Arunas Matelis – Class with a Master
Confession: I insisted to be the one to talk to Lithuanian Arunas Matelis in the class that the organisers of Docudays in Kiev had set up to celebrate the director and his work for the last 25 years with his…
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 MoreArunas Matelis – Class with a Master
New Top Portraits
After a long time with three male directors, three female directors go to the top of the filmkommentaren.dk: Maite Alberti, Agnès Varda, Giedre Zickyte. Maite Alberdi, Chilean director, is known for her warm-hearted films, to be mentioned ”Tea Time” from…
Modern Times Review Spring 2018
… with the subtitle ”The European Documentary and Non-fiction Magazine” is out with its 3rd printed version, and let me start with a strong promotion of what is ridiculously cheap, 28€ per year: ”A yearly subscription gives you the spring…
Agnès Varda & JR: Faces Places
The title in French is Visages Villages – more precise than the English one, as it is mostly villages the two artists visit to meet locals, take their photos, make them grand format, large scale and paste them on big…
Sergei Loznitsa to Receive Award in Krakow/ 1
A press release came in from Krakow Film Festival two days ago. Here comes the essence of it, followed by a post of some references, we have made to films of a very productive and excellent director of short and…
Sergei Loznitsa to Receive Award in Krakow/ 2
… and here are some quotes from Loznitsa films, we have been writing about on filmkommentaren. It’s very few, only documentaries. If you want to see the full filmography go to Loznitsa’s own website, link below. The Event (2015) –…
Wajda – at Work
He died in 2016, Andrzej Wajda, 90 years old. A quote from Guardian’s obituary: ”Polish cinema burst upon the world in the 1950s with Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy, A Generation, Kanał and Ashes and Diamonds, with the director becoming the…
Kristoffer Hegnsvad: Werner Herzog
DEN ANDEN USKYLD Den trænede læsers (filmlæsers / filmpublikums) læseproces (filmtilegnelse) bør se således ud: 1) at opleve teksten (filmen) umiddelbart og uhildet, 2) at nærme sig teksten (filmen) fra så mange sider som man kan overkomme og med så…
Best of DAFilms 2017
… DA standing for DocAlliance, “the creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals…”. We do it again, recommend our readers to sign up for a subscription for this unique quality vod. €5 per month! “The end of the…
Miroslav Janek: Universum Brdecka
Got the newsletter from Czech IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) yesterday. One of the news highlighted was that Miroslav Janek has made a new film that will be released December 21. Janek is one of the heroes of filmkommentaren.dk, we…
Serbian Documentaries in Paris
It’s a pleasure to see that Serbian documentarians get international recogniiton. They deserve it. And I know what I am talking about. Since the beginning of this century I have had the privilege to go to Belgrade to help Svetlana…
Sérgio Tréfaut: Treblinka
The portuguese director Sérgio Tréfaut/ Serge Tréfaut () was back in Copenhagen with the film Treblinka. The screening took place at the Cinématheque at the Film House. The Cinématheque that we so often have praised on this site for its…
IDFA 2017 Opening
It was a brilliant IDFA opening night yesterday at the amazing Royal Theater Carré in Amsterdam. Film and tribute to Ally Derks, who has stepped down from her post as director of IDFA that she co-founded 30 years ago. The…
The European Documentary Magazine/ 2
The second print edition of the documentary magazine, MODERN TIMES REVIEW, that took over when DOX was stopped by its publisher EDN (European Documentary Network), is out. It was in the festival bags at DOK Leipzig and it will be…
Masters at IDFA
Not all films can go to the competitive sections, of course not, so festivals arrange strands like Panorama and Masters, at IDFA both are there, with 32 titles in the first and 29 in the latter, where also older films…
Andreas Horvath: Helmut Berger – Actor
In the 1970’es my friend Kjell Væring and I went to see Luchino Visconti’s ”Ludwig” about King Ludwig II of Bavaria, 235 mins.(!). A masterpiece that we watched in a big cinema on Champs Élysées in Paris. We wrote about…
What is documentary?
