Allan Berg om Jon Bang Carlsen
IT’S NOW OR NEVER OG HOW TO INVENT REALITY (1996) Når Jon Bang Carlsen i It’s Now or Never lader de medvirkende i Vestirland spille løs, ikke deres egne liv, men digtede liv, ikke i deres egne huse, men i…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
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Ji.hlava IDFF
IDFF stands for International Documentary Film Festival, number 28 it is, high quality always. A quote from the email I received yesterday from the festival: “We are thrilled to announce titles, which have been selected to the Opus Bonum and First Lights International Competitions…
DOK Leipzig Opens with new Film by Thomas Riedelsheimer
“We all think we know what light is. But if we take a closer look, we realise that we don’t,” the film “Tracing Light” tells us. DOK Leipzig will open at the CineStar in Leipzig on 28 October with the…
Ivars Seleckis 90 Years/ 2
Lovely to have a correspondent who was at the celebration of legendary master of Latvian documentary Ivars Seleckis at his Birthday feast and the premiere of “To be Continued. Teenhood”. I wrote words to Ivars here In that text…
Göran Hugo Olsson: Reframing Documentary. A Talk at Nordisk Panorama
90 minutes at the Nordisk Panorama yesterday afternoon. With a great filmmaker, Swedish Göran Hugo Olsson, who together with Cecilia Lidin gave the audience an excellent introduction to his working method, and who characterised himself as a documentarian of existing…
Ivars Seleckis 90 Years Old
Dear Ivars. Paldies for your extraordinary life-long documentary work and congratulations on this birthday! If anyone, you have introduced me to your country, its history and culture and its citizens, in all ages. Much appreciated that you with “To Be…
Nicolas Philibert: Nénette
The film of one of the world’s most significant documentary filmmakers, Nicolas Philibert, screened at the Berlin Film Festival as a distinctive, masterfully made, auteur documentary. Nénette is a charming orangutan, an unusual and irresistible being. She is the oldest…
Magnificent7 Opening Night 2024
You only have your 20th birthday once and that is to be celebrated. Even on a Friday the 13th… The celebration of the 20th edition of the Magnificent7, the European Feature Documentary Film Festival, took place at the MTS Hall…
Magnificent7 – a Festival with a Big Heart
I am in Riga for the Baltic Sea Docs. I am with Uldis Cekulis, who has been to Magnificent7 twice. As the producer of “Ramin” by Audrius Stonys and “Bridges of Time”, that Stonys directed together with Kristine Briede. I…
Audrius Stonys on The Baltic Way
The Baltic Way for me and for my whole generation, those who survived this event, will remain as a genetic code that is deeply and substantially engrained in the consciousness. As a believer, I see this event from a theological…
Maryna Stepanska and Darya Bassel on Docudays
Darya Bassel: “Documentary cinema speaks better to people about events happening right here and now” A conversation between the Ukrainian filmmaker and screenwriter Maryna Stepanska and Darya Bassel, the Director of the DOCU/PRO Industry Platform and film producer, about the…
Lise Roos
Af Tue Steen Müller, tidl. filmkonsulent ved Statens Filmcentral Børnelivet På gulvet i børnehaven ved Sankt Hans Torv sidder instruktøren, den pædagoguddannede Lise Roos. ”I de næste to uger fjerner vi legetøjet, men I kan jo stadig tegne og male og…
Two Dragons. Jacek Petrycki and Godfrey Reggio win the Dragon of Dragons award
This year, the Dragon of Dragons award will go to two outstanding creators: a legendary American director and an eminent Polish cinematographer. Godfrey Reggio’s films are a cultural phenomenon – visually captivating and pioneering essays that have left their mark…
ZagrebDox – take 20!
