A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
At the Odense Film Festival one of the special programmes is very much welcomed. It is a selection of short documentaries, a genre that is very rarely seen. Read what Cecilia Lidin, festival director of Odense Film Festival writes on…
If you want a qualified overview of what has happened in Danish documentary, short fiction, animation and children film during the last year – you should go to the 23rd Odense Film Festival that takes place next week, August 19-24,…
What a charming film, full of Life and Love! Taking place in a small town in Burkina Faso, it is built as a film for cinema release with several parallel stories circling around the St. Valentine´s Day. Old people´s love,…
A short piece of observation that was done by one of Bulgaria´s most talented young documentary directors – in connection with the shooting of a feature film by Stephan Komandarev. The characters are extras from the film, the village is…
I have just left Vilnius, this beautiful spiritual capital of Lithuania. I had two nights at the Shakespeare Hotel, which I would like to (an exception on this blog) recommend to everyone. Anyway, I can report to you that the…
Riga, the city where came to life so many great documentaries during Soviet times and around the fall of the empire. I was invited to teach at the Discovery Campus session that was held at the coast, 40 minutes from…
I went to Tallinn, Estonia to update my almost 20 year long love story with Baltic documentary. And to watch films for DOK Leipzig. I saw more than a dozen from last year’s Estonian documentary production at the premises of…
This blog has constantly – through my writing – stressed that originality and creativity in documentary filmmaking of today mostly is to be found in the Eastern part of Europe. When it comes to films for 2008/2009 there are many…
A brief and warm salute to the director of the film from Afghanistan that we sneak-reviewed on this blog almost half a year ago. It will have its international premiere at the prestigious Locarno film festival, see site below. A…
Surprise me, please, it is often said to filmmakers when films are to be thought of, written, pitched, filmed and put together. Nothing is worse, or more boring, than the predictability in narration where you know where it goes, from…
A documentary animation film. Quite innovative. Based on a visual diary made by Latvian Irina Pilke, an old woman, who has drawn episodes from her life since 1947. Made into a film through the script and interview from writer Nora…
This film is funny, clever and makes you think. If it makes you (=me) change lifestyle, is another question. Could be, let’s see. The synopsis of the film taken from the website: Director JW convinces his wife and two small…
Tuesday evening May 6, Riga, the old fine cinema in the middle of the city. I am invited to the premiere of a film, that I have had the privilege to follow for a couple of years. The director Peteris…
I don’t need to write a lot about this film, do I? The winner of IDFA 2007, screened and awarded at an enormous amount of festivals, broadcast all over, including in Denmark. A well constructed dramatic story with a wonderful…
This music documentary film is about Swiss music – the famous and for many, including me, unbearable yodel – and Swiss artists who have developed their music from the yodel into a great innovative and fascinating rythmic play with the…
What a darling! Very simple idea, charming main character, a film for all ages about a young student, who earns his money as a porter, and carries a coca cola fridge up the mountain to a place where it can…
Catherine Destivelle is the name and after numerous films (at the Trento Film Festival) about people dying in the mountains, and about heroes who save people, or fight the mountains – it was such a relief to meet a female…
Normally you say that something must be wrong if you leave the cinema to say that the cinematography was excellent, but the rest of the film… You do say so with this ambitious film but it is justified because it…
Here are the results of the jury work. 4 of the films will be reviewed in the coming 3 days. Plus one that did not get a prize: Stranded. Gran Premio “Città di Trento” – Gold Gentian and 5000 Euro…
Time for banalities. My own ones and examples from the films I have seen. Word banalities. My own first: Wow, how much the viewing situation means for your evaluation of a film. Being in a jury you will always watch…
Last day of watching. I write this while another commercially thought tv documentary is running on the screen. Makes me think about this genre where you can argue that the scenography – the mountains with or without snow – is…
The jury has seen 25 films in 3 days. Diversity is the word that applies to the selection. But also quality in most of the films, in very different formats and storytelling traditions. Diversity because there are several films for…
… have to break the news that “Blind Loves” made it to Cannes! As expected and as so well deserved. Juraj Lehotsky is in the Director´s Fortnight section with names as Jerzy Skolimowski and Claire Simon. Congratulations and may this…
I am in Trento, in the jury of the Trento Film Festival that has the thematic subtitle: Montagna. Esplorazione. Avventura. The festival starts today and goes on until May 4. 34 films are in competition, short and long. It is…
A Love Affair – and a small follow-up on the review of “Blind Loves”: It all started around 1990. Even though I had been working for the National Film Board of Denmark since 1975, my knowledge was very limited when…