A month ago I was teaching at the film school department of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius. The first morning of the week I asked the students to write down 3 words that comes to their…
DOK Leipzig – Alvarez, Varda, Kluge, Panh, Rau
Yes, political films, films on political issues, film history. DOK Leipzig offers at its 60th edition 24 short and longer documentaries under the title ”commanders, chairmen, general secretaries”. Which refers to an event at the festival. Catalogue text by Ralph…
DOK Leipzig Loves Polish Documentaries/ 2
Leena Pasanen, director of DOK Leipzig, wrote this to me yesterday: Dear Tue, bad news from Poland indeed. This is the text i had written for our catalogue to introduce our Polish special programme. Had no idea at that time,…
DOK Leipzig Loves Polish Documentaries
… and has put together a special program, ”a declaration of Love to Polish docs”, for the festival. Readers of this site will know that Polish documentaries are highly valued through reports from the Krakow festival, lots of positive reviews…
Jihlava International Documentary FF
… takes place October 24 till October 29, DOKLeipzig starts October 30 and runs until November 5, 10 days later it is IDFA in Amsterdam. It is rather crowded with important documentary festivals within a month, one can say, I…
Niewiera/Rosolowski: The Prince and the Dybbuk/ 2
I had high expectations to the new film by Elvira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski. I liked their ”Domino Effect”, link to the review below, and I have followed ”The Prince and the Dybbuk” through a read of the treatment and…
Finland in Focus – in Belgrade
The M7 in Belgrade stands for the Magnificent7 Festival – 7 feature duration European documentaries. The festival has launched 13 editions, number 14 is coming up January 31st till February 6th 2018. But before that the tireless director couple of…
DOK Leipzig – Loznitsa & Rosenblatt
One more quote from a DOK Leipzig press release: Two DOK Masterclasses will cover the topic of archival footage given by world-renowned directors. Sergei Loznitsa will introduce his personal way of working with found footage, talk about the power of…
Message2Man St.Petersburg
The festival in magnificent St. Petersburg started last night with an opening ceremony on the Palace Square, in rain as last year where I was there – unfortunately not possible for me to be present this year. Look at the…
Henrikas Sablevicius – Sobles Kino Klubas
Finally I am at the film school in Vilnius – Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre – to teach for a week. On this first day my host Giedrė Kabašinskienė took me to see Sobles Kino Klubas named after my…
TUE STEEN MÜLLER 70 ÅR
Photo: Nenad Puhovski
DocAlliance: Hybrid Films
Look at this list of films presented by DocAlliance: Life in Denmark (Jørgen Leth) Cooking History (Peter Kerekes) Blind Loves (Juraj Lehotský) Alda (Viera Čakányová) Ex Press (Jet Leyco) The Wolf from Royal Wineyard Street (Jan Němec) The Perfect Human…
Joshua Oppenheimer
…there’s never been a deeper or more diverse time for documentary cinema… That’s how IndieWire introduces its article about the 25 documentaries four critics have found the best in the still young 21st century. And it is an impressive list…
DOCAlliance /3 DIMANCHE À PÉKIN
CHRIS MARKER: DIMANCHE À PÉKIN Chris Marker er på optagelse, det er 1955, det er i Kina… Det var jo tidligt efter krigen, så det var tidlige scener fyldt med ærbødighed og håb for den unge revolution han optog. Jeg ved…
DOCAlliance /2 LA JETÉE
CHRIS MARKER: LA JETÉE Det var i 2008. Jeg havde været til festival Cinéma du réel, og jeg skulle jo have noget med hjem til min filmklub. Noget fra Paris. Noget rigtigt. Jeg fandt det i Pompidoucentrets butik. En nyrestaureret…
Chris Marker Collected posts & notes on his works
… and the euphoric discovery of “direct cinema” (you will never make me say “cinema verité”) and on the crew’s day off, I photographed a story I didn’t completely understand. (Chris Marker) JUXTAPOSITIONEN I et interview med Chris Marker…
DOCAlliance /1 CHRIS MARKER
I had a talk with colleague Allan Berg yesterday. He remembered the time of repertory cinemas, where classics could be seen. Nowadays this is mostly the film historical job for the cinematheques. BUT, we agreed, some vod’s have classics on…
Their Finest Hour… and Humphrey Jennings