Saturday, February 20, 2005. An attempt to rehearse the opening of ZagrebDox, which should start tomorrow at the Europa cinema. Four technicians are bringing in the “beast” of an HD projector that came from Switzerland to the top of the…
Anca Păunescu: Eyal Sivan at One World Romania
Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker, theoretician, and lecturer, renowned for his uncompromising political stances and for using cinema as a tool to question and review dominant narratives of the past and present. A noteworthy figure among politically engaged filmmakers,…
Victor Kossakovsky: Architecton
Press release of today from DocsBarcelona: Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky will return to DocsBarcelona with Architecton, an epic and poetic meditation on architecture that at the same time offers hope for survival. With his latest film, which will have its Spanish premiere at the Barcelona…
Oksana Karpovych: Intercepted
“I wanted to show the dehumanization”, the director said in an interview with Business Doc Europe. Indeed, she succeeded. The film is a masterly done narrative construction with an image side and a sound side that each works on its…
Birgitte Stærmose: Afterwar
Made in co-creation with lead cast: Shpresim Azemi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Gëzim Kelmendi, Besnik Hyseni. It’s such a clever film. That stays with you. Touches your heart. Because of the way it is made and the consequent narrative. Birgitte Stærmose made…
Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret will receive the Honorary DocsBarcelona Award
The International Documentary Film Festival of Barcelona, DocsBarcelona, will pay tribute to the french filmmaking couple Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret during its upcoming edition, which will take place from May 2 to May 12, 2024. The award recognizes Depardon’s…
Aistė Stonytė: The Mammoth Hunt
All right, let’s have the synopsis (Scanorama Festival Kaunas 2023) first: ““The Mammoth Hunt” is a story about a film reel that for many years has been thought to be lost. On the reel, under conspiracy conditions, an abolished anti-Soviet…
Carl Th. Dreyer Prisen til Lea Glob
Filminstituttet inviterer alle interesserede til reception og fejring af Lea Glob, når hun modtager dette års Dreyer Prisen. Lea Glob er uddannet dokumentarfilminstruktør fra Den Danske Filmskole i 2011. Hun blev Robert-nomineret for afgangsfilmen ‘Mødet med min far Kasper Højhat’…
Netflix: Captains of the World
2012. Hotel Prezident in Sremski Karlovci in Serbia, style Louis XVI, cherubines in the background. It is late sunday evening and our only way to watch el classico Barcelona against Real Madrid was to go online via some unauthorized links…
Viesturs Kairiss: January
It was a fine night at Danish Cinemateket. As the opening film of a min-festival “Latvia Before and Now”, the award winning film of Viesturs Kairiss, “January”, was shown to an almost full cinema hall. Jesper Andersen from Cinemateket introduced…
Cinemateket 2024
Programmet for det danske Cinemateket i København er på gaden og det er som vanligt med appel til alle filminteresserede, også dem (som os her på flmkommentaren.dk), der sværger til den dokumentariske film eller noget i den retning i en…
The Best Docs I saw in 2023
What I did was to take a look at this site – www.filmkommentaren.dk – and pick the films I thought could go for being “the best”. They are listed here in a random order: Apolonia Apolonia, Lea Glob, Denmark/Poland, 116…
Jessica Gorter: The Dmitriev Affair
Dutch documentarian Jessica Gorter continues to make films from Russia (“Red Soul” last one I saw, before that one from the Leningrad Blockade) with strong content – and actuality. This one is about Yury Dmitriev, awarded human rights activist, working…
Watch Docs Festival 2023
Tomorrow, December 1st, the Watch Docs festival, 23rd edition, opens in Warsaw with an impressive program including competitive sections, Main Competition and Green Doc Competition, plus “I want to see” (human rights focus), New Polish Films with among others “In…
Uljana Kim Receives Big Award
Eurimages and the European Film Academy have the pleasure to award producer Uljana Kim with this years’ Eurimages International Co-Production Award. The award goes to her “to mark her outstanding commitment to co-production and the strong co-producing partnerships she has built…
DOCA Documentary Association Georgia
… was founded one year ago, November 2022. And has since then performed an avalanche of activities, first of all protesting against the Ministry of Culture and its Reorganization at Georgian National Film Center followed by demonstrations outside the Center…
Pedro Costa at Festival dei Popoli
Retrospective and masterclass with one of the absolute masters of Cinema today, Portuguese Pedro Costa, at the legendary Festival dei Popoli that starts in two days. The festival site has this introduction to Costa: “To go back on Pedro Costa’s…
IDFA Press Conference 2023
… was held yesterday afternoon with artistic director Orwa Nyrabia in the leading role after Head of New Media Kaspar Sonnen had introduced the DocLab: Phenomenal Friction. For more than an hour Nyrabia talked us through the 2023 program with…
Ramallah – Documentaries from Palestine
This text was written by Tue Steen Müller in 2010 after a stay in Ramallah meeting Palestinian filmmakers including those in Gaza, with whom we tutors from Western Europe met to select makers to come to Corfu in Greece to…
2012: Emma Davie, Scottish filmmaker and teacher at Edinburgh College of Art, and tutor at numerous workshops for filmmakers from Europe and elsewhere, was in Ramallah at the Storydoc/Ramallah.doc workshop. She has given us permission to re-post this beautiful text. When I asked her for permission, she said “Go Ahead, Words fail for what is happening but good to remember the historical context of this brutality.
