Peter Greenaway: The Baby of Mâcon
Jeg sad i aftes foran tv-apparatet og så en dvd med Greenaways The Baby of Mâcon, og filmen tumler omkring i mig endnu, vil ikke slippe. Så klog til det lærde, så voldsom til det vilde, så smuk til det…
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
Læs merePeter Greenaway: The Baby of Mâcon
Richard Leacock 1921-2011
Sad news. Documentary pioneer Richard Leacock died this Wednesday in his home in Paris. He would have celebrated his ninetieth birthday in July. He played a crucial role in the history of documentary film, as a filmmaker and cinematographer and…
US Documentary Channel
Wish we had a documentary channel in Europe! We do not. The Americans have: The Documentary Channel, that also offers a very valauable newsletter that advertises the broadcasts of the channel AND a so-called Docstore, where films can be bought…
Sergei Loznitsa – from Mathematics to Filmmaking
Ukranian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa is being honoured with a big retrospective of his work (11 documentaries) at Doc Fest in Thessaloniki, that runs until March 20. The festival has a fine newsletter (free subscription) from where this press text –…
Tribeca Film Festival
Could not resist, had to bring that photo, even if I have now idea about the film – it has its premiere at the festival. Here is what is written about it on the site: The first big piece of…
News from Paris: Richard Leacock: The Feeling…
Documentary pioneer Richard Leacock will be celebrating his 90th birthday June 18th of this year. He has been working on his memoirs for several years and now the book is finally ready to be published. The Feeling of Being There…
Omar Amiralay
It can only be a very sad opening of the fourth edition of the Syrian documentary film festival Dox Box, that runs from March 2nd to 10th in Damascus. The reason is that the festival will be without THE Syrian…
Gainsbourg Forever
Tomorrow, 2nd of March, it is twenty years ago that the French artist icon, Serge Gainsbourg, died. This is being celebrated by the French. Yesterday the daily newspaper ”Libération” brought a black & white poster photo with ”Gainsbourg nu”, at…
EKKO – hvor er redaktionen?
Et lille PS til Opstrups mail: Den tarvelige smudskastende artikel i EKKO af René Fredensborg, forsmået ansøger hos Det danske Filminstitut, fik den konsekvens at en filmkonsulent blev fyret. Og Peter Ålbæk kunne så more sig i Berlin med sange,…
Jørgen Leth – Master of Dox
This is how Danish veteran Leth is characterised on the site of the coming ZagrebDox (February 27 – March 6) in a quite interesting intro text, that also has a greeting to what is called Danish puritans: “Can ‘eroticism’ be…
DocAlliance offers Love – for free
The excellent vod (video on demand) portal DocAlliance, a collaboration between the five documentary film festivals in Copenhagen, Leipzig, Jihlava, Warsaw and Nyon, introduces a Valentine’s Day gift from tomorrow. Here is the text from the site: “As part of…
Cinema Komunisto in Cinema
Mila Turajlic’s Cinema Komunisto closed the Magnificent/ Festival in Belgrade a bit more than a week ago. The reception was overwhelmingly positive and the film is now up for a theatrical release. The organisers of the festival Svetlana and Zoran…
Peter Greenaway in Barcelona
Greenaway needs no big introduction and no need to stress his importance for European cinema as a master constantly searching for new possibilities for expression. I was not able to attend (with 300 others) his masterclass, that he – taken…
Cinema Komunisto Closes Magnificent7
It was one of those evenings that you will never forget – and that Mila Turajlic will never forget. A totally packed Sava Centre in Belgrade gave her a minute long applause for her great work on making the 100…
Cinema Komunisto Awarded
Cinema Komunisto, the documentary about Yugoslav film history, made by young Serbian film director Mila Turajlic, had its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam a couple of months ago – and will have its national premiere on sunday at the…
Nicholas Philibert at Magnificent7
The festival opened with an image of Nénette, the more than 40 years old orangutang that since the age of 3 has been living in a zoo in Paris. A close up of someone looking at you and another beautiful…
Cinéma du Réel 2011
Loyal readers of filmkommentaren will know that both bloggers have a faible for this yearly festival in Paris – next year the dates are March 24 – April 5. Today the programme was announced in overall terms and the appetite…
