What is Danish Dogme?

Danish Dogme or ‘Dogme 95’ was a Danish avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity".

These were rules to create films based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, while excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. It was supposedly created as an attempt to "take back power for the directors as artists" as opposed to the movie studio.

Von Trier and Vinterberg were later joined by Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, forming a group known as the Dogme 95 Collective or the Dogme Brethren. French-American filmmaker Jean-Marc Barr and American filmmaker Harmony Korine are also seen as major figures in the movement. Breaking the Waves (1996), von Trier's first film under his own production company Zentropa, became the precursor of the movement.

Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg wrote and co-signed the manifesto and its companion "vows". Vinterberg said that they wrote the pieces in 45 minutes. The manifesto initially mimics the wording of François Truffaut's 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" in Cahiers du cinéma.

They announced the Dogme movement on March 13, 1995, in Paris, at Le cinéma vers son deuxième siècle conference. The cinema world had gathered to celebrate the first century of motion pictures and contemplate the uncertain future of commercial cinema. Called upon to speak about the future of film, Lars von Trier showered a bemused audience with red pamphlets announcing "Dogme 95".

In response to criticism, von Trier and Vinterberg have both stated that they just wanted to establish a new extreme: "In a business of extremely high budgets, we figured we should balance the dynamic as much as possible."

In 1996, the movement took Breaking the Waves as the main inspiration by ethos, although the film breaks many of the movement's "rules", including built sets, post-dubbed music, violence, and computer graphics in the end of the film.

Like The French New Wave, Italian Neorealism and Nuascannán, Dogme 95 has been described as a defining period in low-budget film production.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rise of Nuascannán AKA Lo-Fi Cinema

Image
The Rise of Nuascannán AKA Lo-Fi Cinema The emergence of Nuascannán represents a radical departure from the traditional industrial complex of cinema - signaling the birth of a sovereign, digital-first "reality" that prioritizes the human spirit over algorithm. This movement, originally rooted in the Irish independent film scene but expanding into a global network of "guerilla" creators, is defined by its lo-fi textures, liminal spaces and a "brutalist" approach to emotional honesty. By abandoning the "invading army" scale of studio production, these filmmakers utilize the inconspicuous nature of digital cameras to capture truths that are often edited or airbushed out of the mainstream. At the bedrock of this movement lie Graham Jones’ early movies - particularly his debut feature HOW TO CHEAT IN THE LEAVING CERTIFICATE. That film served as the "Big Bang" for Nuascannán, utilizing a high-contrast, black-and-white aesthetic to capture the...
Read more

The Spirit of the Shore: The Left Bank Film Movement

Image
  While the French New Wave ( La Nouvelle Vague ) is often synonymous with the rebellious, handheld energy of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, a more cerebral, poetic, and structurally daring sibling emerged simultaneously across the Seine. This was the Left Bank group ( Rive Gauche ). While the "Right Bank" filmmakers (the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd) were obsessive cinephiles reacting against the "tradition of quality" in French cinema, the Left Bank directors were intellectuals, modernists, and practitioners of other arts who viewed film as an extension of literature, philosophy, and political activism. 1. Defining the Left Bank Identity The distinction between the two groups is largely geographical and professional. The Right Bank directors hung out at the Cinémathèque Française and wrote film criticism. The Left Bank group—headlined by Alain Resnais , Agnès Varda , and Chris Marker —lived and worked in the Montparnasse district. Unlike their counterparts, ...
Read more

THE RANDOMERS and the Nuascannán study of digital intimacy

Image
If Nola and the Clones was a scream from the streets, Jones' earlier movie  The Randomers (2014) was a whisper from a cramped Irish west coast bedsit. This film is the movement's quintessential "Chamber Piece," a deep dive into the atomization of modern life and the awkward, transactional nature of 21st-century relationships. It represents a genuine pillar of the ethos: The Sanctity of the Small. It argues that the most cinematic landscape in existence is not a sprawling modern vista, but the microscopic shifts of expression on a human face during a difficult conversation and the beautiful rural Irish landscape behind them. The plot is a masterpiece of Nuascannán simplicity. A 23 yr old woman advertises in a kind of old-fashioned and equally lo-fi Irish way. She advertises for a relationship with a man - just no speaking. No verbalising. No words.  As for the technical "lo-fi" specs of The Randomers , they are essential to its power. By using hand held ci...
Read more