TECHNIQUE DOGME 95
DOGME 95 This back-to-basics filmmaking movement might seem like a relic from the past in today’s tech-driven filmmaking landscape, but the Dogme principles live on, finds Oliver Webb TECHNIQUE I n March 1995, at a conference in Paris celebrating cinema’s centenary, Danish director Lars von Trier threw red flyers into the Dogme called out those filmmakers for going against everything they initially stood for. With its anti-bourgeois terms, the manifesto was interpreted by many as a joke response to the current state of filmmaking. Nonetheless, its founders stood by their set of rules (mostly) and
and in order to be stamped with the seal of approval, each film was required to comply to every one of the strict ten rules. Despite pioneering them, von Trier and Vinterberg both broke these rules on occasion. Festen broke rule number four by covering a window with black material to block light, as well as using digital MiniDV cameras instead of standard Academy 35mm film. The Idiots used artificial lighting equipment and added non-diegetic music in post-production. While some critics saw the movement as gimmicky, Dogme 95 was a radical concept that proved compelling stories could be told with simple means. By stripping back the artifice of filmmaking, the movement
audience, announcing the birth of a new movement: Dogme 95. Written on them was a manifesto he had created with director Thomas Vinterberg. The document opened with several statements before detailing that: ‘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.’ Although inspired by the French New Wave and Francois Truffaut’s essay ‘A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema’,
created groundbreaking films such as Festen and the controversial The Idiots . Other Danish filmmakers such as Susanne Bier also released certified Dogme films, with 2002’s Open Hearts . Filmmakers from outside of Denmark also began to take notice. Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy was the first non-European film to be made under the vows of chastity. Between 1995 and 2005, 35 official Dogme films were made,
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