# SPECIAL ISSUE/DOGME l1l PUBLISHED BY THE DANISH FILM INSTITUTE / SPRING 2005 FILM#SPECIAL ISSUE / DOGME / PAGE 2 l1l SPECIAL ISSUE / DOGME INSIDE 3-7 TEN YEARS OF DOGME # SPECIAL ISSUE/DOGME Dogme has left its mark on Danish and international cinema by guiding l1l PUBLISHED BY THE DANISH FILM INSTITUTE / SPRING 2005 filmmakers away from the big technical apparatus toward spontaneity and immediacy. 8-10 THE KING OF DOGME Lars von Trier stands out as a controversial pioneer who persists in serving up surprising artistic provocations distinguished by intellectual acuity, satirical bite and a pinch of perversion, along with an always fearless desire to discover new possible expressions. 17-19 THE MOMENT The Dogme films have enjoyed audience and critical acclaim but was FILM #SPECIAL ISSUE /DOGME SPRING 2005 the project also a success by the yardstick of the intentions of the Dogme PUBLISHED BY Danish Film Institute manifesto? Documentarist Jesper Jargil challenges Lars von Trier, Thomas EDITORS Agnete Dorph Stjernfelt, Susanna Neimann Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring in The Purified. EDITORIAL TEAM Lars Fiil-Jensen, Vicki Synnott TRANSLATIONS Glen Garner DESIGN Rasmus Koch TYPE Cendia (e©), Millton (e©), Underton (e©) 17-19 THE HEART-WARMING SPARK PAPER Munken Lynx 100 gr. PRINTED BY Holmen Center Tryk A/S Dogme is more than von Trier and Vinterberg. The method has rejuvenated CIRCULATION 6,000 ISSN 1399-2813 Danish filmmaking and put actors and actresses into the limelight. COVER Dogme posters by Ole Swander and Lars von Trier 20-24 DANISH DOGME ACTORS All articles are written by freelance film critics and journalists. The Dogme-films launched a new generation of Danish actors, including FILM is published by the Danish Film Institute Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Iben Hjejle, Peter (DFI). 8 issues annually, 3 are in English and published prior to the festivals at Cannes, Gantzler, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Mads Mikkelsen and Trine Dyrholm, Amsterdam and Berlin. Subscriptions are free of charge. several of whom have subsequently had parts in international films. Contact: [email protected] The Danish Film Institute is the national agency 25-31 THE TEN DANISH DOGME FILMS + THREE responsible for supporting and encouraging film and cinema culture. The Institute’s operations Ten Danish Dogme films plus three films orbiting the phenomenon are extend from participation in the development and production of feature films, shorts and the Danish results of the Dogme wave. documentaries, over distribution and marketing, to managing the national film archive and the cinematheque. The total budget of the DFI is DKK 390.4 m / EURO 52 m. DANISH FILM INSTITUTE Gothersgade 55 DK-1123 Copenhagen K, Denmark t +45 3374 3400 [email protected] / [email protected] WWW.DFI.DK/ENGLISH TEN YEARS OF DOGME / PAGE 3 / FILM#SPECIAL ISSUE / DOGME TENYEARS OF DOGME 1995 was the 100th anniversary of cinema. that genre, gratuitous action, and special films, renouncing external glamour in favour A century after the Lumière brothers made effects are taboo, and that the film must take of simple virtues – modest equipment, intense the world's first public film screening, a place in the here and now. acting, spontaneous storytelling. symposium was held in Paris in celebration. Dogme can also be seen as an alternative Lars von Trier, the Danish film director known LESS IS MORE artistic working method, a kind of therapy for his controversial and challenging films, European cinema has always felt the pressure for the artist suffocating in mainstream took the podium and introduced a whole of America’s global dominance and tried values and technological perfectionism. new filmmaking concept. out various strategies for coping: basically Dogme stimulates the filmmaker into opting On stage at the Odéon Theatre, von Trier variations on the motto, “if you can’t beat’em, for artistic originality rather than stale read his text and threw handfuls of red flyers join ’em.” One way has been for European convention. It is about forcing out a unique to the enthusiastic audience. It was the directors to go to Hollywood and, with artistic expression by setting down rules, Dogme 95 manifesto and, with it, the so- varying success, applying the qualities of limitations and obstacles. Philosophically called Vow of Chastity, ten rules that rocked European art films. related to other formalist art forms (including the film world... Another way has been to “Hollywoodize” the formal demands of classical music and European films, that is, copycatting American the rules of classical poetic metre), Dogme genre films with their effect-mongering and implies that it is liberating to submit to BY PETER SCHEPELERN accessible worlds. The problem with that constraint. The same tendency is inherent in is that it is almost by definition impossible Dogme’s declared anti-individualism. Unlike Dogme 95 presented itself as a “rescue action” to beat Hollywood movies at their own the European art film, which