Zelig Film School Bolzano

I have just finished three days of teaching at Zelig, the documentary film school in Bolzano in the region of Alto Adige in the North of Italy. There are not many European film schools that specialise in documentaries, and as far as I know this is the only one, that does only documentaries… for 3 years a group of young people (between 20 and 30) are going to learn about, watch, make documentaries. Sounds great, and is great.

I have been teaching in Bolzano twice before and this time I have the privilege to follow the students for all 3 years. They started their study monday and I had the next 3 days of general intro to the documentary of today. I showed clips and discussed and circled around keywords to what a documentary actually is. We still run a round with the John Grierson definition from 1936 (“the creative treatment of actuality”), it is no longer relevant, or is it? Anyhow, go to http://www.zeligfilm.it/ and learn more about this excellent place, which is also behind the MEDIA programme training programe Esodoc.

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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