IDFA Preparations…

Wednesday IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, starts. And I am going there for five nights. Due to being part of the IDFA Academy, this great initiative of the festival, where young filmmakers get the chance to meet each other, share their ideas and projects and get inspiration from cameraperson Kirsten Johnson and directors like Kim Longinotto and Frederick Wiseman to mention the most famous ones. Together with Cecilia Lidin, with whom I worked at the EDN way back in time, I will be available for meetings in the afternoon.

The last couple of days I have been preparing my stay in hopefully not too foggy Amsterdam. The festival is overwhelming with talks, masterclasses, industry screenings (very good as many take place in the mornings) and good friends invite you to premieres of their films. Happy that there is a Docs for Sale, got to find films for a couple of festivals and for writing on this blog.

Let me mention two which are scheduled in my agenda:

Lithuanian Mindaugas Survila’s new work – it’s in the First Appearance Competition – ”The Ancient Woods” is a film that I know will be visually magnificent. The director has been filming nature for years and has invented extraordinary ways of getting close to his protagonists – see the photo. I know him and his first film very well, ”Field of Magic”, as he, 8 years ago, took me and Audrius Stonys on a tour to the forest where we were met with warmth and generosity by the 7 men and women, who lived there – http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/768/ – You can see that film on the website of the director, link below.

The other film is ”Time Trial” by Scottish Finlay Pretsell, who has been following the former British road racing cyclist David Millar during his last cycling season. I am very happy for Pretsell that his film made it to the Main International Competition. I have seen some clips from the film in beforehand, and the trailer on the IDFA website – Millar has charisma, I have high expectations loving this sport highly, very much because of ”our” Danish hero in that field, Jørgen Leth.

https://www.idfa.nl/en/

http://www.sengire.lt/en/

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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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