Back in 1992 Lars von Trier,
the Danish director who invented the “von” of his name to be sarcastic, came up
with a no less ironic strategy to challenge the establishment of cinema, and
most particularly, Hollywood manner of producing and distributing films. He
wanted to provide a more democratic and low-cost alternative for directors to
make films. But not knowing what to do yet, he thought of creating something with the word Dogme –Danish word for Dogma- because it contained elements of
truth that could not be questioned, and as he says, also because the word ‘felt
good in the mouth’ (In Schepelern, 2014). Two years later, Trier made The Kingdom (1994), a TV mini-series in
which he experimented with deliberately faulty visuals and shaky handheld shots
in order to create a more realistic cinematographic style. In such occasion he
also conducted the shooting by ignoring some conventions such as the classical
180° rule in order to simplify and reduce the cost of the process (2000: 171).
In 1995, together with Thomas Vinterberg, Trier would come up with an
influential proposal to redefine the way films were being made: Dogme 95’s
manifesto.
In what follows, this essay will refer to
Dogme 95 as a positive programme that explicitly outlines a method of
filmmaking. Hence, embedded in a long tradition of film manifestos, we will address
such movement as an ascetic approach to filmmaking that added new aesthetic and
technical criteria to make and read films. Some connections with South American
productions, the Indie circuit and its influence to the Danish film industry
today will be addressed here in order to illustrate the scope that this
movement has achieved in our film culture. Furthermore, by analysing Dogme 95’s
contributions to the field, this essay will state that the manifest emerges in
a moment of history where a digital shift was taking place in cinema: Hence, it
contributions for the industry can only be understood under this broader
paradigmatic move.
In the history of cinema, manifestos have been
written since the early decades of the XX century. Regarded as continuous
initiatives and vanguards, they have offered an alternative as much as a
reaction against the establishment of the cinematographic industry. In 1920,
Dziga Vertov wrote several texts attacking bourgeois films and calling the
attention towards documentary as a medium that expresses and develops a kino-pravda, what we know as film truth (2005:
6). A couple of decades later, in 1956 Lindsay Anderson’s Free Cinema Manifesto
would also be directed against the propagandistic goals and box office appeals
of British films. At around the same time, the Italian neorealism broke through
by the writings of Cesare Zavattini who outlined the major thoughts of the
movement. As suggested by Neimann and Stjernfelt, the Italian manifesto had an
important influence on filmmakers everywhere (2005). Such is the case among the
members behind the revolutionary Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in South America
during the 1960 (Duno, 2007) or most particularly, among the young French
filmmakers who founded the French New Wave in the same decade. In the latter, two
documents were crucial not only to develop the main ideas of the French group,
but also to stand as a pillar towards the figure of the auteur that started to proliferate and shape and alternative cinematographic
discourse: Alexandre Astruc’s Le
camera-stylo (1948) and François Truffaut’s A Certain Tendency in
French Film (1954).
Dogme 95 clearly shares a common ground with
the earlier manifestos. It borrowed strategies and learned from its different perspectives
to call for change, freedom and more realism in our film culture. However, as scholar
Peter Schepelern observes, most manifestos would stop at this point, whereas
Dogme 95 goes a step forward in offering a practical solution: ‘While [all
these] movements came with declarations and intentions, the originality of the
Dogme manifesto relied in the fact that it explicitly offered a particular
method of filmmaking, it outlined a positive program to proceed not in abstract
terms but in very literal form’ (2013: 6). This might be an important reason
why Dogme 95 has been evaluated as “one of the most important events in the
European film history of the 20th century” (Volk, 2005: 8).
It was during the spring of 1995, exactly one
hundred years since the first film shown by the Lumiere Brothers, when the
initial Dogme group, composed by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vintenber, was
invited to attend a conference in Paris regarding the future of film: Le
cinéma vers son deuxième siècle. This commemorative occasion seems to have
been a suitable time for the Danish directors to announce their program: Dogme
95 would be proposed as a new approach to filmmaking. As described in the
manifest itself, It intended to present a ‘rescue mission’ (2005: 2) against
the entertainment cinema of Hollywood and a deconstruction of the concept of auteur. First, It stand as an opposed method of
filmmaking to the excess and glamour of the typically box office mainstream
film: ‘Dogme points out a new way to proceed and, perhaps even more so, ways to
get back to cinematic basics in films, renouncing external glamour in favour of
simple virtues (2005: 3) Second, Dogme is also a protest against the
establishment of avant-garde movements, stating that the director ‘must refrain
from personal taste [and] ‘from creating a work’ (1995: 2) In other words, it
means that the filmmaker should give up being an artist. What is interesting to observe in this regard
is that even when Dogme 95’s apparent intention is to free itself from any
notion of aesthetics, the result of its philosophy -deliberately or not- encourages
more artistic originality and less old conventions. Its filmmaking methods
based in modest equipment –guiding directors away from the big technical
machinery- and the focus on intense acting delivered at length –sometimes for
twenty minutes without interruption- allow now the audience to watch a film
that is not only more original, but that simultaneously looks more spontaneous.
