A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
A film blog by Allan Berg Nielsen & Tue Steen Müller
Did you see it : ”The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu” (director : Andrei Ujica, editor and sound designer Dana Bunescu) from 2010, 3 hours long, a true masterpiece. You have to ! Archive the whole way through, no commentary, no explanations of where…
In a very interesting article, written by Nick Bradshaw, in Sight & Sound, the head programmer of the Sheffield Doc/Fest Luke Moody reveals why he decided to leave the festival after 20 months as director of programming. Bradshaw writes about…
The Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries (BSD) is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, taking place in Riga, Latvia, from September 3 to 7 and mostly focusing on the projects from a greater Baltic…
… her 65 minutes long documentary has its premiere in Karlovy Vary tonight. The play- and colourful Latvian director is very busy on Facebook, where she for a long time has posted great photos, the last couple of days also…
“The film screen is not a window through which you look at the world, it is a world in itself.” DAFilms.com presents yet another documentary film classic, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Recall his works from the golden collection of European cinema.…
… with the subtitle ”Find Your Way – Vision – Space and Storytelling” here in Banská Stiavnoca in Slovakia – is going to its end. Two more program points, exiting both of them, and then a summing up tomorrow. First…
… and when that is the case, like last night at DocsBarcelona, the participants get a memorable treat at a masterclass from a master, who has a lot to say about filmmaking. And who is a performer, who knows how…
Full house, of course, for the opening screening of “Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky, who was there on stage answering a few questions, asking his first assistant director and editor on the film, Ainara Vera, to come to the stage and…
After the screening of a beautiful 2018 restored copy of “Etre et Avoir”, the film by Nicolas Philibert, that he made in 2001 to be premiered in 2002, to be an amazing audience success in cinemas in France, 2 mio.…
So well deserved an honour – Latvian Laila Pakalnina has a big retrospective of her mostly short documentaries at Centre Pompidou in Paris, to be more precise, organised by La Cinématheque du Documentaire at the Bibliothéque Publique d’Information. 20 films…
Of course there has to be a post about Serbian documentaries being here in Belgrade. It’s going well, is my impression. There is a well functioning Serbian Film Centre, there is the association of DOKSERBIA, that in the 2017/18 catalogue…
It’s been my passion since 1990, the Baltic documentary cinema and I have had so many wonderful moments together with filmmakers from the region, those living and those who have passed away. One more beautiful moment came here in Belgrade,…
A little after 8pm in Belgrade, at the Kombank Hall, Zoran Popovic, together with his wife Svetlana the director of the European Feature Documentary Film Festival that in the coming week celebrates its 15th edition, walks on stage to greet…
8 years later… same place, Moscow, I met one of my documentary heroes, who has been written about so many times on this site. I met Dvortsevoy back in the 1990’es. One time on the island of Bornholm at the…
En ung kvinde får ordet, forstår jeg, i en samtalekreds for alkoholikere som ikke drikker. Hun er smuk, fotograferingen er smuk, det hun siger er smukt at lytte til, dette vidunderligt langsomme sprog, som i underteksterne burde være oversat omhyggeligt…
It’s a lovely start of a film. Shots from a naval parade in St.Petersburg. Grandiose. People in striped sailor blouses, and people in uniforms. Waving the navy flag in front of the Winter Palace. Suddenly focus on a pretty girl…
Years ago Nenad Puhovski, founder of and director of ZagrebDox, said to himself: I also want to give an award, I will call it ”My Generation”. (Remember that Puhovski has a competitive category for filmmakers under 35 with an attached…
The festival in Kiev takes place March 22-30 and I am happy to go again, always a pleasure to be at a festival that has an idea, makes a (political or social) statement, know about the documentary world and pick…
The 15th edition of the Croatian international documentary festival starts tomorrow. It is a festival that year by year has grown and developed, with competitions for international and regional films and a lot of side sections. You can’t complain if…
Andrijana Stojkovic: I remember when in July 2007 two great film artist – Bergman and Antonioni – “left” during one night… It seemed that the (film) world will never be the same again. And it isn’t. But these last days…
Audrius Stonys: Jonas left us. With the same lightness as he used to live. Silently and gently as if he didn’t want to disturb the image of life. We first met in 1990, when he invited us, 10 young filmmakers…
This afternoon an important mail reached me – attached with the photo you see above. It came from Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis and film director Kristine Briede, who took the photo. It went like this : « Dear Tue and Audrius (Stonys),…
Filmkommentaren has written much about Nicolas Philibert, French master of documentaries. () I missed his new film at IDFA, but I will catch up asap with a review. In the meantime I have enjoyed reading an interview with the director…
… i et arrangement, som med rette blev kaldt for et maraton, visning af en russisk tv-serie bygget over romanen fra 2003 – 10 afsnit af en længde på 50 minutter. Publikum – vi – sad lørdag i Cinemateket fra…
Etnografen Henning Haslund-Christensen står på fotografiet midt på højslettens vældige tomme flade med bjergene i dis langt, langt borte. Fotografiet er fra en af hans mange rejser i Mongoliet… Jeg har som til tidligere nytårs opsummeringer udvalgt de danske dokumentarfilm…
