Emmanuel Laurent: Two in the Wave
A tour down memory lane. And can’t help it – It still brings a tear to the eye to watch Jean-Pierre Léaud run towards the sea, stop and look at us in the end scene of ”The 400 Blows”, the…
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Filmkommentaren.dk
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Film History
Read MoreEmmanuel Laurent: Two in the Wave
Patricio Guzman: The Power of Memory
The BFI (British Film Institute) has been running a retrospective (ends July 26) with films by Patricio Guzman, having ”Nostalgia for the Light” as the recent highlight of the Chilean master director. In an article to be read on the…
Ravello Observations
Classic Italian town: Piazza Duomo, with the dome on the main square surrounded by cafés, meeting points for locals (only 3000 outside the season) and in July tourists like us, who enjoy the overwhelmingly bella vista to the Amalfi Coast.…
Magnificent7 Summer Edition 2012
On the 9th, 10th and 11th of July the Belgrade feature documentary film festival Magnificent7 organises a high quality programme of music documentary films. This is how it is announced on the website: ”“The Magnificent Seven” at BELEF is an…
Sunny Side 2012: Yves Jeanneau Interview
The excellent French-language Le Blog Documentaire (more about that on a later occasion) has published an interesting interview (this time in English) with the director of the Sunny Side of the Doc that opened yesterday in la Rochelle: Here is…
The Guardian: Destination Docs
The British newspaper, always strong on cinema, has launched a series of (sponsored) articles named “Destination Docs”, published in connection with the Sheffield DocFest. The headline goes like this, “Despite new documentary formats, traditional fact-based films still attract impressive audiences…
Moscow Exhibition of Film and Art
As part of the upcoming MIFF (Moscow International Film Festival) that runs from June 21 – 30 and again this year includes a competiton programme of documentaries as well as Panorama documentary section, you can go to Moscow to attend…
Photography and Photographers
Copenhagen Photo Festival runs until June 17 with exhibitions all around the city. The Danish Film Institute joins the event with an offer to access 6 fine films online – if you are living in Denmark. Therefore this change to…
25 Best Documentaries – American View
It is old news, but still interesting to look at, as it lists the 25 films that the 3000 members of the IDA (International Documentary Association) announced as the best documentaries ever in connection with the celebration of the association’s…
Lee Miller
The Danish Øregård Museum in the North of Copenhagen hosts currently an exhibition of works of legendary model, surrealist and war photographer Lee Miller (1907-77). Her role is known as part of the surrealist movement in the Parisian Montparnasse period,…
Herz Frank in Riga
The exhibition space is limited but the content is excellent. The film museum in Riga, situated in the same building as the National Film Centre of Latvia, in the old town of the Latvian capital, hosts a presentation of the…
Sokurov in Barcelona
The impressive Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona is a fascinating place to spend some hours. Its collection includes paintings, photographs, and until May 20 also the so-called Military Film Series by Russian master director Aleksander Sokurov, a series that hopefully…
Viktor Kossakovsky: Vivan las Antipodas!
Finally! It has been and is being shown all over the world, the unique work of Viktor Kossakovsky, a generous and overwhelmingly beautiful film that also witnesses a new direction thematically, a new tone for a director whose filmography includes…
Ib Bondebjerg: Virkelighedsbilleder/ 3
In Danish – about an event in the Danish Cinemateket, where Ib Bondebjerg hosts his third session about the modern Danish documentary portrait linked to his book ”Virkelighedsbilleder”. Invited directors are Sami Saif and Jon Bang Carlsen: De to film…
DocAlliance Excellent Online Offers
Even today, with the existing online possibilities, many come up with the usual comment and ask the eternal question: Yes, I love documentaries but where can I see them. And those who go to festivals with hundreds of films to…
DOX for Short Docs
The Summer 2012 issue of the European Documentary Film Magazine DOX (number 94!) is out. The editor-in-chief Truls Lie uses his editorial to point at the values of the short documentary, which is forgotten by many. His starting point is…
Michael Glawogger Retrospective in N.Y.
The IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) website informs that the first retrospective of the Austrian documentarian is taking place in New York at the Museum of Moving Images until April 29. The website of the Museum includes interesting text excerpts…
Chainsaw Massacre on Canadian Documentary
Below there is a posting on the upcoming HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto and the budget cutdown of legendary NFB, National Film Board. Realscreen makes a follow-up on the story that also involves the broadcaster CBC’s documentary commitment as…
Humphrey Jennings: Listen to Britain
It is still pure pleasure to watch the 17 minutes long short masterly montaged documentary masterpiece by British Jennings, the first of his war-time trilogy. And bravo for the BFI (British Film Institute) for publishing the film, and other films…
Susana de Sousa D, Collected Postings on her Works
An academic film team would normally make me, a documentary addict, shiver with fear for the outcome of 48, in this case no, for that simple reason that I had seen the team’s previous film that perfectly combined the background…
Michael Christoffersen, alle tekster om hans film
De fire film set under ét udgør en samlet journalistisk og dokumentarisk erfaring om international ret lagt ned i ét vældigt værk, som filmet på location disse tidlige år vil bevare sin enestående status som skildring af denne ambition om…
Nicolas Philibert, Collected Postings on his Works
I can not think of any European documentarist who has this sense of making beauty out of everyday life as it is being lived by us ordinary people… (Tue Steen Müller) LA VILLE DE LOUVRE (1989) by…
Janina Lapinskaite in Copenhagen
On this site you will find lots of texts that introduce, review and report on documentaries from Lithuania. Another one comes here to tell our Danish readers that Janina Lapinskaite will show some of her films at the Danish Cinemateket…
Theodor
Below a Danish text about the man, who is considered to be the father of Danish documentary, Theodor Cristensen (1914-1967) This coming sunday his film ”Ella” will be shown at Cinemateket in Copenhagen introduced by his son and people, who…
Baltic Documentaries at ZagrebDox
This is a text for the ZagrebDox catalogue 2012: The films that you are going to watch from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are the finest examples from a cinema that has, from country to country, its own individuality and its…
Haus des Dokumentarfilms
Our German language readers should know about the fine work done by the Stuttgart based Haus des Dokumentarfilms. Yesterday I received a ”Dokumentarfilm Newsletter” from the Haus with a link to a website – in German – that provides you…
Film History for Free
”Your online documentary cinema”. This is how the excellent vod Doc Alliance Films characterises itself. Based in Czech Republic at the address of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), they are doing great work. The selection of films available is indeed…
15 Young by Young Finished
”Think Big! Is what young producer and director Ilona Bicevska has done throughout a year of participation in the Ex Oriente 2008.” This was the text posted here in October 2008. Two years later another text was posted: ” Think…
Dokumentarer til Salg
In Danish language as this is about primarily Danish documentaries that are sold through the online shop of the daily newspaper Information. Vi hører det tit på redaktionen: Åh, men hvor kan man få fat i alle de film, som…
Avi Mograbi on DocAlliance
DOCAlliance, the vod of six quality documentary film festivals (FID Marseilles has just joined cph:dox, Visions du Réel Nyon, DOK Leipzig, Planete Doc Review Warsaw and Jihlava IDFF) is very appealing for documentary lovers. Their selection is excellent, their texts…
Julie Bonan: Il était.. Les enfants du Paradis
The world’s best film? No doubt for me, Marcel Carné’s ”Les Enfants du Paradis” from 1945, shot during the German occupation, script by Jacques Prévert with the best of best of French actors like Pierre Brasseur, Pierre Renoit and Jean-Louis…
Burma VJ
Danish producer Lise Lense-Møller passed on this great news asking if it could be interesting for our readers. Absolutely! Below quotes from emails from yesterday from Joshua to the producer, her team and the director Anders Østergaard: “Dear All, I…
Top Stills
Vi forbinder bestemte historiske begivenheder med bestemte personer, de er vores hovedpersoner før, filmene gør dem til det. Dobbelt betydningsbærende. De tre stills i Filmkommentarens hoved kunne være de to bloggeres personlige bud på tre sådanne scener med tre særlige…
