DOK Leipzig: Caucasian Lessons

The upcoming festival in Leipzig (October 18-24) has an interesting retrospective with films from the conflict zone in Caucasia. Here is the site introduction text:

“Eight programmes with some twenty films will give you sufficient opportunity to deal with a transit and conflict zone between Europe and Asia, between the old world order and a new region. Political stories from Georgia, the clash of traditional and post-modern lifestyles in Armenia, archaic culture and crazy poets from Azerbaijan. The focus is also on the battle in the media around the events in Southern Ossetia, the search for terrorists in Dagestan as well as the war-torn countryside in Nagorno-Karabakh, where the effects of the conflict are still felt. And finally: Figures of loss – the disintegration is omnipresent.”

A couple of the films have been reviewed or noted here: Georgian Salome Jashi’s ‘The Leader is always Right‘ , Nino Kartidze’s propaganda piece ‘Something about Georgia‘ , ‘The Last Tightrope Dancer‘ by Inna Sahakyan and ‘A Story about People in War and Peace‘ by Vardan Hovhannisyan – the two latter from Armenia. Not written about, but seen at Baltic Sea Forum is the shocking film by Andrei Nekrasov, ‘Russian Lessons‘ (PHOTO), that I would need to watch again before writing about a film that is more controversial than the rest of the programme. Nekrasov, Russian, has been threatened to death for this film, in Russia, whereas he is said to be a hero in Georgia in his description of the recent war.

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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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