Taking the title of Agnès Varda and JR’s wonderful film as headline, I look back at festivals, pitching sessions, film schools… that I had the privilege to attend in 2018. Privilege is the right word to use, when you board…
The courage to address the world with ambiguity never stooping to easy answers, can also be attributed to the Russian filmmaker, Victor Kossakovsky, who never tires of reminding us that film is an emotionally charged medium, and even when it…
… with the subtitle ”Toward a Concrete Utopia” is an exhibition that runs at Moma (Museum of Modern Art) until January 13. For one who has been visiting Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Pristina, Skopje, Ljubljana… it was a fine…
… at the European Film Awards yesterday, „Bergman, A Year in a Life“ by Jane Magnusson is the title of the Swedish documentary that took home the prize. Which made many angry… Here is what Krakow Film Festival director Krzysztof…
In the 1980’es I attended Cinéma du Réel in Paris almost every year. It was during the years, where wonderful, charismatic Suzette Glenadel was the director. And where big documentary names like Fred Wiseman and Pedro Costa were introduced to…
… with the title “The Landscape of Chinese Everydayness” – An offer you can’t refuse! DocAlliance keeps on the high quality in its program policy on dafilms.com. This time with 6 of Wang Bing’s documentaries from China. They are long…
Så kom postbudet med Ada Bligaard Søbys bog, ”min første bog” havde hun skrevet. En fotobog, vidste jeg det var. Der var tre citater trykt uden på cellofanindpakningen fra bogbinderen som havde gjort den fornemt udstyrede bog færdig som bog,…
Tuesday night I was back in Saint Petersburg after two days at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam. In the cinema. On screen. No, wrong – I was back in Petrograd 1918 through the outstanding film historical event organized so brilliantly…
No doubt, Sergey Loznitsa is the master of making creative archive documentaries – a part of his impressive oeuvre that also includes fiction films and documentaries like “Austerlitz” – in the archive films he stands out with films like…
I started working on a film about Stalin’s show trials, which were held in the USSR in 1930s, a couple of years ago. My initial idea was to edit the footage from different trials in order to show how the…
”De vil lave en film om mig? Men jeg er da ikke interessant. Det er mine film som er interessante.” Carl Th. Dreyers svar dengang for længe siden var til en anden instruktør, en forgænger, men Torben Skjødt Jensen tager i…
You have to be careful with “vonhörensagen” but in this case it had its influence on the talk with Vitaly Mansky, that took place friday afternoon at the Polish Institute in Leipzig, a couple of hours after his film had…
I would have loved to see more from the Retrospective 68 – An Open Score but I was anderswo engagiert, i.e. introducing the Lithuanian retrospective and moderating the discussions afterwards BUT I saw the last section, number 7 which was…
I have known him for years – since back to the days of the Bornholm festival in the 90’es. He came to Leipzig for one screening of the film and for a talk. We hugged and I told him that…
10.30 in the morning, Kupferstrasse in Leipzig. There is a line outside the Kupferhalle, where Werner Herzog is to hold his masterclass or as the DOK Leipzig organisers called it, “a conversation” with Kristina Jaspers, who knows about the director…
Det er altid særligt at læse virkelig lange romaner. Uanset om den strækkes ud over mange uger eller foregår i en hektisk rus, går læsningen fra at være en oplevelse til at blive en tilstand… (Martin Bastkjær i Informations bogtillæg,…
Here we are – watch our films, meet our filmmakers. It seems like this is the policy of the Lithuanian Film Centre this year, where the population-wise small country celebrates its centenary. According to an article in Cineuropa – link…
… in Sibiu, Romania celebrates its 25th edition. For that reason Cineuropa brings an interview with the founding director Dumitru Budrala. He looks back and makes a status on the state of the documentary art. Here is a quote –…
MARGARETHA VON TROTTA: SEARCHING FOR INGMAR BERGMAN (2) Forrige blognotat sluttede: “… Margarethe von Trotta folder sine hænder netop som jeg ser Max von Sydow gøre, med håndfladerne mod hinanden: ”Først meget alvorligt, men så mærker man, at han nok…
There is a grand focus on Lithuania at DOKLeipzig this year. Festival director Leena Pasanen has since her time at the Finnish television YLE been an admirer of the small Baltic country’s impressive documentary tradition. She stands behind a uniqe…
MARGARETHE VON TROTTA: SEARCHING FOR INGMAR BERGMAN (1) Filmens begyndelse er fælles for de to, ligesom hele filmen vil være det, en instruktør på sporet af sin beundrede forgænger i arbejdet med filmkunsten, von Trotta skriver et filmessay om Bergman. MEMENTO MORI Og…
… IDFF standing for International Documentary Film Festival. A press release came out today from the festival that starts October 25 and runs until October 30. With its 22nd edition. I have taken some bits and pieces to highlight what…
So here it is, the announcement of the Official Selection for DOKLeipzig. The filmmakers were of course informed in beforehand but were not allowed to express their enthusiasm before publication, which they can do now. First step for me who…
… fra Statens Kunstfond – ”Hædersydelser fra Statens Kunstfond er livsvarige og kan tildeles kunstnere, der har en sådan kunstnerisk produktion bag sig, at de har placeret sig afgørende som kunstner.” Og det kan man da vist godt sige at…
I går modtog instruktørerne Mira Jargil og Christian Sønderby Jepsen årets Roos Pris for deres bidrag til dansk dokumentarfilm med denne begrundelse: ”For instruktørerne Mira Jargil og Christian Sønderby Jepsen ligger stoffet til deres fortællinger lige for. Det er i…