A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Tonight the opening of the Krakow Film Festival takes place at 7pm. The festival 2020 goes online – with the same high quality in selection as always. Competition programmes, thematic sections, a Dragon Award for the master Peter Forgacs, films…
3 months ago a state of alarm forced us to leave the office from where we always produce DocsBarcelona. In this context, this edition has been prepared: looking out the window to see the few things that were happening in…
Yesterday a masterclass was held with Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen in conversation with me. I was happy to see that almost 130 attended the class with ”the Skinny Romantic”, as he has been called by Ai WeiWei, whose ”Vivos”…
“Krāslava bridge is the first bridge built over the river Daugava in the territory of Latvia—a gate for the Daugava river from Belarus to Latvia”, explains Laila Pakalniņa. “Every film is about time, but ours maybe a bit more than…
… coming up. Grants were given by the National Film Centre. For 8 documentaries, most of them to be realised by producers and directors I have met and valued during the many years, I have followed the documentary scene in…
Agnieszka from Fine Day Promotion invited me to watch a new film by Tomasz Wolski, ”An Ordinary Country” – look at the great film poster above, which reveals the content of the film perfectly, surveillance, not of today (could it…
I met – on skype – Atahualpa and Diana Lichy last week for a conversation about ”Memorias de un Tiempo Eterno” that is selected, as one of four, for the Rough Cut Pitch at the upcoming DocsBarcelona, taking place May…
Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries (BSD) is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, taking place in Riga, Latvia. The 24th edition is scheduled to take place from 1 – 6 September. The call for…
This is a very good offer for those interested in editing. Copied from the FB of the Service: RCS – Rough Cut Service presents 5 online sessions on the art of editing from Monday to Friday May 11. – 15.…
When Anders Østergaard received the Carl T. Dreyer Award five years ago, these were accompanying words on this site: Østergaard has developed his own original and playful take on how to treat creatively the past… it was just after he and…
Just watched the one hour online discussion initiated by DocuDays ua, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZUMw3nEwF0&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3kxqPXIBBRRAelRQLkO-e6Fu8-sFTzXgDTQDModXkGbFPzzmV6XNphuR0 with these people taking part: Ondřej Kamenický – director of International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival One World; Melanie Iredale – deputy Director of Sheffield…
Being on many mailing lists… these days I get bombarded with online offers for films to watch, conferences to follow, from festivals or production companies or distributors. It is indeed overwhelming, and lovely at the same time. Overwhelming, because how…
I have copy-pasted a part of the press release text about the competitive Panorama program, naming the top director names that will have their film presented in the online festival – reserved for the Spanish audience. Check the festival page…
English title: The Building – Excellent film. A work on constructivism that is superbly constructed… Soviet history. Architecture. With lovely portraits of and episodes with Ukrainians of today, who work in The Building in Kharkiv that was meant to the…
It was expected… alas… but cheers to the festival team and the filmmakers that the festival will take place… online. I had expected – in my selfnishness – with my wife – to have celebrated our silver wedding in Krakow…
I needed a break from watching new documentaries and through the Swiss https://www.artfilm.ch/de/dokumentarfilme (many films for free streaming) I was brought to watch this Swiss classic from 1990. The title was familiar but I could not remember if I had seen it…
There is a lot of recommendations for the Cph:Dox Online Festival. Here are some more – from my viewing at home yesterday. In English, as many non-Danish film lovers follow what goes on in the digital documentary festival world –…
«Attention! The cinema belongs to all of us. Please help us maintain the cinema by taking care of it. Keep it clean…” Cinema Pameer is in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Come on in, the film is about to start”. Two voices, two different employees…
It’s not even a year ago Agnès Varda passed away after a long and productive film-life. This film, from 2019, has been called her swan song and indeed it is a beautiful hommage to the director and what she has…
Tamara Stepanyan films her characters with warmth, asks questions with respect and out of curiosity… words picked from the review of ”Embers” written more than 6 years ago on this site, link below. A true documentarian she is. Her latest…
It’s become a nice tradition that I praise the ZagrebDox for its programme put together, as always, with Nenad Puhovski as director. Having seen the selection for the 16th edition, 112 films to be shown between the 15th and 22nd…
Absolutely no objctions to this choice of the Krakow Film Festival that will take place on May 31 – June 7, 2020: “Every year, the Krakow Film Foundation Programme Council grants the Dragon of Dragons award for the exceptional contribution to the…
A new film is on its way by Swedish master director Roy Andersson. ”About Endlessness” will be premiered this year, maybe at Cannes? The director has said that this will be his last film. Alas. Until then there is a chance…
A quick copy-paste (almost) note on the fact that the wonderful Krakow Film Festival, in its celebration of its 60th edition (!), dedicates its special section to documentaries from Denmark. The programme director of the festival, Barbara Orlicz-Szczypula, has this…
The Oscar event is over – and we can be happy that all five documentaries nominated this year were of high quality in cinematic terms, and dealt with important themes of our time. Let’s leave the glamour and the red…