Such simplicity might also be read as the result of the use of handheld camera
and several other prohibitions described in its ‘Vow of Chastity’ (1995: 1).
Indicative of these constrains are the exclusion of artificial lighting in the
shooting process and later corrections in postproduction of picture and sound.
In this vein, it seems contradictory for the
manifesto to pretend to avoid ‘any good taste [and] any aesthetics’ (1995:2).
In line with Jon Elster’s readings of constraints (2002), Dogme 95’s technical
limits and various prohibitions deliberately search to enhance creativity and
to compel the director to radical innovation. As a matter of fact, Trier
himself has clearly stressed that Dogme 95 is “an artistic concept” (In Schepelern, 2013: 21). Echoing Jesper
Jargil, this is why Dogme ‘fundamentally means that if you encounter an
obstacle you must use it. It must be a source of inspiration. If you can’t work
within the limitations that this obstacle imposes you must come up with a
different alternative’ (In Neimann & Stjernfelt 2005: 15)
Dogme 95 made a huge international
breakthrough when Vinterberg’s The
Celebration (1998) and Trier’s The
Idiots (1998) were presented in the main competition at Cannes in 1998. It confirmed
to be, in many respects, an ascetic approach that added new freshness and
vitality to cinema culture. And as it has happened with previous manifestos,
Dogme 95 had an important aesthetic influence on filmmakers elsewhere since its
international arrival at Cannes. As Dieguez has noticed in relation to Latin
American cinema, the movement’s free adscription to low-budget filmmaking
methods fit the material scarcity of a continent in which the pureness of its
cinema comes from necessity rather than from free choice (In Duno Gottberg,
2007). As a way of example, in Argentina, at the middle of its profound
economic crises during the 1990s, the work of Scandinavian directors
subscribing to the manifesto had an important influence in the aesthetic and
narrative of local works. The key, as Luna and García point out, was that
‘Dogme 95 offered a password to produce innovative films on a low-budget basis’
(2012: 876). Such influence is best exemplified in the early films of Lisandro Alonso,
who’s ‘cinema of substructions and absences’ (2013: 296) has positioned him as one
of the most influential figures of Latin American cinema: For Alonso [as for Dogme 95] the idea has
been to make films “here and now”, using the spontaneity of the moment rather
than doing a lot of postproduction’ (2013: 296)
Dogme 95’s return to simplicity might also
have helped to strengthen the aesthetics of the Indie circuit. Arguably as a
consolidation of the already emergent new minimalist cinema of the 1980, the
Danish group was certainly canny to translate such trends in order to offer a
new point of departure. In fact, the handheld ascetic style of the Belgian brothers
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, or the ability for the actors to get into
character and perform in long and uninterrupted sequences in films such as Jim
Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise
(1984) showed already some light in this regard. Hence, it is not coincidence
that the works just described would be considered key elements to construct the
ideology of the Danish group (Schepelern, 2013). Furthermore, even when no
direct influence can be claimed here, the aesthetics employed by influential
contemporary cinematographers can only echoes a mix of this minimalist
tradition with more than a hint of Dogme style. Such is the case of
well-established filmmakers among which Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) and Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal (2002) stand out along with many others.
