out for…
Be careful if you are German, has made a good documentary and wants it to go to DOK Leipzig 2009. New regulations have been introduced, read this press release: Starting in 2009, all films screened in DOK Leipzig’s German Competition…
It is not very often that jury motivations are useful to read. This one is, from the documentary competition at the Belfast Film Festival, named after the Maysles Brothers. The members were Karolina Lidin, Charlie Philips and Ben Kempas. Here…
If you happen to be around Nyon in Switzerland on tuesday April 28, you should go and meet one of the few real stars in documentary cinema, Russian director Sergey Dvortsevoy. He has been invited to Visions du Réel and…
Documentary festivals flourish. For the 4th time ”Doc a Tunis” takes place, April 1st to 5th. A lot of films are shown from the host country, and from Marocco, Algeria and Libanon, and from Syria comes the film ”Dolls. A…
The Idfa based Jan Vrijman Fund, named after the late Dutch documentarian, who made several great films, including one about the COBRA painter Karel Appel, has finished the first round selection for 2009, second round deadline June 1st. The fund…
The excellent “One World Human Rights Film Festival” in Prague is over and awards have been distributed. One of the awards not only carry the name of Vaclac Havel but when I was there years ago, I was told that…
The annual EDN award for 2009 goes to Nenad Puhovski and his ZagrebDox. The motivation goes like this: ZagrebDox is a documentary event initiated by Nenad Puhovski, consisting of a weeklong festival and a financing forum entitled ZagrebDox Pro. Within…
For 70 years, the National Film Board of Canada has been breaking ground in socially-engaged documentary, auteur animation, alternative drama and more! This is how the NFB/ONF (Office National du Film du Canada) modestly, in small letters, celebrates itself on…
Pier Paolo Pasolini og Chris Marker, ja, de gamle meget forskellige mestre var med. Havde hver en sag med. Pasolini en lille og en mindre og Marker en lille bitte. Vægtige på hver sin måde alle tre… Pasolinis rejsefilm fra 1963…
Atelier Denis Cheerbrant, en hel dag med den flittige og koncentrede dokumentarist fra Marseille.. “La Totalité du monde”, 2009, 13 min. Grebet i den lille perle af en film er forbavsende enkelt. Et langt, grundigt, improviseret interview med en mand på en…
Med sit kamera på skulderen er instruktøren på sentimental rejse hjem til sin molesterede by. Han møder som de første tre drenge, som præcist og bevægende nøgternt viser om i ruinerne. Her boede deres navngivne handlende, naboer, skolekammerater. De er…
De taler om nederlagene, som var de sejre. Disse palæstnensiske veteraner fra krigene. De bærer skaderne efter sårene som stolte minder, deres egne skæbner i slutspillet som begyndelser til en samlet stolt fortsættelse. Vreden er deres styrke – eller er det…
Min anden festival favorit var Aljona Poluninas “The Revolution That Wasn´t” med Anatoly, som en kort periode greb magten og partiformandskabet i det russiske kommunistparti og havde gyldne dage som en af lederne af demonstrationerne mod Putin. Han mistede imidlertid…
Jeg havde jo mine favoritter på festivalen, især to. Den første af dem er Rosemarie Blank: “Job en de hollandse vrisjtaat”. Hendes forbavsende værk konstrueret på tre årtier gammelt filmmateriale i flere forskellige formater, som hun optog, dengang fristaden i…
Den dansk/ægyptisk producerede film “Over Jorden, under Himlen” af Simon Lereng Wilmont fik festivalens pris som bedste kortfilm. Den er om ambition og træning, med den lille Mahmoud, som elsker cirkus og drømmer om at blive akrobat i det ægyptiske…
Den næste film i programmet, Nathalie Loubeyres “No Comment” fortsætter uden at vide det, hvor “Mirages” slipper. (Programlæggeren ved det, havde set det..). De overlevende rejsende er kommet til en by uden navn, markeret ved et markant tårn. En havneby,…
Festivalen begyndte forrige torsdag, som denne festival bør, i det fremmede. Som jeg troede, jeg kendte. I Sahara. Olivier Durys “Mirages” handler om at rejse i ørkenen, om sandet overalt, om farens konstans. Om at være lille og ubetydelig, her i ørkenen…