Sergei Loznitsa In Lisbon
Loznitsa (b.1964 in USSR (Belarus)) (photo) is one of the gurus at the European film festival circuit. Respected for his film language and for his extraordinary use of archive material. His last film is ”My Joy”, a fiction film, the…
Presidential Docs
The trade magazine Realscreen – that calls itself ”the best in non-fiction” – announces the American HBO’s upcoming slate of documentaries. Two interesting documentaries are to be broadcasted, made by well-known documentarians – they deal with JFK and Ronald Reagan.…
DR K
Lad os gøre lidt reklame for DR K, Danmarks Radio digitale kulturkanal. Som ser ud til at være ved at finde sin programprofil. I går aftes så jeg – se nedenfor – Stan Neumanns film fra 2009 om det surrealistiske…
Nyt Videotek i Filmhuset
Hvor kan man se dem, har spørgsmålet altid været, når talen drejer sig om dokumentar- og kortfilm, som jo kun i særlige tilfælde finder vej til biografen. Og hvis de gør, så stort set altid kun i København. Min kollega…
DOX – European Documentary Film Magazine
For the readers of this text: I am absolutely biased. I was one of the founders of the DOX magazine way back in the first half of the 1990’es at the time where the EU MEDIA Programme had its office…
DocuNotes 2010: Ceausescu
It is 180 minutes long, it is from 2010, the director is Andrei Ujica, if you can talk about a director, when it comes to this amazing work ”The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” that must be obligatory in all film…
Who was Niels Jensen?
To our non-Danish readers who might have noticed that several recent Danish language articles circle around the name, the very Danish name, Niels Jensen. The reason is that Jensen (photo below) died a week ago, 81 year old after a…
Niels Jensen og den korte historie
For tre år siden blev jeg af Film, DFI’s blad , bedt om at vælge mig en filmisk julegave og begrunde valget. Jeg valgte en bog af netop afdøde Niels Jensen, som jeg siden da har læst med stor fornøjelse.…
Henning Carlsen: De gamle, Familiebilleder, Ung
Niels Jensen skrev i Filmkunst (1969) videre om Henning Carlsen, at han med trilogien De gamle, Familiebilleder og Ung (1960-65) var blevet “den førende danske repræsentant for moderne dokumentarisme.” Det var skarpt set og modigt vurderet blot fire år senere,…
Henning Carlsen: Limfjorden
Jørgen Vestergaard var ung og begynder dengang i 1961, da han var assistent på Carlsens film fra Limfjorden, men han var som den journalist, han også ville være, herefter erobret af den poetiske måde at rapportere på. På film. Carlsens…
Christian Braad Thomsens snart samlede værker
De er rimeligt synlige på Filmstribens forside disse dage, Braad Thomsens film gennem årene, mange af dem, de fleste efterhånden. Som Jørgen Vestergaard har han tilsyneladende selv taget fat på digitaliseringen, så otte af dem nu kan streames af alle…
Niels Jensen
Så sidder man her på et hotelværelse i Tbilisi i Georgien med tårer I øjnene. En halv time efter at en sms tikkede ind med meddelelsen om Niels Jensens død. Jeg så ham sidst i Filmhuset under festivalen cph:dox, han så…
Lithuanian Documentaries – for free
An early christmas present for documentary lovers: The offer to watch artistic short documentaries from the country of filmmakers who, if any, master the poetic film language: Lithuania. In times where these kind of films have problems in getting to…
IDFA Starts Today/1
The without any doubt biggest in audience and most important documentary film festival for the professional community kicks off today in Amsterdam and goes on until November 28. Edition number 23 it is, that will welcome an audience with more…
IDFA Starts Today/2
Many of the 300 films at the festival in Amsterdam have been noticed or reviewed at filmkommentaren.dk. From the programme of today ”Armadillo”, ”Steam of Life”, ”Last Train Home” and ”Erotic Man” can be mentioned… But if I were at…
Camera, Laptop, Action: The New Golden Age of Docu
… is the headline of a long, interesting article in the Observer sunday November 7. It serves as a follow-up to the Sheffield Doc/Fest that has been covered excellently by the Guardian, see site address below. The Observer article (written…
Godard Discussed Again Again…
