DOX – European Documentary Film Magazine

For the readers of this text: I am absolutely biased. I was one of the founders of the DOX magazine way back in the first half of the 1990’es at the time where the EU MEDIA Programme had its office called Documentary in Copenhagen. I have followed the magazine since then, contributed with articles and sees with pleasure that it is very much alive and renewed since Norwegian Truls Lie took over as editor-in-chief in 2009 after almost 12 year’s of brilliant work by Danish Ulla Jacobsen.

Today DOX is exclusively a FILM magazine. The focus is on the films, which are written about in features, critiques, festival reports, interviews and essays. The more debate orientated and informative articles connected to activities in the industry, and targeting the professionals are not a priority any longer. That is of course an editorial line to be discussed as the major part of the readers are professionals, mostly producers who are members of the publishing organisation EDN (European Documentary Network). Anyway, this is how it is now, where the magazine comes out 4 times per year, and not 6 as before. You might easily argue that to deal with actuality and debate in a quarterly magazine does not make sense – leave it for the internet.

The political and social films do get most space. In two recent issues (88 has come out) focus has been put on North Korea and Africa with a thematic treatment of relevant films. The critiques of films are in general good, the festival reports suffer from what festival reports always do: name-dropping of titles, seldom the author gives him/herself the liberty to go deeper, there is a list of note-worthy films at the back of every issue, it is extensive but lacks factual info on where or how to get hold of the films mentioned… The best, however, in the last many issues, is to read the editor-in-chief’s own essayistic articles that are excellently written, always with a interesting angle and luckily not afraid to touch on film history as with the text(s) on Pier Paolo Pasolini in 87. Or the article from the festival Cameraimage, the cinematographer’s festival, in 85.

Take a subscription If you want to be updated on the world of documentaries You get a well layout’ed (although the font could be bigger for eyes that are 50+!) documentary magazine, and you will even get a dvd sent along with each issue.

http://dox.mono.net/9295/DOX%20Magazine

www.edn.dk

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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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