dogmatic film movement gets local screening
by Kirill Galetski
In the 100-year history of cinema, the world has seen almost no truly international film aesthetics movements. Most films are not challenging, due to the comfortable routine of increasingly complex and garish entertainments from Hollywood. Dogme95, or Dogma Filmmakers, as they have come to be called, are small but growing group of film artists who have willingly created a reactionary film movement. The first three films from the movement, "The Celebration (Festen)," "The Idiots (Idioterne)," and "Mifune's Last Song (Mifunes sidste sang)" are being shown together for the first time in St. Petersburg at the Spartak. The three-film retrospective is being sponsored by the Cinema Without Borders (Kino Bez Granits) home video company, which has also released the films on video in Russia. Thomas Vinterberg's "The Celebration," subtitled as Dogme1 using the movement's cataloging system, is an exploration of what happens when too many of one family's dark secrets are revealed at the family patriarch's 60th birthday celebration. Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots," the second dogma film, is the unabashedly frank story of a group of diverse, intelligent Danish people who come together in a group and feign mental retardation in social situations, each for his or her personal reasons. Sшren Kragh-Jacobsen's "Mifune's Last Song" deals with the painful choices a young man must make when his father dies, like returning to the family farm and caring for his "mentally challenged" brother. The aim of the austere aesthetics of Dogme95, originally drawn up by Vinterberg and Von Trier, is to "counter 'certain' tendencies in cinema today." One of these tendencies is the aforementioned Hollywood syndrome of mounting films that have all sorts of visual and aural trappings - special effects, hip soundtracks - but are ultimately empty. The Dogma is a set of rules to follow which essentially force the film maker to stick to the basics- location camera and sound, a well-written story and acting. "The advantage of the rules is also that they ensure a great freedom of movement during the shooting," notes Vinterberg, "While nearly all other filmmaking instruments have been stripped away, what remain are the two most essential of instruments to a director, the story and the acting talent. Dogme95 allows me to focus on these instruments to an extreme degree." One can see how Von Trier has been moving in this direction. His films "Europa" (known as "Zentropa" in the U.S.), "Breaking the Waves," and the TV miniseries "The Kingdom," all of which have achieved fame or notoriety due to their cinematic daring, can all be seen as stepping stones to his partial creation and total acceptance of all the tenets of the movement. "There is an implicit duplicity in the Dogme95 Manifesto," declares Von Trier, "On the one hand it contains deep irony, and on the other it is most seriously meant. Irony and seriousness are interlinked and inseparable. What we have concerned ourselves with is the making of a set of rules. In this sense it is a kind of play, a game called 'rule-making'. Seriousness and play go hand in hand. A clear example of this is that the very strict and serious Manifesto was actually written in only 25 minutes and under continuous bursts of laughter. Still, we maintain that we are in earnest. Dogme is not for fun." Despite these claims, any iron-clad set of rules is ultimately limiting, and there have been some legitimate criticisms of the Dogma movement, from the resulting in-your-face hand-held style, to the notion that Dogme95 has mushroomed into little more than a PR stunt. Is Dogme95 just more shameless commercialism, albeit in a different form? "Most definitely not," asserts Von Trier, "While the ideas behind the Dogme95 Manifesto were born out of honest analysis it is true that the enormous international and local success of the first three dogme films has to a degree turned 'dogme' into a commercial gimmick - a PR stunt. That is fine with us. After all we are missionaries for the message." Nonetheless, the movement has managed to attract an array of low-budget filmmakers who have an affinity for the aesthetics. The principal perpetrators refer to their Dogma colleagues as "brothers." Indeed the movement finds soul brothers in such people as Harmony Korine, director of the notoriously weird independent film "Gummo," and Rick Schmidt, the man who wrote a well-known book on low-budget filmmaking called "Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices." The best summary of the appeal of the movement is provided by Jacobsen: "In every musician's life there comes a time and place where you want to go back to basics, where you want to play unplugged. That's what Dogme95 is about." For dates and times, check listings.For information on Dogma films and filmmakers consult the official Dogme95 Web site, www.dogme95.dk
|
Перевести на русский
Print this article
