DOCAlliance Offers Free Streaming

Again the excellent vod DOCAlliance – calls itself very rightly ”your online documentary cinema” with over 700 quality films – invites (documentary) film lovers to watch films for free, this time its 11 most watched documentaries of 2012. From December 31 to January 6.

Seen from a Danish perspective it is great to notice that Jørgen Leth’s bicycle race classic ”A Sunday in Hell” (1977) as well as his masterpiece ”Haiti. Untitled” (1996) are on a list that includes several Czech and Slovak films. ”Solar Eclipse” by Martin Marecek is a both funny and clever work on two Czech electricians in Zambia, fighting to teach the locals how to have their electricity in good shape. Personally I will take a look at the film on a writer, whose name I know but have never read. Here is a quotation from the site of the vod: 

“The key impetus for Arnošt Lustig’s (1926-2011) (photo) writing consisted in the ordeal of his painful holocaust experience. His first short story collection set in the environment of Nazi concentration camps was published in 1958; considering it his best book ever, Lustig kept on returning to the dramatic historical experience. He knew too well that the “Auschwitz experience” is beyond description and that while trying to describe it, one may get swept by the dark current of dreadful memories; many a “holocaust writer” took his own life (e.g. Primo Levi, Jean Amery, etc.). What helped Lustig escape the fate of his famous colleagues was probably his intense optimism. However impoverished, humiliated and marginalized life could be, it has always been the main axis of Lustig’s interest. His desire to live (and appreciate life) has not been suppressed even by the tragic episodes of his stays in concentration camps (Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Buchenwald). That is the fundamental victory of Arnošt Lustig over the darkness of war and primarily over the machinery of Nazi hatred, aimed, in its principle, at the very value of life.”

http://dafilms.com/event/103-most-watched-docs-of-2012/

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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