THE FREEDOM TO SEE by Emma Davie It’s a bar in Ramallah called Beit Aneesh. Apparently named after an old lady that lived there. A laid back place with posters from the history of the struggle of the Palestinian people.…
DOKLeipzig: Panorama
”DOK Leipzig is opening a window on the world of Central and Eastern European cinema. The short and feature-length works presented here span the range from the socialist past through the times of upheaval to the present – personal, funny,…
Marc Isaacs: This Blessed Plot
In 2007 Marc Isaacs made ”All White in Barking”, in 2020 “The Filmmaker’s House” and now “This Blessed Plot”. You should know, when reading this article that I am a big admirer of Isaacs having seen, loved and written about…
Oeke Hoogendijk: Housewitz
One of the best European authors, Oeke Hoogendijk, whose three masterful films on art seen from unexpected and exciting angles we saw at “The Magnificent Seven”, this time turns to a very personal subject in a Kammerspiel style to create…
Sarajevo FF CineLink Industry focus on Docs
CineLink Industry has steadily evolved over the years into a home and thriving hub for documentary professionals. This year’s 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will feature an extensive lineup of documentary-focused activities with a focus on captivating storytelling. From deeply personal…
Sarajevo FF: Dealing With the Past
The Dealing with the Past programme is an additional platform for testimonies and stories that can serve as a base for developing film scripts, projects and films. The aim of the program is to initiate dialogue in the countries formed…
Baltic Sea Docs 2023 Edition 27!
A copy paste from website of Baltic Sea Docs: We’re excited to announce the 20 film projects that have been selected for the 27th edition of Baltic Sea Docs in September! Many thanks to all submitters for sharing your work!…
DocLisboa: Anastasia Lapsui & Markku Lehmuskallio
Doclisboa (that takes place 19-29.10) will present another momentous retrospective – with the support of the Finnish Film Foundation – dedicated to the cinema of Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio: this is the first complete retrospective dedicated to the directors.…
Truls Lie on Observational Documentary
Norwegian Truls Lie, editor-in-chief of Modern Times Review, The European Documentary Magazine, wrote an interesting article () that you should read, inspired by his visit to the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival this year, a reflection on the observational documentary…
DocuDays UA Dana Bunescu and Niels Pagh Andersen
It was one of those moments he has called “The Authentic Now”, Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen. In the Docudays online seminar the other day with Andersen and Dana Bunescu. The latter showed clips from the masterpiece she did with…
DocuDays 20th Edition 2023 Opening
I was in Kyiv last night. Again. For the opening of the 20th edition of the DocuDays ua International Human Rights Documentary Festival. Online via Facebook. It was like it was before in the Zhovten Cinema: An opening with speeches in…
DocsBarcelona: Camilla Nielsson
”You’ve got to have love for your characters and do everything you can to give them confidence in the job you’ve been assigned”. Said Camilla Nielsson to me in an interview back in November 2014, published in a Danish Film…
Honorary Heart of Sarajevo to Mark Cousins
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of film, director and writer Mark Cousins will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival. This will not be his first encounter with the city…
Mansky & Titarenko: Eastern Front
This film has been shown at numerous festivals and now the audience In Barcelona gets the chance to watch it and meet one of its directors, Vitaly Mansky, in the Q&A. At a session the day before, entitled “Documentary filmmaking…
Mantas Kvedaravicius Mariupolis 2
In 2011 I attended a Summer School in Neringa Lithuania for film students. A film by Mantas Kvedaravicius was shown, his first. ”Stasys Baltakis, teacher at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the film school of the Country, introduced the…
Stonys & Briede: Bridges of Time
This is a text I wrote for the premiere of the film, 30th of June 2018: Wow, it’s tomorrow at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival that Bridges of Time has its premiere. The film, a co-production between the three Baltic…
Arunas Matelis: Wonderful Losers
This is a text that I wrote in October 2017 when Arunas Matelis film had its world premiere: … with the subtitle ”A Different World”, a film that many of us, who think Lithuanian Arunas Matelis is a great artistic…
CPH:DOX 2023 Scores Biggest Audience Ever
The 20th anniversary of CPH:DOX became a record breaking year for Denmark’s largest film festival. During the festival, the audience number reached 125,680 – in total. Audiences flocked to the cinemas – both in Copenhagen and in the 28 municipalities…