A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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…
Så er vi i gang med sidste dag af FOF’s og Filmkommentaren.dk’s festival med Tue Steen Müller. Her et sidste citat fra hans katalogtekst til den sidste film, “Black Sun af Gary Tarn: … Jo, “Black Sun” er noget ganske særligt,…
I morgen 15:00 køres Juraj Lehotskys “Blind Loves”. Om den hedder det blandt andet i katalogteksten: … Hvordan fortæller man fire kærlighedshistorier, som har det til fælles, at de elskende er blinde? Hvordan kommer man tæt på sine karakterer uden…
Festivalen er i gang. Første film i morgen søndag klokken 11 er Ferenc Moldovananyis “Another Planet”. Citat fra Tue Steen Müllers katalogtekst: … Uden kommentar og uden at vi bogstaveligt får at vide, hvor i verden vi er. Moldovanyi går…
Så er den lille eksklusive festival i gang. Et publikum er samlet om Tue Steen Müllers farverige viden og hans omhyggelige valg af syv film til denne week-end hos FOF i Randers. Men man kan sagtens nå støde til. For…
Lørdag, 14. marts 15:00 vises Peteris Krilovs’ “Klucis – the Deconstruction of an Artist”. Tue Steen Müller fulgte filmens tilblivelse og vil før og efter kørslen fortælle om det. I sin katalogtekst skriver han: … Det var her, i den såkaldte…
Lørdag 14. marts 11:00 “The Bell”: Tue Steen Müller præsenterer Audrius Stonys film. I kataloget skriver han udførligt om sit møde med denne litauiske instruktør og hans betydningsfulde filmværk. Her et par citater fra teksten: “Et af de steder, vi besøgte på…
“Citizen Havel” 13. marts 19:00. På fredag begynder festivalen 7BEST i Randers med den store film om Václav Havel, som Tue Steen Müller kommenterer og diskuterer med publikum. Fra hans katalogtekst dette citat: “… Det er her – i 1993 –…
”Six Ordinary Stories” by Syrian director Meyar Al Roumi is a quite refreshing report on six ordinary taxi drivers and their work and life in Damascus. Ordinary, well also extraordinarily open they are as well as critical to the life…
Another fine new initiative from DoxBox 2009 is the “Point of View” festival newsletter. Editor-in-chief is Danish Ulla Jacobsen, who by this year decided to leave the post of the DOX Magazine after more than a decade as the brilliant…
The writing workshop is over. An amazing development from Day 1 to Day 3. 5 documentary projects are ready to be piitched internationally. Projects with quality and passion. The doors should be opened for these filmmakers to proceed to the…
Second day of a workshop organised by DoxBox that really has put an emphasis on establishing a so-called industry section of the two year old festival. Mikael Opstrup and I tutor 6 filmmakers with projects and 6 with no projects.…
Nicholas Philibert is here. Three films have been shown, “Le Pays des Sourds”, “Retour en Normandie” and “La moindre des choses”. Last year the Syrian audience could enjoy “Etre et Avoir”. Philibert did a master class, denied to be called…
It is sometimes difficult to understand the mechanisms of censorship. I saw the funny, maybe a bit repetitive documentary by Massoud Bakhshi, “Tehran has no more Pomegranates”, a playful and well made film about the big city, using wonderful archive,…
It is one of those minimalistic films that subject-wise has been seen so many times: Man lives alone outside the cities, big house, animals – cows, chicken, horses, cats and dogs – he has retired from the noisy world full…
Orwa Nyrabia, together with Diana el-Jeiroudi the founder and director of the festival: We considered 300 films. 90 of them we requested for the selection. 100 passed for the selection committee, 6 people, and out came the around 40 films…
Second edition. Second time that Damascus has an international documentary film festival. The programme is enlarged, there is an industry section, sidebar retrospectives, it is all there. Impressive it is to be back. Full house at the opening film, “China…
Just a brief follow-up note from Zagreb where the votes from the audience gave the following result: Best film “The English surgeon” by Geoffrey Smith. Second “Cash and Marry” by Atanas Georgiev. Third “Burma vj” by Anders Østergaard. … they…
Second edition of the documentary festival in Damascus, Tartous and Homs in Syria. Reports from the 1st edition can be found on filmkommentaren.dk. I dont have the programme schedule yet but have seen the list of films and guests who…
It is the fourth time the programmer Cian Smyth organises the documentary festival ”within” the Belfast Film Festival, March 26- April 4. And again it is a pleasure to see a varied selection of high quality films, 44 in all,…
… stands for the excellent, weekly electronic newsletter published by the MEDIA Desk France & Antennes Media Strasbourg & Grand Sud. Editor Christine Mazerau. Excellent, because it is so rich in information, goes far beyond the promotion and information on…
Nu er det snart… Om mindre end to uger er der festival i Randers med FOF og Filmkommentaren.dk som værter og Tue Steen Müller som kommentator hele vejen igennem. Se program og tilmelding her.
