Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade

The Magnificent7 festival starts thursday the 30th of January in Belgrade. Opening film is “Leviathan” (photo). From thursday and the following seven days a report will be posted from the festival as well as a presentation review by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. For the website (link below) I wrote the following text:

Ten Years Older…
Well, I am told that the festival celebrates its 10th edition! Really? Is it true? I feel the festival more to be Ten Minutes Older, to bring in the title of the legendary short documentary by Herz Frank.

For me it is just a moment ago that we (festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, the whole festival team including me) waited down at the stage in the Sava Centre in 2005. Anxiously to see an audience enter the hall to watch ”Touch the Sound” by Thomas Riedelsheimer. The opening film of this European Feature Documentary Festival. People came, in huge numbers, and it has been like that since then. The Belgrade audience has been more than loyal to Magnificent7, simply the best that this travelling documentary observer knows. Thank you! Veliko, neizmerno hvala!

Herz Frank again: “In front of me on my work table is the central fragment from Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”. Plato and Aristotle discuss the philosophical meaning of life. Plato is pointing upwards – the essence is the Idea! Aristotle, on the other hand, has his palm pointing down to the ground – the basis is the material! Even earlier in the Old Testament (Genesis) both views are united. In the first book of Moses the first lines states: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Read – the spiritual and the material.”

The spiritual and the material, facts and reflections, many narrative layers, personal interpretations that are filtered through a creative temperament, poetry and prose. The documentary is an art form. Important art stays in our minds and hearts.

I am sure that the 2014 selection will be remembered as well. Indeed it deals with the spiritual in films like ”Leviathan”, a more than magic visual tour-de-force on sea and ”Faith Connections” from India… Fasten your seat belts! Three autobiographical films are told in first person – Palestinian ”A World not Ours” from a refugee camp in Lebanon, ”Meine keine Familie” with fantastic archive material from the commune Friedrichshof, and a young Finn who decides to get rid of his daily ”My Stuff”.

The world is not at its best right now, and the documentary genre has always proved to be the best place for films that deal with protests: ”Everyday Rebellion” does so. Contrary to the tumult is the quiet and safe creative world in ”La Maison de la radio”, the French film about the beauty of words brought to the screen by the great master Nicolas Philibert.

Join the celebration of the 10th homage to the creative documentary!

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

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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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