Dogme 95

Karl Hungus

I think it's time I perked up the film board with an interesting topic, as it seems to be mostly confined to the discussion of specific films, and has a lot of untapped potential in the way of discussing filming techniques.

So, I thought a discussion about the Dogme 95 style of film making could be very interesting altogether. I don't know if many people have any intrest in it, but I've seen people talking about Lars Von Trier here on these boards before, so at least a few people will have an idea about it.

For those of you who don't know what Dogme 95 is, here is the official website, and here's a quote of the manifesto:

DOGME 95 is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.

DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.

DOGME 95 is a rescue action!

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false!
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!

Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition!

DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie had been cosmeticised to death, they said; yet since then the use of cosmetics has exploded.
The “supreme” task of the decadent film-makers is to fool the audience. Is that what we are so proud of? Is that what the “100 years” have brought us? Illusions via which emotions can be communicated? ... By the individual artist’s free choice of trickery?

Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters’ inner lives justify the plot is too complicated, and not “high art”. As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise.
The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love.

To DOGME 95 the movie is not illusion!
Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind.

DOGME 95 counters the film of illusion by the presentation of an indisputable set of rules known as THE VOW OF CHASTITY.

And here's the Vow of Chastity:

"I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.

10. The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY."

Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995

On behalf of DOGME 95

Lars von Trier Thomas Vinterberg

Now, for anyone who's into film this is pretty damn interesting stuff altogether. It raises some very good points also, but to fully grasp the meaning of all this you really would have to see a film that has adhered to the strict rules of the Vow of Chastity.

The first film made to the rules is Festen, and when I saw it only last year, after learning about Dogme 95, it really did bring into question a lot of the unnessicary 'gloss' behind Hollywood films with heavy post-production and lots special effects. It even brings to question lighting as being somewhat unnessicary in a lot of situations! Another factor is that it opens up to more low-budget productions being able to be produced after such a great film being filmed in essentially very low-tech and low-budget ways.

But really, the main accomplishment of the film in my personal view is that it's just a downright great movie, and opens up a lot of doorways as to what exactly can be done within the strict confines of the Dogme 95 style.

Personally, I find the Manifesto and Vow Of Chastity quite flawed (And I assume Von Trier found this himself also, as he's not done another Dogme film since The Idiots, and went on to do Dancer In The Dark which is a pure 'genre' movie, and contains some very superficial set peices) and one example I could give is the use of hand-held camera ONLY, and seeing as the manifesto itself sets out to be about the characters, and not about the illusions or trickery... Yet the camerawork can be extremely distracting to the point of drawing focus away from the story and the characters.

Overall, while I couldn't see myself making Dogme films anytime in the future, it's extremely an interesting concept to study, and makes perfect food-for-thought.

Thoughs?

SweetBirdOfTruth

in festen, in taking the handheld shakey-cam approach to the story, vinterberg has given the whole thing a cinema verite feel, and you get sucked into the story heart and soul. it's raw and it's immediate and it hits home in a way you find hard to imagine it hitting had it been filmed in a more conventional style.

but still there's something rotting in this danish state-of-the-ark naturalism. and that's the whole dogme manifesto. the problems i have are not with festen the film, but rather with dogme the movement.

there is little or nothing original in the dogme brethern's new puritanism. every few years a bunch of new puritans comes along, only to be subsumed into the machine they rage against. in the eight years since dogme arrived - and the five since festen took screens by storm - the shakey-cam verite-feel has been embraced by dozens of films. the dogme aesthetic has become just another trick of the trade, sometimes deployed to great effect, and sometimes just another trick in the game of getting bums of seats. look at a film like full frontal (you don't have to actually look at it, it really isn't all that good) and consider how much of the publicity for it centered on the rules soderbergh drew up for the cast and how little on the actual film itself. look at keeping-it-real films like thirteen (again, the previous disclaimer holds true) and answer honestly whether you really believe there is anything inthem beyond their faux-real looks. look at crap irish indie fare like the honeymooners, no budget so he claims it's a dogma film simply becuase he can only afford a camaraman with parkinson's.