Despite this international influence and
aesthetic contribution offered by the movement, Dogme 95’s most direct
accomplishment has to be located in the international reputation given to
Danish cinema. To some extent, it branded Denmark internationally as a film
nation that had only enjoyed a similar reputation in the golden age of its
silent years (2013). That was a time for classic auteur such as Carl Theodor Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen to become
leading figures in the international arena. However, at the gates of the new
millennium, some of the Dogme 95 directors -such as Lars von Trier, Thomas
Vinterberg, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Susanne Bier- would emerge as important
figures of our cinematographic language, being constantly acclaim in the most
prestigious film festivals during the last decades. In this regard, in spite of
the more than 200 Dogme films that have been made -from other countries and
directors- only few of them have been considered to be relevant contributions
for the cinematographic field. Hence, even when the manifesto has meant to be
an international strategy (Schepelern, 2013) its influences should not be
located in the global adscription to the Dogme’s movement itself, but in the
proliferating Danish filmmakers arising from this initiative that have
contributed to enrich our cinematographic culture. At last, from a national
outlook, Dogme has also favoured to strengthen Danish films among both the
local audience and politicians. As observed in the data collected from Det
Danske Filminstitut (1999-2002), the State subsidy given to Danish
cinematographic endeavours increased radically since 1999: During the 1995-1998
period, the yearly budget for film development reached 100 million Danish
kroner, whereas in the following years –exactly at the time of the
international breakthrough of the two initial Dogme films in 1998- the budget
grew up from 144 million in 1999 to 224 million in 2001.
Described as the first meritocratic epoch for
cinema, the digital era in filmmaking made its international appearance during
the course of the 1990s, the same decade in which Dogme 95 was presented at the
Odeon Théatre de l’Europe in Paris. As scholar Mark Cousins has suggested: ‘the
possibilities to shoot on videotape with a small camera, the use of small
crews, editing on home computers and dubbling in the simplest of sound suites
meant that the world of film production was no longer a charmed one into which
only the lucky few could enter’ (2006: 434) Paradoxically to the clear
advantages of digital technologies to make films, the Danish group initially
called for a return to the old technological devices and methods. In fact, one
of the manifesto’s commandments clearly stated that films ‘must be shot on 35
mm film in Academy Format’ (1995: 2), rule that in the following months would
be violated by its creators, or more suitable for our arguments, adjust to the
breakthrough of the 1990’s new digital techniques. Once Trier has realized that
video might suits Dogme better (Björkman, 2003), the group decided that ‘this
rule should apply only to the distribution format’ (Kelly, 2000: 138). As a matter of fact, both The Celebration (1998) and The
Idiots (1998) were shot on video but distributed on 35 mm film. Similar
phenomena occurred in Argentina, where filmmakers started to shot in Mini DV to
later convert the moving image into 35mm film. In this way, on a low-budget
basis but truthful to the ascetic principles of the movement, several film
professionals from South America started to find alternatives to shot a ‘poor
and pure cinema’ (2012: 875) Here two important films ascribed to the Dogme
certificate: Argentinian Jose Luis Marques’ Fuckland
(2000) and Chilean Artemio Espinosa’s Residence
(2004).
Therefore, in relation to the first
meritocratic era of cinema described above, we are in a position to claim that
rather than influencing the digital shift in our filmmaking culture, Dogme 95
stand more as a consequence of such paradigmatic change; it became for the
history of film an artistic variation that offered, echoing Gombrich,
corrections to the schema and not a schema to be corrected (2007). However, where
I do see the movement’s direct contribution to the meritocratic spirit of the
time is in the fact that Dogme 95 stimulated discussions around questions of
access and voice in our society that went beyond the world of film. As stated
by Hjort. ‘Dogme 95 effectively mobilized and forged links between a series of
counter publics that were committed in various ways to challenge dominant
arrangements’ (2005: 64). As a way of example, Trier’s The Idiots (1998) can give us some light in this regard. The film
centres on the story of a woman who joins a group of disable young people and
with whom she spends some vacations of communal living and experimentation as
they confront the “normal” world together. As such, this work departs from a
very specific issue and depicts an existing set of prejudices against the
disabled. Once released, the film had an impact in the public and allowed for a
controversial debate around issues of disability in Europe. More particularly, it
was of great influence in promoting new laws regarding the disable in both
Britain and Norway (2005)
Considering some of the ways that Dogme 95 has
come to contribute to the aesthetics of film culture and by tracing its
connections with low-budget and digital filmmaking techniques, this essay has
intended to analyse the extends to which the Danish movement has influenced the
means by which films are being made today. Now, almost 20 years after its
presentation at the Odeon Théatre de l’Europe in Paris, Dogme 95 has remained
in our imaginary as an alternative as much as a provocation against the
establishment of the cinematographic industry: a manifest embedded in a long
tradition of reactions that have called for change, freedom and more creativity
in the field. Thus, it would not be surprising to see in the near future similar
initiatives and vanguards that question the landscape of our cinematographic
culture to contribute for a richer and more diverse production of films.
----------------------------
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