Awards were given out tonite at ZagrebDOX. The regional awards are the ones to be noticed signaling strongly the current high quality. All 3 films have or will have a well deserved international recognition. The two first have been written…
It took some time for director Atanas Georgiev (Macedonia), his producer Sinisha Juricic (Croatia) and coproducer Ralph Wiser (Austria) to make and finish ”Cash and Marry”, which will be a hit at festivals in the coming year. As it very…
12 projects from the region. I can not mention them all but again I must say that the validity of the argument, so often expressed on this place, that originality and creativeness in documentaries come from the Eastern part of…
The ZagrebPro is the training and pitching session of the festival. 12 projects from the region were presented to 8 committed panelists, who contributed with critical, constructive and encouraging comments to the directors and producers present: Veteran Franz Grabner from…
“Man on Wire” as best long documentary, several times mentioned on this place. Here is a clip and some links: … the filmmaker – as the red thread of the narrative – builds up a suspense story in a montage…
The very active news service provided by Cinéma du Réel informs about an upcoming retrospective series of Joris Ivens at the Cinémathèque française (51 rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris) from March 5th to April 5th. The text goes like this:…
The CMCA (Centre Méditerranéen de la Communication Audiovisuelle), based in Marseilles, provides very useful information about what happens in the region through a free monthly newsletter in French ”Méditerranée Audiovisuelle” that is also available in an English version. The organisation…
Success story: DocsBarcelona 2009 closed (10 days ago) with a room full of people to watch Brett Gaylor’s “RIP: A Remix Manifesto”. The film brought to the end six days of activities meant to encourage the creation and interest in…
There he is, festival director, producer and teacher Nenad Puhovski, who now for the 5th time launches a documentary festival in Croatia, and thus welcomes the world of documentaries in the heart of Zagreb. A clip from the welcome text…
Within the festival ZagrebDOX, see above, a project development and pitching session has taken place for several years and will take place again in 2009, where 13 projects have been chosen. Cecilia Lidin from EDN and I have the privilige…
Prestigious BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) ceremony in London had Slumdog Millionaire nominated in 11 categories. It won in seven, including Best Cinematography, which gives us another chance to say bravo to Anthony Dod Mantle, about whom…
Good access news. Festivals help each other, we are not used to that, and establish a vod. Says the IDF site docuinter.net: On February 10, 2009 Berlinale hosts a special presentation. Doc Alliance, an association of Europe’s five key documentary…
At DOCSBarcelona Israeli director Avi Mograbi had two screenings of his latest film, ”Z 32”, a film that I have praised several times on filmkommentaren.dk On top of that the director performed a three hour masterclass for 180 people according…
What a pleasure to listen to Peter Entell at the masterclass in Belgrade in connection with the Magnificent7 festival. Well prepared he showed clips from his previous films, talked about them and about his way of filmmaking, especially related to…
You might say that the films should be able to stand on their own. And right you are. You should be able to understand and sense a film without any introduction or comment or explanation. To watch it on your…
Look at the picture. This couple, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, stands behind the Magnificent7 festival in Belgrade. I have known them for years and have had the privilege to work with them for five years on the selection for the…
We experience right now the golden age of documentary. There has never been such a huge interest from an audience that age-wise mostly is young and has given up on television! And there have never been such an amount of…
It is such an adventure to go to the cinema for four days to watch 7 films that are received with enthusiasm and emotion by the most wonderful audience I know, the one in Belgrade. You can not overestimate the…