consider issues like dogme giving the director no official screen credit. but it won't take you even a minute's googling to find vinterberg's name attached to festen. it may not be there in the screen, but it's no secret. these are not alan smithee movies. ok, so they're against the auteur theory, quite communist in fact in wanting to credit the film to all involved in its making. but if the director is going to get a cameo (vinterberg plays a taxi driver in festen) shouldn't all the other behind-the-scenes people, down to the foley artist or the boom operator not also get their fifteen seconds of screen-time? but as vinterberg himself admits of dogme, "the result is some pretty auteur-like films."

or look at the flash editing. though telling less than twenty-four hours in the life of this family, festen took six weeks to shoot, and those six weeks show in the editing which is a tricksey as it comes. dogme's anti-style posturing is just that, posturing. look at festen on the stage (the recent polish production that played the abbey, the english version that was in london last month) and tell me why it couldn't have been filmed in a couple of days.

or how about the borrowings from movies that dogme's anti-style style suggests would better be left rotting on the shelves of film libraries? vinterberg suggests that the true model of his dysfunctional family in festen is the corelones. one scene, he openly admits, is pure plagarism from ingmar bergman's fanny and alexander. the influences of shakespeare and chekov are admitted by vinterberg's co-writer, morgens rukov. festen is heavily indebted to the past, yet dogme seems to be suggesting that the past needs to be swept away. (only if, of course, you take dogme seriously.)

the whole rules game can be a bit of a pain in the arse. i've read the new puritans and their rules, various oulipian writers, from queneau through to ryman's hyper-texted drivel, 253, and i've even listened to bands like the ravonettes and in only a few instances has the use of rules seemed anything other than an excuse for a lack of original thought. freedom itself may be considered stifling, but there is nothing more stifling to creativity than silly and senselessly arbitrary rules that are not made to be broken. the only good rule is, after all, a broken one.

occasionally, arbitrary rules such as those drawn up by the dogme signatories can be inspiring. but the rules of dogme are just that, rules, and followed too literally they will create a uniform product. and, at the day's end, it is the very existence of such homogenised product that they were - allegedly - formulated to fight against. it produces that which it condemed in the first place. dogme films look and feel like dogme films, shakey cam hiding a lack of substance to many of the stories.

the point, i guess, is that a set of rules as to how films should me made is rubbish, suggesting as it does that rules didn't exist before. all films have rules and the great films are made when those involved know where to throw the rule book out the window and where to follow the rules (look, for example, at citizen kane and all the rules wells rewrote for it). style and substance cannot really be seperated, one cannot exist without the other. the manner in which a film is shot should be dictated by what that film is trying to achieve, not by a group manifesto. style and substance support one and other, are mutual. check out godard's views on this, or sontag's views on this. the rules of dogme - the so called vow of chastity - simply do not suit all stories.

i am only too willing to concede that many modern movies are effects-driven, or vehicles for stars to preen and prance around all actorly or sell merely on the basis of the director's name. but dogme will not reverse this. only audiences can. and as long as audiences continue to sheepishly flock to the films they sheepishly flock to, then those films will continue to be made.

SweetBirdOfTruth

von trier himself, is, of course, the most interesting of the dogme directors. but it is his non-dogma films i like, not his dogma ones. the element of crime and europa are brilliant homages to old cinema. dogville is simply fantastic. and the five obstructions is compulsively wathacble and opens up the most questions about both von trier and the whole dogma mobvement.

do the vows of chastity that make up dogme's manifesto, coupled in the five obstructions with the hurdles he set jorgen leth, amount to the ten commandments and seven deadly sins, prohibitions central to von trier's new found faith? von trier has always displayed catholic tastes but is the catechism of catholicism now the main force driving von trier - the usa trilogy, with dogville as its first instalment, seems to be setting a world in which we (grace) must fall (adam) before we can rise again (jesus). are von trier's films nothing more than his exploration of his new found faith?

what's great about the five obstructions is the way it shows leth reacting to and against the rules imposed upon him - never accepting them blindly, always seeking a way to subvert them. each time von trier sets leth an obstruction, leth turns it on it's head, rising to each challenge set him.

viewed as a game of chess, it is, as von trier finally accepts, the attacker who is left exposed. leth prefers a boxing analogy: "i decided to lie back and listen to what he said and then respond to it. i like the idea of how muhammad ali beat george foreman by lying back on the ropes and absorbing the blows."

von trier's belief is that leth uses film to distance himself from the story he is telling, and the obstructions von trier sets leth aim to remove that distance. the resulting film, von trier feels, will be terrible, but that is just a means to an end, the film itself doesn't really matter, it is the journey he thinks it will force leth to undertake that matters. but having watched von trier's own films, it's hard to be sure how much of von trier himself in in his own films and how much he has used stylistic indulegences to hide himself behind. as with dogme, in the five obstructions, von trier is himself the thing he is arguing against.