Danish Documentaries
It is going well for Danish documentaries, and it is not only we Danes who say so in the general halleluja-how-good-we-are atmosphere that often reign here. The Swedish say so (9 documentaries to be shown at the upcoming Gothenburg International…
Dokumania January 2012
For the English readers: The Danish documentary strand Dokumania, that broadcasts on DR2, starts the new year with high quality films: Oscar-winner ”Inside Job” by Charles Ferguson, continued the week after by ”The Interrupters” by Steve James (to be remembered…
William Klein Exhibition in Paris
William Klein (born 1928), American filmmaker and photographer, who has great reputation for his many photo books, especially those dealing with cities like New York, Paris and Rome, and who has made films on Muhammad Ali and who has been…
Vaclav Havel on Film
It seems strange that on the day of the death of Vaclav Havel, I posted several texts on the high quality of the IDF (Institute of Film) website (see below) and now I do it again to make you know…
Vaclav Havel Died Today
… and what a loss it is! Luckily – in terms of films, we have a lot of material that documents who he was and how he performed as a writer, a politician and, simply, a human being. I go…
Best Documentaries 2011
Playing the-best-of list game, here is what I consider as the best documentaries of 2011. This time I have not mentioned the countries of origin as the documentary film language is not bound to borders. Nevertheless, contrary to the American…
Documentaries in Paris
That Paris is the best cinema city in Europe is known by every film buff. Not only do all important new films arrive to the screen, but there are also ”reprises” and ”festivals”, so you can always enjoy Fritz Lang,…
The Film Essay – Storydoc
Truls Lie, editor of DOX and filmmaker, made a fine inspirational introduction to what is the film essay. He stressed the characteristics of the genre and showed great classic clips from masters like Jean-Luc Godard (photo) (”L´Histoire du Cinema”, Chris…
Idfa – film about Michaël Meshke
This is what is (also) nice about going to idfa – you meet directors and producers, whose work you have seen and appreciated before. Viktoria Szymanska made the wonderful “Themerson & Themerson” (photo) about the magic work of this British…
Wajda Studio celebrates 10 Year
The Polish tradition for high quality documentaries is very much kept alive by the Wajda Studio, which formerly was called The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Especially the short documentary has had and has a strong home at…
IDFA – Watch Films for Free
The 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) started two days ago and runs until November 27th. If you are not there, you have the chance to watch a fine selection of films, primarily from previous editions, offered for free…
A New Wave for Arab Cinema?
17th floor of the Hotel Africa in the capital of Tunisia. Early morning, the city prepares for a new day. Sunshine. To the right the beautiful clock with the sea behind it, to the left a look down the Avenue…
Documenting the Revolution/ 2
Two films at cph:dox dealt with the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia: Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim’s “1/2 Revolution” and Elyes Baccar’s “Rouge Parole”. The latter about Tunisia, the first shot in Egypt. “1/2 Revolution” (PHOTO) was made by…
Greek Festival Opening in Moment of Crisis
The 52nd edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has started and runs until the 13th of November. In a newsletter issued by the festival, under the headline “a modest ceremony raised the curtain of the festival”, the festival director…
Omar Amiralay: Everyday Life in a Syrian Village
In Danish as this is about getting Danes to come and watch the forbidden masterpiece of Omar Amarilay, Syria’s most important documentary filmmaker, who died this year in February, a month before the Syrian revolution started: Tabet af den syriske…
RIDM Edition 14
RIDM… stands for Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal… its 14th edition takes off November 9 and runs until November 20. A small festival compared to the ones in Europe right now (Leipzig, idfa, cph:dox) and to HotDocs in Toronto,…
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
I don’t want talking faces, you often hear documentary filmmakers say. To be understood: it is boring television stuff. In this case, and in many other, of course, the talking faces, at least most of them, are interesting to look…