I saw this beautiful film sunday morning in Vienna during the Ex Oriente first session ( www.docuinter.net ). The director Juraj Lehotsky took the short way from Bratislava to show us a feature length, four chaptered (following the loves stories…
Wish I were in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo! For the 8th time Amir Labaki (it started yesterday) launches his documentary film festival with the provoking Orson Welles inspired name “It’s All True”. I was there years ago as…
Cinéma réel festivalen har en socialantropologisk pris (Prix réalités de l’immatériel), dens 2500 euro blev givet til en film om den sibiriske rensdyr-nomade- og jægerkultur Evenk, som er ved at forsvinde ind i den russiske agrare kultur, en problemstilling, filmprojektet…
Den forrygende oplevelse på Cinéma réel sidste uge var Vardas cinéma vérité om at tage til Hollywood og optage en film med udsøgt casting: Viva (Warhols superstar), Jerome Ragni & James Rado (Hair) og i biroller Shirley Clarke (!) og…
Filmen, som i lørdags vandt hovedprisen på Cinéma du Réel i Paris, er en vidunderlig fortælling om en flok børn og deres frie liv sammen uden mange voksne omkring sig. Jo, de går da i skole, men det er uden…
The festival is over. The prizes have been given. It happened saturday night and the winner was Volker Koepp with his story about the children in Kaliningrad, ”Holunderblüte”. No objections, not at all, Koepp is a master and deserves to…
Maybe – at the end of the day – documentary festivals will be events that you travel to in big numbers as you travel to visit art exhibitions, says Allan, my co-blogger. He could be right if you consider the…
Saturday morning in the café. The sun is shining in Paris today. In 90 minutes we have booked the videotheque to catch up with some films in the international competition. And then a couple of films later this day. Here…
It is raining cats and stones in Paris. No spring feeling yet. Nevertheless the cafés are full outside as all the smokers are situated there now. No smoking inside. Full houses at the festival for the two screenings in the…
I am sitting in the niveau -1 in the Centre Pompidou. This is where the acceuil for the Cinema du Réel is situated. As always in the Centre during the festival, it is difficult to create anything just close to…
Yes, for those who do not read Danish, “we” (Allan Berg Nielsen and me, Tue Steen Müller) leave for Paris tomorrow to follow the 30th edition of Cinéma du Réel, which took off with the subtitle “antropological and ethnographic films”.…
15 documentary projects were presented at the ZagrebDox pitching thursday the 28th of February. There were 9 commissioning editors around the table. 4 from the West (Arte, YLE, ORF, Jan Vrijman Fund) and 4 from the region, from the Bosnian,…
Last day of festival. I have a seminar in the morning where I present the state of the art of documentary in Europe. I am trying to find the right approach to the audience which includes people, who come because…
Sometimes, actually very often, reality cheats you, or in this case the weather! While I was in safe surroundings inside the Al Kindi cinema to a session about ethics and documentaries, about the relation between the filmmaker and the person…
It is monday morning and once again I find myself with Pirjo Honkasalo and Niels Pagh Andersen, who are to talk about ”3 Rooms of Melancholia”. For four hours with 25 people in the hall. It goes very well, we…
No, they don’t know it or them, says Orwa Nyrabia, one of the DOX BOX organisers, when I doubt him stating that the audience to the seminar of French academic Martin Barbier, ”Back to Basics”, had never heard about ”Nanook…
Full house for the film of Omar Amiralay from 1982, ”The Misfortune of Some”, produced for the French channel Antenne 2, during the Lebanese war. Amiralay is the Syrian documentary filmmaker, his films have been shown all over the world,…
This is a small report from the first day of the new DOX BOX documentary festival in Damascus. At the opening yesterday there was full house in at the Al Kindi Film Theatre, where the DOX BOX team, headed by…
Sneak preview of a film from Poland shot in Afghanistan by Jacek Petrycki, master in camerawork as he has shown so many times before with Kieslowski and Marcel Lozinski. Beata Dzianowicz has written and directed this film about a group…
What to do a loong grey saturday in February in Copenhagen? You go to watch documentaries at the Danish Film School where EDN (European Documentary Network) per tradition invites professionals and film students to attend a mini-festival with long and…
It must be a good sign for the documentary genre that festivals are starting all over the world. And that the more established ones break their audience attendance records year after year. A Golden Age for the documentary? I think…
Nenad Puhovski is a filmmaker and film school professor and festival founder and organizer from Zagreb, Croatia. His commitment to the documentary is enormous. He has through his Factum delivered several critical films on Croatian politics and action during the…
It is one of those ideas that is so obvious that normally noone takes it! However, Cian Smyth did and put it into practice. To make a documentary film award, and a festival, in the name of The Maysles Brothers…
The prestigious Berlin film festival, the Berlinale, offers a good selection of documentaries this year. 30 it is according to which is the excellent site of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), that is based in Prague. The Berlinale takes…
My Danish writing blog colleague writes above, under the caption “Oscar kritik”, linking to a group of festival people, who object to the selection of films nominated for this years documentary Oscar. He proudly mentions that two Danish films are…