… is the title of the British WW2 comedy drama, directed by Danish Lone Scherfig, that I saw this morning in Grand Teatret in Copenhagen. It is a lovely picture to bring up the same term the protagonists use, when…
DocAlliance Celebrates Ex Oriente Film
A press release came in: ”In collaboration with its organizer, Institute of documentary film, Film, we have prepared a selection of the best works that have gone through this prestigious workshop throughout its history of 15 years! Nine critically acclaimed…
Pavel Kostomarov: Together
Do you remember the film by Kostomarov called Together, Roman Bondarchuk asked me on the Virmanska Street, when we sunday were walking around in sunny Lviv in Western Ukraine. The couple in the film, Ludmila and Vladimir Loboda, were sitting…
CPH:DOX 2017 /Kirsten Johnson
90 minutes with Kirsten Johnson thursday morning 23rd of March at Cinemateket, that’s a good time investment. I can guarantee that knowing Kirsten’s knowledge and commitment, and having attended her classes and Q&A sessions several times. Of course it is…
CPH:DOX 2017 /Modern Times Review
First day of the 2017 CPH:DOX. I went to the new festival centre, Charlottenborg, got my accreditation, ran into always energetic Frank Piasecki Poulsen, who ordered me to go up to see the impressive colourful so-called social cinema, where the…
Joe Bini at East Doc Platform
Of course it was a scoop for the organisers, IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), to have an editor capacity like American Joe Bini as a tutor and to have him deliver a masterclass like he did yesterday at the Cervantes…
Miroslav Janek: Normal Autistic Film
Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, festival directors of Magnificent7 in Belgrade, writes this presentation of Miroslav Janek’s awarded film that will be shown at the Sava Center tonight: This dynamic and playful documentary is the work of one of the most…
The Poetic Documentary
I think we said ”poetic documentary” more than a hundred times in Aarhus during the weekend, where the mini-festival Baltic Frames took place. The theme for the festival chosen by the curators Signe Van Zundert and Niels Bjørn Wied, also…
Uldis Brauns 1932-2017
Sad news, Audrius Stonys said, when we met at the cinema Øst for Paradis in Aarhus, where the mini-festival Baltic Frames takes place: Uldis Brauns passed away, 84 years old. Brauns was with Herz Frank the leading man in what…
Roy Andersson
We have to wait until 2019 but Roy Andersson is always worth waiting for. I was happy to read this today and hurry to do a copy-paste from the (free) newsletter of Nordisk Film & TV Fond: (Roy) Andersson’s About…
My Name is Popovic
Yes, look at the lovely photo taken by Maja Medic yesterday in Belgrade at the award ceremony at Dvorona Kulturnog Centra, where the new award “Nebojša Popović” was given to SVETLANA and ZORAN POPOVIĆ for ”their devoted work on promoting and critically…
Michael Glawogger: Untitled
Good news on a sad background – coming from the Berlinale. I am so much looking forward to see the film by Master Glawogger and Monika Willi – it will have its world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama 2017: “This film…
Baltic Films in Aarhus Denmark
Below you find a post in Danish calling for people who are interested in Film, Baltikum, Ukraine, Post-Soviet History and current politics in the region – to come and watch films at the second edition of Baltic Frames mini-festival in…
Best Documentaries 2016
Photo from Homeland, Iraq Year Zero by Abbas Fahnel Rahul Jain: Machines Raoul Peck: I Am Not Your Negro Kirsten Johnson: Cameraperson Ugis Olte & Morten Traavik: Liberation Day Torstein Grude & Niels Pagh Andersen: Mogadishu…
No Nation Films
A mail came in on the 14th of December from old friend Orwa Nyrabia, here is first a quote from the mail and then one more from an article written by Melanie Goodfellow for Screendaily, link below, read it all:…
Jon Bang Carlsen, Pamela Cohn, Viesturs Kairišs…
… and me are online thanks to our visit to the 2016 DocuDays UA in Kiev. The festival has recorded the lectures made and edited them into nice, informative videos where ”experience is shared”. There are clips in between the…
Rembrandt, Ukrainians, Eisenstein, Goldin
And what do they have in common? I will tell you in this small report from New York, where everyone talks about – well, you know who, we had to struggle to pass his blocked corner at his Tower on…