We have posted several texts on the ever original and non-conventional 79 year old Jean-Luc Godard, especially in connection with his newest film ”Film Socialisme”. This sunday (November 14) Guardian has an interesting article that starts like this: It should…
Memorimage 2010/1
In Reus, a city a bit more than one hour’s drive from Barcelona, there is a film festival called Memorimage. It is quite unique in its basic philosophy. It deals with ”today’s films with yesterday’s images”, as it is being…
Memorimage 2010/2
The main awards of the festival were given to the Israeli film ”Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork” by Eyal Sivan, and to ”La Isla – Archives from a tragedy” by German Uli Stelzner. Both of them are strong political films, rich…
Mila Turajlic: Cinema Komunisto
Young Serbian director Mila Tulajlic has finished her work on “Cinema Komunisto” that will have its international premiere at idfa in Amsterdam and its national premiere as part of the Magnificent/ festival in Belgrade January 25-29. The film will exist…
Manifesto against Ketchup Television
At a meeting arranged in connection with the EU MEDIA supported training programme Eurodoc, under the leadership of the former head of documentaries at arte France, Thierry Garrel and current Head of Documentaries at YLE, Finland Erkki Astala, the following…
MK2 + la Cinematheque
Our Paris correspondent, Sara Thelle, has already written about Film Socialisme by Jean Luc Godard, and her article was one of the reasons that I, with great expectations and huge pleasure, went to see the film in MK2 Beaubourg, where it…
Documental del mes
… means ”Documentary of the Month” and is a strong film-cultural initiative for the distribution of creative documentaries for the audiences in around 40 cities of Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana, Illes Balears and other Spanish cities. Since May 2009, The Documentary…
Eva Stefani: The Box
Want to see, for free, one of the most charming and creative documentaries from the first decade of 2000? You can do so by very simply making a click on the website of idfa.tv. Here is the description of the…
Political Film Group Argentina
Sunday in Buenos Aires. As hundreds of other we decide to pay a visit to the St. Telmo market. At the main street of the market I see a stand with videos, and many of the covers are familiar to…
Brassaï in Buenos Aires
Brassaï, original name Gyula Halász, is on exhibition in Buenos Aires. The photographer was one of many famous artists, who lived and worked in Paris, more specifically in Montparnasse (he lived from1899-1984). The National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos…
Antra Cilinska: Is it Easy…?
The Latvians write history with their films. Below a description of the ambition of Ivars Seleckis to make the third part of the epic about the Crossroad Street in Riga. A work that will cover more than 20 years of…
Pirjo Honkasalo: My 10 best
Idfa – International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam – asks every year a prominent director to choose her/his 10 Best Film list, whihc are then screened at the festival. This year the director is Finnish Pirjo Honkasalo and her list goes…
MandagsDokumentar Efterår 2010
We have written about it since the start of filmkommentaren.dk and we will continue to do so as this excellent initiative is exportable: You find a documentary and short film addict – and connaisseur – with a wide network and…
On Being There with Richard Leacock
Richard Leacock, 90 years old in 2011, a master of cinema vérité, always energetic and inspirational… finally gets a filmic homage. It happens now at the Telluride Film Festival and it takes place in association with the first public screening…
Jacob Thuesen om filmmusik
Jeg er stadigvæk høj efter to timer søndag formiddag med Jacob Thuesen, der i en tøvende beslutsom og præcis samtale med Michael Bertelsen simpelthen lukkede op for posen af viden, erfaring og researchresultater fra sit arbejde med filmmusik, siden han…
OFF Odense Film Festival/1
The 25th edition of the festival in Odense, Denmark takes place 23-28. August. There are many reasons to congratulate the municipality of Odense for keeping alive this film festival for all these years in spite of constant battles to raise…
OFF Odense Film Festival/2
En lille tur ned ad Memory Lane: Klokken er fem, sagde festivaldirektøren, så er det tid til en kold øl. Der havde vi 4-5 udvælgere siddet fra morgenstunden i et af kommunens mødelokaler og set bunker af kortfilm tilsendt fra…