SweetBirdOfTruth

by the by. does anyone know if any of von trier's porno films are done dogma style?

MrGump

Sorry but im too lazy to read posts that long.


I liked what i saw of Dogme for its anti-American stance. Dogme is Dead though. Just watch Von Trier's or Vinterberg's more recent work. I did like Dogville though.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump
Sorry but im too lazy to read posts that long.


I liked what i saw of Dogme for its anti-American stance. Dogme is Dead though. Just watch Von Trier's or Vinterberg's more recent work. I did like Dogville though.

ok, i'll keep this one brief now i know you have add. what's anti-american about dogme? specific examples would help.

MrGump

Basically i like how they will show negative aspects of america, the corruption of the mid-America, the suppression of the worker etc.. (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville)* Its not in every film but in some.

Other then that the manifesto is totally anti-American, or if not anti-American then at least against the American idea of how film should be made. To highlight one of the beliefs that Hungus took from the site

" The director must not be credited"

Wasn’t it Hollywood that really first credited directors?






*i know what i said about dogville in my last post:)

Karl Hungus

Fantastic post, sweet bird...

Originally posted by MrGump
Basically i like how they will show negative aspects of america, the corruption of the mid-America, the suppression of the worker etc.. (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville)* Its not in every film but in some.

Other then that the manifesto is totally anti-American, or if not anti-American then at least against the American idea of how film should be made. To highlight one of the beliefs that Hungus took from the site

" The director must not be credited"

Wasn’t it Hollywood that really first credited directors?

*i know what i said about dogville in my last post:)

I'd like to point out that neither Dancer In The Dark, or Dogville are Domge films... Just Lars Von Trier films, and whatever stance they may take, or point they have to prove against America, aren't exactly Dogme stances.

The manifesto I'd say is far more anti-hollywood than anti-america, unless that you want to argue that all american film making is hollywood film making and vice versa. Which to be honest, I don't beleive.

joe_chicken

dogme 95 is pants

film-makers should be able to take any aspect of film making (be it sound engineering, prop design, CGI....) put them together and make it into a good film.


bad film makers let this stuff get in the way of the most important thing in a movie....the story

there should be an anti dogme revolution....

that would be alot harder....make a film that uses as much glitsy crap as possible and come out with a good movie

MrGump

id like to remind u i said i know dogville isnt, but i think that dancer is heavily influenced by dogme.


"In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not!"

what was the means- New Hollywood

And yeah i agree that Hollywood and America arent the same, but its totally arguable that they were at one time, and that's what Dogme is against.

And Joe- it is pants- Good Films with an unrealistic agenda.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump
Basically i like how they will show negative aspects of america, the corruption of the mid-America, the suppression of the worker etc.. (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville)* Its not in every film but in some.

Other then that the manifesto is totally anti-American, or if not anti-American then at least against the American idea of how film should be made. To highlight one of the beliefs that Hungus took from the site

" The director must not be credited"

Wasn’t it Hollywood that really first credited directors?

*i know what i said about dogville in my last post:)

was it hollywood that first created directors? probly if you believe film started in hollywood. check your facts, maybe.

neither dancer in the dark not dogville are dogme movies - try and find a dogme film to support your argument that dogme is anti-american. if those two films are your only evidence then you're on very shakey ground, as neither is anti-americn. they are simply called that by some zenophobic american critics. dogville in point of fact can be effortlessly read as being pro-american.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by joe_chicken

bad film makers let this stuff get in the way of the most important thing in a movie....the story

if films are only about stories then maybe you should just stick to reading. films are not just about stories. they are a complex mixture of many elements, one of which can be story, but story does not always have to be the pre-eminent part of that mix.

