Film History

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…

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 –…

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…

… 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…

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…

… 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…

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…

Two days into the workshop and mini-festival in Riga – the 23rd edition of a forum that starts with preparation of 24 documentary projects for pitching Friday and Saturday with a parallel screening of films. September 1st the BSD opened…

The always up-to-date Cineuropa brought yesterday a review of «Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer, written by Marta Bałaga. Here is the intro, a quote, click below and read the whole review plus an interview with the director, the son: Andrei…

Jeg har kendt Kaspars Goba i mere end et årti. Måske før, måske mødte vi, da hans fremragende ”Seda. People of the Marsh ”(2004) kom ud. Senere havde jeg fornøjelsen at følge “Homo @ lv” fra 2015, hvor hans partner…

Or you could say the best of the best of current international documentaries will be screened in the mini-festival that per tradition runs parallel to the Baltic Sea Docs development and pitching workshop. 8 films, Riga, Cinema K-Suns, from September…

It’s not every day that one Oscar-winner takes a photo of another Oscar-winner. It happened the other day, where my friend, photographer and filmmaker Georg Zeller sat behind Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), who was in the first row…