A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Richard Leacock died 2011 and yesterday one more from the Direct Cinema movement of the 1960’es that changed the documentary history, passed away: Robert Drew. As USA Today puts it in their factual obituary: Drew formed Drew Associates in 1960…
I like this tradition so much – the plaques that are put on the walls of the houses, where great artists have been living and working. To honour them and remember. They do so a lot in the Baltic countries…
The Austrian Film Museum (celebration of its 50th year) has a present to all who are interested in film history and Dziga Vertov and history of course, read here, click and watch, it is so well presented: The Kinonedelja (Kino-Week)…
It starts today, the yearly Flaherty seminar at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York and runs until June 20. Programmers are Gabriela Monroy & Caspar Stracke – you can read more about them on the website of Flaherty, link below. Here…
The Czech production company Film&Sociology was so kind to send me a vimeo link so I could watch Janek’s film on Olga Havlova, which I had read about passionately because of ”Citizen Havel”, where she is very much present with…
At DocsBarcelona 2013 Michael Glawogger asked me if I could write a piece on ”Megacities” and the remix of it done by Timo Novotny, ”Life in Loops”. Compare the two, he said, and he gave me the dvd’s of the…
Han siger, at han nu ved, hvordan det var, hvor forfærdende. Og Joshua Oppenheimer replicerer fra sin plads ved kameraet: Jamen, dine ofre havde det meget værre, de vidste, de skulle dø. Du ved, at dette er film. Anwar Congo…
Have to confess that I did not know about the online documentary film magazine DOK Revue. Now I do, and it is no surprise that this fine initiative comes out of the Czech Republic, this time from the Jihlava International…
This is a film, that I can’t wait to see. The main character is Olga Havlová, the director is Miroslav Janek. It guarantees the quality. Janek made “Citizen Havel” into an unforgettable film, when he took over the material that…
National Film Board of Canada/Office National du film du Canada is the oldest national film institution in the world, as far as I know. It started in 1939, and is being celebrated in and outside its own country because of…
”Niels Jensen behandler på sin umistelige lyriske malerbaggrund indforstået Palle Kjærulff-Schmidts ‘Der var engang en krig’ og når efter et langt tilløb om den tids stemning frem til Claus Loofs fotografi. Som, ja altså, så forunderligt præcist rammer den stemning.…
Det var en herlig tirsdag eftermiddag på Den danske Filmskole. Niels Jensen var tilbage i rollen som den inspirerende, vidende og altid veloplagte filmpædagog og –historiker. Her er historien: ”Indtil sin død (december 2010, red.) arbejdede Niels Jensen på et…
”A World of Troubled Beauty…” HEADLINE NY Times brought the most precise headline to an article about the films of Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger’s impressive work: A World of Troubled Beauty – referring to his…
Shocking news – Michael Glawogger has died from malaria during the shooting of a film in Africa. So young! My deepest condolences to family and the many, who were close to him. In June last year I had the privilege…
Jeg er ved langsomt at lære FILMCENTRALEN / FOR ALLE at kende. Den er ikke Statsbiblioteket eller Det Kongelige Bibliotek, jeg kan ikke bare komme med min seddel over de filminstrktører, jeg har brug for i mit arbejde, og så…
”Vi er allerede ved slutningen. Hun ligger livløs på scenens gulv. Stemmen, den mørke, kompetente mandsstemme siger: ’… og hendes sind bristede, og hun blev vanvittig, og hun døde.’ Heidi Ryum rejser sig med et suk af anstrengelsen. De går…
Så er FILMCENTRALEN / FOR ALLE åbnet. Jeg går forventningsfuld, men forsigtig i mine forventninger i gang med en liste over lige netop de instruktører og de film, jeg har brug for at gense, som jeg igen forsigtig i forventningerne…
It’s gonna be a bit personal/sentimental as I worked with Danish short films and documentaries for 20 years. At the Danish Statens Filmcentral, where the distribution on 16mm was huge to the whole non-theatrical sector – schools, community groups and…
“… en ung kvinde, Lele, fremhæves og der skabes grundlag for en kærlighedshistorie mellem hende og en af bandelederne.” Streamingtjenesten FILMCENTRALEN / FOR ALLE åbner i morgen på http://filmcentralen.dk/alle Filmkommentaren ønsker Det danske Filminstitut, Filmcentralen og alle danskere…
Det Danske Filminstitut, Filmcentralen åbner 10. april 2014 en ny dansk streamingtjeneste, for – som det flot hedder i pressemeddelelsen – alle danskere, som hermed får fri adgang til en række dokumentarfilm og kortfilm, som tidligere har været tilgængelige på…
Today I got this emotional FB message from Sevara Pan, who has written many reviews for filmkommentaren, including one on “In My Father’s Garden”, an absolute highlight in modern documentary: Dearest Tue, I hope my email finds you well. I…
What a treat I got last Friday during the music film festival in Copenhagen: To be able to watch this old Tom Waits-film on the big screen again. It’s from a time in his career when he had almost redefined…
The Brazilian documentarian, who died tragically on the 2nd of February, 80 years old, is the obvious subject for an homage at the upcoming Cinéma du Réel in Paris (March 20-30), where ”Cabra Marcado Para Morrer” (119 mins.), said to…
For new readers: “The Flaherty is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the…
On 27th January 2014 it was 70 years ago that the catastrophic and tragic siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was lifted. I wanted to watch again the much acclaimed ”Blockade” by Sergei Loznitsa. Deckert Distribution was so kind to…
