Can there be beauty in an atomic bomb? Or in the explosion of a nuclear reactor? I don't think so, but I'm going to find out tonight. In Atomic Living, filmmaker/writer/presenter/producer Mark Cousins explores what that's really like, living in the atomic age. Because in addition to the horrors, we also have X-rays and other extremely useful medical applications. Once again, he uses...
The first IDFA tip of the day is immediately a double bill and both films are decades old. They are in the top 10 of Errol Morris, this year's chief guest. Las Hurdes - Tierra sin Pan by Luis Bunuel is a half-hour film that made documentary history. Bunuel was also known then for Un...
IDFA 2015 opens strongly with intriguing family history A Family Affair, but the main programme feature is Benjamin Barber: Jihad vs. McWorld.
Virtual reality will be the new hype next year, we are promised. A sneak preview could already be enjoyed at an Amsterdam pop-up cinema.
Three days of classical music among the trees and cows. Festival Wonderfeel presented a unique classical music festival last weekend from 24 to 26 July, under the smoke of 's-Graveland. Top musicians from home and abroad gave dozens of concerts. Lectures were given and, as befits a festival, there was also plenty to eat, drink and...
Clark Terry was a legend and is no more. The American jazz trumpeter died on Saturday at the age of 94. He began his musical career with jazz greats Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who soon recognised his extraordinary talent. He said of the two: "Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school." [Tweet ""Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was ...
Morgan Knibbe doesn't do that badly at all. Graduated from the Film Academy two years ago, already on equal footing with the world's best documentary filmmakers at IDFA. Those Who Feel the Fire Burning is his unconventional portrayal of the world of refugees who ventured across to Europe. Now nominated for IDFA's top prize, the award for best feature-length documentary. It...
Film-making used to be a man's business. Men made films about men watching women - something like that. In 1975, film scholar Laura Mulvey launched the famous notion of 'The Male Gaze'. Last year, it resurfaced in the heated debate surrounding La vie d'Adèle, that wonderful film by Abdellatif Kechiche (male) about a lesbian love affair. So how about before? This year, IDFA has...
So I spent five minutes in singer-songwriter Patrick Watson's studio. He played a bit. Put his phone in the ashtray. Said something to his labrador. And I could look around quietly while he played. Behind me, in front of me. Below and above. Nothing like sitting at an artist's home while he plays. And he wasn't bothered...
With the crowning of Song from the Forest by Michael Obert, the jury chose a poetic film essay that combines a very personal account with reflection on our culture. Samedi is a 13-year-old Bayaka Pygmy from Central Africa who here travels to his American father's homeland for the first time.
Watching the emotional pulse of the world live, designed as a screen full of dancing dots. That was possible last night at IDFA during the live cinema event, presented by internet artist Jonathan Harris.
Way back when fast food had just been invented
Two opposites had emerged. Would the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary go to a personally coloured auteur's film, or to a thoughtful account of a major issue? To Alan Berliner's remarkable portrait of Alzheimer's-affected poet Edwin Honig, or to Dror Moreh's fascinating insight into the Israeli secret service?
In John Appel's new documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place features survivors of the shooting on the Norwegian island of Utoya and the preceding bombing, which killed 77 people.
MuseumgoudA not expelled MuseumgoudA may still remain a member of the Dutch Museum Association (NMV). A majority of the members were still of the opinion in September that the museum should be expelled because it had auctioned Marlene Dumas' The Schoolboys at the end of June without consulting other museums. That is against the NMV's rules. It did, however, decide to change the rules for the...
IDFA's jury neatly balanced poetry and politics by awarding among the feature-length documentaries the moving Planet of Snail (South Korea), alongside the Palestinian village-set 5 Broken Cameras, a Palestinian/Israeli/French/Dutch co-production. Planet of Snail by Seung-Jun Yi received the main award, the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary. The fireworks of...
A bit alienating it is. Watching at IDFA the eventful account of Egypt's February Tahrir 2011 revolution while at the same time, in Tahrir Square, the second phase of resistance against the dictatorship is in full swing. A kind of 'back to the future' feeling. Tahrir 2011 Tahrir 2011 is a relatively unpolished, but with a sense of...
Coincidence? The two Dutch documentaries in the main competition of the IDFA documentary festival both explore what music can mean to people. Two films that also complement each other perfectly - one starts from the perspective of the listener, the other from the musician. In About Canto, Ramon Gieling outlines the profound influence that Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato...
The crisis rages on and the Arab world is in flux, but in the documentary world, the time for big stories is over. At least that was the conclusion drawn by festival director Ally Derks at a press conference ahead of the 24th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (16-27 November). Unlike a decade ago, documentary filmmakers now focus...
Now then. 6.5 million goes off subsidised institutions. In Amsterdam. Qua municipality. The state was already doing away with just over 40 million, leaving 36 institutions in dire straits. Now Amsterdam has decided to keep at least 13 named institutions. Should we think of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the IDFA, Holland Festival, Concertgebouw and the Muziekgebouw...
Leonard Retel Helmrich's Stand of the Stars is a two-time winner of the Amsterdam documentary festival IDFA. At the awards ceremony at the Tuschinski theatre, it was announced that this dynamic and poetic portrait of a poor Indonesian family not only won the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary, but was also chosen (by another jury) as the best of the...
Timothy Leary is not dead. The corpse of this colourful 1960s counterculture guru may have abandoned its occupant on 31 May 1996, but Leary's ash particles are orbiting the earth, his spiritual legacy is preserved on the internet and, if the rumour is true, a tape recording of him travels to...
The latest in documentary screening has nothing to do with websites or other new media. On the contrary, the presentation of the 'live documentary' Utopia in Four Movements, which IDFA had the European premiere of, in fact harks back to the primal form of cinema, when films were shown with live music and a so-called explicateur. Utopia...
After the opening film Stand of the Stars, the second major premiere of a Dutch documentary at IDFA was that of Homeland. The screening at the Tuschinski Theatre, incidentally, was not just about the Palestinian cause, as it was also, of course, a celebration in honour of 78-year-old director George Sluizer (Spoorloos), arguably our most internationally oriented filmmaker....
If you see someone wearing a yellow ribbon one of these days, it is in protest against the cuts to arts and culture. As might be expected, Ally Derks, director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, in her speech at the opening of the 23rd edition of the film event, took a hard line against the impending attack on the arts....
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