traditionally to counter the predictable scenarios, superficial game. As is almost always the case, the best operates with a cult of the artist, as the action and technological cosmetics so revalent Hollywood movies are made, you guessed director strives to appear as an individualist in the Hollywood-dominated cinema world. it, in Hollywood. genius, an auteur, the Dogme artist must Instead, Dogme 95 proposed a new approach Dogme offered a third way, making humbly surrender to anonymity and brother- to filmmaking, an ascetic policy of abstinence a virtue of necessity and demonstratively hood. The director must not be credited. and restraint, summed up in the so-called Vow abstaining from the lavishness, excess and Then again, that rule has probably been of Chastity, a set of rules decreeing, among shallowness of the typically extravagant bent more than any other. No one ever, other things, that the film must be shot on Hollywood blockbuster. Dogme points out even for a moment, forgot that the director location with no outside props or artificial new ways to proceed and, perhaps even more was Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier, lighting, that the camera must be handheld, so, ways to get back to cinematic basics in or Lone Scherfig. FILM#SPECIAL ISSUE / DOGME / PAGE 6 / TEN YEARS OF DOGME Woman Under the Influence (1974), John Cassavetes / Photo: DFI – Stills- & Posters Archive THE TEN COMMANDMENTS with the strength of stage acting – the ability social life. Aiming for truth and authenticity, The Dogme method and spirit are realised for the actor to really get into character and de Sica used real locations and even cast when the filmmaker abides by the ten give a performance in long, uninterrupted amateurs in all the parts. Though neorealism rules of the Vow of Chastity. Like the Ten sequences. faded out in the early 1950s – the Italian Commandments, they mainly concern what Other contemporary filmmakers – chiefly, government did not condone films painting not to do. Most of the ten rules contain Mike Leigh of the UK, as well as Americans too gloomy a picture of daily life in post-war negative statements and prohibitions, which, directors such as Steven Soderbergh and Italy – the movement had an enormous in combination, will compel the director to Mike Figgis – work with similar techniques influence on filmmakers everywhere, not radical innovation. for freeing the actor. least the young Frenchmen who manifested The way the rules were conceived was The goal is to get closer to the human themselves around 1960 in the French New characteristic in itself: Trier and Vinterberg element. Wave. Starting as a circle of friends, Jean-Luc sat down and discussed which elements of Godard, François Truffaut and Claude the filmmaking process they could least do TOWARDS A POOR CINEMA Chabrol brought a new, casual approach to without. These elements were then prohibited. Though Dogme was received as a novelty, the filmmaking process. The New Wave The basic Dogme concept clearly has a the movement obviously has film historical simultaneously had elements of play, masochistic streak: Trier and Vinterberg roots. Film history can be regarded as a improvisation, experiment and rebellion – asked themselves what prohibitions would continuous interchange between the estab- as seen, notably, in Godard’s Breathless (1960). hurt the most and then chose them. This is lishment and the initiatives of the anti- Dogme learned and borrowed from all of also where the religious connotations of the establishment. It might also be regarded as an these movements, but its most important terms Dogme and Vow of Chastity come alternation between formalism and realism, precursor may be the American filmmaker through most clearly. illusion and truth. John Cassavetes, whose alternative cinematic Dogme has left its mark on Danish and Dziga Vertov, a revolutionary documen- art – including Husbands (1970) and A international cinema by guiding filmmakers tarian and an important figure in 1920s Woman Under the Influence (1974) – in ways away from the big technical apparatus toward Russian silents, noted for his The Man with a similar to Dogme, opted for a consciously spontaneity and immediacy, the here and Movie Camera (1929), wrote a series of mani- anti-aesthetic visual style, long intensely now. Dogme has also, and perhaps most festos attacking bourgeois cinema. Instead, acted scenes and raw realism. The Cassavetes significantly, freed actors. The conventional he proposed Kino-Pravda (film truth) – style also predates the minimalism of later method of shooting forces actors to deliver venturing into the reality of time and place American independent filmmaking, as their performance in tiny fragments, whereas with light, handheld equipment. A couple of practiced by Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and Dogme allows the actor to act at length, decades later, at the end of World War II, Kevin Smith. Dogme’s only purely Danish sometimes for 10 or 20 minutes without neorealism broke through in Italian cinema.