Måske er det rigtigt, måske betragter Jørgen Vestergaard sine danskere i sine danske film etnografisk / socialantropologisk, som var det et eksotisk folk, han gennem årene i sit værk er kommet udefra til og har beskrevet. Nu har han i…
Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verana Paravel: Leviathan. USA, 2012, 87 mins. Claude Lanzmann: The Last of the Unjust. France, 2013, 220 mins. (photo) Talal Derki: Return to Homs. Syria, Germany, 2013, 87 mins. Rithy Panh: The Missing Picture. France, 2013, 85…
”Skrevet efter en lang lykkelig dag med Olof Lagercrantz’ Ekelöf-bog”, skrev Poul Borum engang over et digt om lykke, tid og rigdom på tanker. Sætningen hører til dem, som ofte memorerer sig selv, synger sig selv, lever sit eget liv…
… for the first time. This is how the vod DocAlliance presents its christmas present to us viewers. It is quite a generous offer that comes up in collaboration with the Slovak Film Institute that celebrates its 50th anniversary. If…
“For me documentaries are no more real than fiction and fiction films no more invented than documentaries,” the filmmaker says of his approach, which he consistently developed since graduating from the National Film School of Denmark in the mid-1970s. (TSM)…
The news about the death of Peter Wintonick (see below) (photo) made me sit down with DOX 100 that was in the mailbox the day before. The issue is built up as conversation pieces between documentarians who talk professional matters…
Peter Wintonick has died. FB pages, newspapers and websites are full of warm words and sadness from the documentary community. My former colleagues at EDN wrote these fine words: It is with great sorrow that we, at EDN, have received…
The film of Lanzmann is extraordinary in all aspects: The story about how the film was made and why it did not come out before now has been dealt with in numerous interviews with the author, journalist and film director…
It is a tradition, and a good tradition: The Polish delegation invites for a dinner that includes an aperitif of clips from the films that take part in the DOK Leipzig (this year 12 docs and animation films) and a…
Some call their films author driven, some call them auteurs, all agree they make creative documentaries, are artists in the field of filmmaking. They are very different, have their own style, some would call it a hand-writing, which is personal.…
… and as usual there are many interesting side programmes like this one, text taken from the site of the festival, headline “Putting the Material At a Distance”: Peter Voigt’s films reveal his special relationship to image material: He has…
Voila, the 1st International Documentary Film Festival in the Caucasus started last night in the Rustaveli cinema in Tbilisi. Totally full was the cinema hall for the opening ceremony that included a promise from festival director Artchil Khetagouri, that a…
Sunshine. Wonderful view from the 11th floor of Riga’s Hotel Albert, named after a certain Einstein. ”If you don’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”, is one the sentences that are presented in the hotel that is…
Sevara Pan writes this in-depth review of a film, that has become a classic within the animation doc genre. For those who are interested there is at the end of the article a link to a review written on filmkommentaren…
Som regel kan jeg ikke lide at læse, hvad instruktørerne mener om deres film, hvordan de udlægger deres film. Det minder mig så meget om facitliste. Og at se film er jo ikke at løse regneopgave, slet ikke at nå…
Yesterday at midnight the great Swedish cultural strand K-Special of SVT showed (third run) a French production from 2012 with Jonas Mekas, who declares that ”I’m not a filmmaker, I don’t really make films, I only keep filming, I am…
… to its loyal documentary lovers, hope there are many, who use this exceptional vod library that now has more than 800 titles, which can be overwhelming, where to start and where to end… which is the reason why ”…
… is a very well programmed and introduced film series that takes place in London at the BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank. Yes, what is the essay film that we talk about and often connect to films that we don’t…
Readers might think that I am paid to promote the vod that is run by DocAlliance – I am not, the simple reason it has so many posts on this blog is very simple: It has high quality and is…
Jeg fortsætter mine gensyn med Per Kirkebys film, som så lykkeligt er dukket op på Filmstriben. Nu altså Ekspeditionen (1988), som vist nok aldrig har været i distribution, men som jeg sært kender alligevel. Noget af materialet er optaget, da…
So there he was in Moscow Cinema Big Hall on a thursday evening, and it was totally packed. Artavazd Pelesjian, the Armenian director of all times. I was about to write documentary director, but has been told that he does…
Sergey Parajanov (1924-1990) experienced that a museum was being built in his honour. ”I must be the only one who is alive when a museum is set up”, he is said to have joked. The museum is there, in Yerevan,…
Titlens provokation har siddet fast i mig siden jeg så filmen ved dens fremkomst. Det er for mig at gribe tilbage i mit liv og se begyndelsen til den kunstopfattelse, den videnskabsforståelse, som jeg orienterer mig med nu. Per Kirkeby…
The tireless organisers of the Belgrade European Feature Documentary Film Festival, Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, and their many helpers, all of them filmmakers themselves, have put together a summer programme, 3 directors, who have already visited the festival (10th…
Yesterday a new Slovak documentary had its world premiere in Karlovy Vary. It will have a long life on festivals around the world. If you say to someone that they are going to watch a film about people, who fought…