The IndieWire brings a fine article yesterday about Tabitha Jackson, who at Sundance «will replace John Cooper as festival director, bringing 25 years of experience in the arts and non-fiction film to the position». Read the whole article (written by…
Thomas Heise: Heimat is a Space in Time Alexander Nanau: Collective Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov: Honeyland Artemio Benki: Solo Sergey Loznitsa: A State Funeral Feras Fayyad: The Cave Review with top marks will…
A week after it won the Audience Award at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam “For Sama” by Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts was on the top in the EFA Documentary category. In strong competition with films like “Honeyland” by Tamara…
March 1953. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin dies. The great leader is to be mourned all over the Soviet Union. For five full days. Cameramen are sent to all republics to catch the well orchestrated mise-en-scène of the State Funeral. Loads of…
… to be given tonight at the Amsterdam festival, where his new film, ”I Walk”, has its world premiere. In an interview on the IDFA website – the director says: “In observing life, I’ve always been very frank in…
Film History. And History. Vyborg, once Finnish, now Russian. Next time I am in St. Petersburg I must go to the city. Thanks to Patricio Guzman, who picked Pia Andell’s wonderful archive-based love story as one of his favourites to…
The opening night at the beautiful Royal Theatre in Amsterdam, Carré, was very well put together. As an homage to D.A. Pennebaker, who died this year, 94 years old, his five minutes long jazzy (Duke Ellington) ”Daybreak Express” from 1953…
When 300+ films are to be screened, how do you decide where to go. This is the situation for those going to Amsterdam very soon. IDFA is a big festival and you/I need help. And help is given. The festival…
…were distributed the other day in Riga. I mention the documentary awards – many of them have been reviewed/noticed on this site. They are still strong in documentaries in the country of Herz Frank, Uldis Brauns, Ivars Seleckis, Juris Podnieks…!…
It started at 7pm and ended at 10.30pm with half an hour break. 90 minutes talk with Stephen and Timothy Quay followed by the screening of their live action film (105 minutes) ”Institute Benjamenta”. (PHOTO) It was an entertaining night…
Max Kestner modtog den 31. oktober på dokumentarfilmdagen, branchetræffet i Filmhuset årets Roos Pris. Roos Prisen påskønner en særlig bemærkelsesværdig indsats for dokumentarfilmen i Danmark, og priskomiteen bestod af sidste års prismodtagere, Mira Jargil og Christian Sønderby Jepsen af Claus…
It was shot in 1945, “Rome – Open City”, director Roberto Rossellini, with Anna Magnani in the role as Pina. I am sure you know the scene, where she is running after her husband Francesco, who has been arrested by…
… and will continue untill the 3rd of November. With films, many excellent industry activities, film talks here there and everywhere. The ticket counters are open, I am sure there will be full houses for many films and there will…
I was happy with the many positive reactions on Russian director Alina Rudnitskay, who was the one I praised in the post yesterday. Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjær told me that Rudnitskaya’s fine ”School of Seduction” was to be screened at…
I have followed the career of Alina Rudnitskay and will continue to do so. Below you find links to films she has made and about which I have written. This post deals with her latest production, “School of Seduction”, that…
There are films by Andrew Thorndike, Harun Farocki, Heynowski/Scheumann, Eduard Schreiber, Alexander Kluge, Thomas Heise, Thomas Harlan… among others. The focus of the 10 programme retrospective is explained in this fine text from the festival: “There’s nothing still standing and…
The shortest but most eye-catching and heart-warming paragraph in a press release that came in some minutes ago goes like this: ”Lifetime Achievement Award: Jørgen Leth From his influential short film The Perfect Human (1967) through to today, Jørgen Leth inspired generations of filmmakers…
Bravo DOK Leipzig! Having a special program with The Brothers Quay is a scoop. They come to the festival, they meet the audience to talk about their work and they have made three trailers for the festival, click below and…
IDFA has chosen Chilean director Patricio Guzmán as Guest of Honor. His films will be shown and he has been asked to make his Top Ten. At the link below you will find all 10 choices. To our pleasant choice…
News from Amsterdam: A focus program at IDFA is called “It Still Hurts”. It ”presents a selection of 17 films from the last 35 years that cinematically explore the psycho-social-economic-political fallout of two world wars in particular, and the more…
I met Kim Christiansen from DR TV Sales before the Forum started its second day at Amiralen in Malmö. I asked him which film was his best sell recently. To my pleasant surprise he said ”Cold Case Hammarskjöld” by Mads…
”Karaoke is the best thing that has happened to Finland” was the point made in the humorous pitch that was the last one of this first pitching day at the Nordisk Panorama Forum in Malmö. The presentation had the show…
Checked in at Scandic Hotel last night, 16th floor, amazing look at Malmö, which is not the case this morning, where fog is covering the view. Today I am going to the DocIncubator presentation as usual. Always interesting to see…
or Trial in a Movie Theatre, the subtitle. It’s film history and it’s Yugoslav history. But it is also indirectly a reflexion on the censorship and fight for freedom of expression today, where many artists are imprisoned or exiled or……
… it becomes indirectly an adaption of Ginsberg’s poem. And at the same time it is a film about Frank’s doubts about filming this. It sounds wild and it is. It is radical and most unique. Avant-garde and uncompromising, not as a…