MrGump

Im sorry but Hollywood was the first industry to truely acknowledge the director as the creative force behind the film. FACT! That isnt to say before that the director was seen as nobody in the film process, but hollywood really made THE DIRECTOR.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump

And yeah i agree that Hollywood and America arent the same, but its totally arguable that they were at one time, and that's what Dogme is against.

so dogme is a reaction against old hollywood? is that what you are now arguing? yet we know that von trier is massively in love with old hollywood, and shows that love in his films. not sure i can figure your argument out - it looks like a bucket full of holes, incapable of holding water.

MrGump

Im talking about new hollywood (60s+) not old.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump
Im sorry but Hollywood was the first industry to truely acknowledge the director as the creative force behind the film. FACT! That isnt to say before that the director was seen as nobody in the film process, but hollywood really made THE DIRECTOR.

now you're talking about the auteur throry, not about crediting directors.

if you want to argue that that started in hollywood, maybe you could offer a date - to the nearest decade will do. there's many v early c20th european films that are not only credited to directors, but fully supporting the auteur theory.

if you weren't suffering from add you'd have read in one of the earlier posts that vintberg himself admits that dogme produces "some pretty auteur-like films."

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump
Im talking about new hollywood (60s+) not old.

sp post 1960's hollywood is america, that's your argument? sorry bud, but utter bollix. there's more to american movies than hollywood and there's more to america than hollywood movies.

joe_chicken

if films are only about stories then maybe you should just stick to reading. films are not just about stories. they are a complex mixture of many elements, one of which can be story, but story does not always have to be the pre-eminent part of that mix.

thats my point...if you read what i said



the trouble about style is that very few film makers are any good at making a good stylish movie....

if you could mix style with content ....

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by MrGump

"In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not!"

what was the means- New Hollywood

new hollwood was NOT the answer - the new wave was the response. can't you even read the next couple of lines after the one you quoted? new wave came out of europe, and was eventually subsumed into hollywood.

look, i'm sorry, but so far nothing you've said has stood up to even the slightest breeze. please, try and start talking sense.

SweetBirdOfTruth

Originally posted by joe_chicken
thats my point...if you read what i said



the trouble about style is that very few film makers are any good at making a good stylish movie....

if you could mix style with content ....

that was not your point, your point was that films are about story. read what you wrote, to which i responsed to. you admit that other elements exist but argue that story comes first and most importantly. i told you it doesn't.

as for the notion of mixin style and content - do you seriously believe one can exist without the other? really?!?

joe_chicken

have you seen dancer in the dark???

joe_chicken

there should be an anti dogme revolution....
that would be alot harder....make a film that uses as much glitsy crap as possible and come out with a good movie

read what i said......i think story is the most important thing it doesnt mean its all that matters

style and content dont always exist together...

ixoy

How many decent dogme movies have there been, out of curiosity? I'm assuming we can count von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" as an example? However, in that - and indeed most of his movies - I found a certain amount of artistic indulgence.

I think it was entertainment.ie that, when reviewing Dogville, said there could be no mistake whose movie this really was (and no, he didn't mean Kidman). In theory the whole bare bones approach is reasonably interesting, isn't it quite haughty to claim this is somehow more real, imply that it's somehow better than other Hollywood fare?

Imagine telling David Lean to take a bare bones attitude - who needs "Lawrence of Arabia"'s epic quality anyway? Or hey, Mr. Kubrick, use handheld cameras - it's not like your wide angle shots, or use of artificial lighting in beautiful ways was of any note (and yes, before somehow says it, I know "Barry Lyndon" used natural lighting).
The Dogme movie smacks of a few directors hoping alone that by enforcing rules on style, that the content will somehow be improved. At best, I guess, it forces the content to stand up to far greater scrutiny which is not always a good thing (would we really want the raw-emotion, in your face, attiude all the time?)/.

Miguel_Sanchez

As far as I know no film has ever adhered fully to the Dogme manifesto. That's what I've been told anyway. Apparently there's always some small slip here or there. But I could be wrong, apparently it's been known to happen.

The Dogme website says 35 films have been made.

http://www.dogme95.dk/dogme-films/dogme-films.htm