OFF Odense Film Festival/1

The 25th edition of the festival in Odense, Denmark takes place 23-28. August. There are many reasons to congratulate the municipality of Odense for keeping alive this film festival for all these years in spite of constant battles to raise the necessary funding. The 2010  festival, as it is being presented on its site, see address below (programme both in Danish and English), is communicated with a lot of fresh energy and proudness, now with a focus on the short film as it looks today, the one for the big screen and the one for the internet via YouTube etc. I switch to Danish language in this posting as well as in the one below, which is a tour down memory lane for this blogger.

Programmet er omfattende med den internationale konkurrence i centrum. Det er animation og fiktion og dokumentar, og det er film fra filmskoler verden over og fra lande som Finland, Canada og Frankrig, som stadig dyrker den trængte filmgenre professionelt. Programmerne er delt ind i temaer, desværre med besynderlige overskrifter som ”inderlig eksistens”, ”ejendommelig eksistens” og ”intet er som det syner” m.fl. Sælger det billetter til et ungt publikum?

Måske er det lige meget for der plejer at være fuldt hus i Odense til festivalen, der nu overalt i sin branding slår på at være OFF mainstream, et valg som også slår igennem i valget af nogle fremragende internationale dokumentarer. Publikum kan se ”RIP – A Remix Manifesto”, Ulrich Seidl’s controversial ”Tierische Liebe”  og ”Crumb” af Terry Zwigoff. Og så er der et pitching arrangement for kortfilm, YouTube konkurrence, masse af aktiviteter for børn og unge osv osv. Bravo!… Photo from the short film thriller “Kitchen Sink” by Alison MacLean, Australia, one of the many eternal hits (from 1989) from the retrospective festival section.

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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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