Message2Man St. Petersburg /1

Do you know the situation for Russian artists, was the first question that came from the audience at the Q&A after Danish Andreas Johnsen’s ”Ai Wei Wei” screening last night at the St. Petersburg documentary festival. The film about the Chinese artist was the first to be shown out of 8 Danish films picked for a programme called GlobalDoK = the Danes go abroad to find stories that can work globally.

No, I do not, the Danish director honestly answered – and the artist in the audience confirmed that there were pretty many similarities between the situation of Wei Wei and the one experienced here in Russia – censorship, aggression from the authorities etc… this is what a director wants to happen, isn’t it, that audiences can transfer what they see to their own life.

The opening was attended by around 40 people. Director of the Danish Cultural Institute in St. Petersburg, Finn Andersen, expressed his gratitude to be able to help the film festival to have the retrospective happen. The same thank you was adressed to the Danish Film Institute.

Message2Man is a huge festival. The main screening venue is Velikan Centre in a beautiful park, where families were having their sunday walk yesterday. The Centre has multiple screening halls and there are also cinemas in other parts of the city that show films from all over the world. To give you an impression of today’s programme: There is Michael Obert’s ”Song from the Forest”, Estonian humorous ”The Gold Spinners” by Kiur Aarma and Hardi Volmer, ”Ukraine is not a Brothel” by Kitty Green, ”Blood” by Alina Rudnitskay, ”Shado’man” by Boris Gerrets, ”Human Geography” by Claire Simon and ”The Will” by Christian Sønderby Jepsen. I check in for the last three mentioned. And there are many, many other films screened from mid afternoon to late evening.

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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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