02 noviembre, 2014

Dogme 95: The last reaction of the 20th century against the cinematographic establishment.




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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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andermann, Jens & Fernández Bravo, Álvaro (2013) New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality Effects (New Directions in Latino American Cultural Series) New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Astruc, Alexandre (1948) The Birth of a New Avant-Barde: Le camera-stylo. Originally published in ‘L’Ecran francaise, March 30th 1948.  
Björkman, Stig. 2003. Trier on von Trier. London: Faber and Faber.
Cousins, Mark (2006). The Story of Film. London: Pavilion Books.
Duno Gottberg, Luis (2007) Un Nuevo Dogma, Viejas reminiscencias:Dogma 95 y el cine lanitoamericano (‘Fuckland’ y ‘Residencia’). Florida Atlantic University: http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero36/dogmala.html
Elster, Jon (2002) Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints. Oxford University Press.
García, María & Luna, María del Rosario (2012). Influencia del Dogma 95 en las narraciones del cine argentino. Revista Comunicación, N 10, Vol. 1.
Gombrich, Ernst H. (2007). The Story of Art. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
Hjort, Mette (2005) Small nation, global cinema : the new Danish cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kelly, Richard. 2000. The Name of this Book is Dogme95. London: Faber and Faber.
Neimann Susanna & Stjernfelt, Agnete Dorpg (2005). Film. Special Issue: Dogme. Danish Film Institute. 
Resultatkontrakt 1999-2002Virksomhedsregnskab 1998, Det Danske Filminstitut. DFI, digital archive.
Sánchez, José Luis (2000) Dogma 95 o la reinvención del relato audiovisual. El Ciervo, Año 49, No. 586. Enero.
Schepelern, Peter. (2000) Lars von Triers film: Tvang og befrielse. Copenhagen: Rosinante.
Schepelern, Peter (2013): After The Celebration: The Effect of Dogme on Danish Cinema. Kosmorama #251 (www.kosmorama.org)
Schepelern, Peter (2014) Lars von Trier: The early years. In Coursera. Scandinavian Film & Television: Lars von Trier and Dogma 95, Part 1. University of Copenhagen
Truffaut, François (1954) A Certain Tendency in French Film. In Nichols, Bill (1976) Movies and Methods. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Trier, Lars & Vinterberg, Thomas (1995) Dogma 95. Copenhagen, Moday 13th, March.
Volk, Stefan (2005). Film-Dienst. No. 8, May 2005.

FILMS

Espinosa, Artemio (2004) Residencia. Chile
Jarmusch, Jim (1984) Stranger than Paradise. United States: Cinesthesia Productions Inc.
Korine, Harmony (1991) Julien Donkey-Boy. United States.
Lee, Spike (2000) Bamboozled. United States: New Line Cinema
Marques, Jose Luis (200) Fuckland. Argentina
Soderbergh, Steven (2002) Full Frontal. United States: Miramax Films
Trier, Lars. (1994) The Kingdom. Copenhagen: Zentropa
Trier, Lars. (1998) The Idiots. Copenhagen: Zentropa

Vinterberg, Thomas (1998) The Celebration. Copenhagen: Zentropa

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