Hotels

During the doc festival and market season – which is now and lasts until December – your bed waits for you in a hotel, normally booked and paid for by the organisers of the event. Some people hate hotels, can not sleep properly, noise or temperature bother them or the bed is too soft or too hard. I normally don´t mind, I even like it most of the times. For my extensive travelling, I like to be surprised, I like hotels that are different from the big boxes, where you know the whole organisation before you enter the room.

I have just left a wonderful place in Lisbon. Downtown, around 30 rooms, all of them different from the other, classic dark furniture, quiet, bad breakfast (Southern Europe!), free internet access, charming ambiance, fine servic. Site below.

And in Jihlava, my next destination for 4 nights, I know what to expect. Pension Jakuba. Simple, clean, relatively quiet as well (read below), several German channels on the tv (if that is something!), all accompanied by a sound design from two sources. The church bells 50 meters from your bed, and the zoo. The first year I was there, I thought the animal sounds came from inter-human joyful moments in one of the other rooms!

After Jihlava, I am off to Leipzig to the one and only Hotel Michaelis, sooo clean and accurate in all details. Each night you can find a couple of biscuits in cellophane on your pillow, and you have the bible within reach. But no… dont think you can´t sin there. The hotel has a superb restaurant with seasonal dishes and a great variety of French and Italian wines. And a selection of Cuban cigars. Difficult temptation for a person who stopped smoking two months ago!

www.casadesaomamede.com
http://www.penzionjakub.ji.cz/
http://www.hotel-michaelis.de/michaelis/cms/index.php

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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