On the occasion of her 41st General Assembly INTERFILM, in cooperation with SteerCom member Jes Nysten, and Bo Torp Pedersen, president of her Danish partner organisation „Kirke og Film“, organised a seminar from July 10-13, 2010, in Copenhagen. The event has been supported by the Danish Film Insitute, the Christian P. Hansen and Wife Foundation, and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Headed “Dogma and Beyond”, it referred to the “Dogma 95” manifesto which was launched at the 100th anniversary of cinema in 1995 by four Danish film directors: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, and Sören Kragh-Jacobsen, also called the “Dogma Brothers”. They layed down ten rules for a renewal of film art which they labelled “Vow of Chastity”.
Film productions respecting these rules received a certificate introducing the film’s opening credits. They forbade special effects, artificial lighting, and force of arms, and prescribed to apply a hand held camera, as well as to shoot at original settings. After “Celebration” by Thomas Vinterberg, and “Idiots” by Lars von Trier, the first two Dogma films, having been invited to Cannes in 1998, Dogma 95 stirred up a controversial discussion, and inspired a number of followers. In 2002, the Dogma office which had issued the certificates was closed. Different numbers circulate about how many Dogma films were made. An online list based on self-applications has 254 titles, some of them obviously being deaf nuts. At the closing of the Dogma office 31 films were registered officially. After all, Dogma had effects far beyond those figures.
At the beginning Danish film critic Liselotte Michelsen introduced the Dogma movement, drawing upon extracts of the documentary “The Purified” (De lutrede, Denmark 2002) by Jesper Jargil. The film clearly illustrates the ambivalent and ironic attitude of the Dogma protagonists which for instance marks their playful reference to religious concepts and rhetorics. Michelsen especially emphasised two merits of Dogma: a cinematography set free from the predominance of technical efforts, and spontaneous acting not being restricted by a detailed script. The unleashing by a digital, mobile hand-held camera however did not meet approval only but also critical objections. They blame Dogma to abandon the demands of visual expression and a careful composition of images and to foster a tiring bulk of blurred or swish panned film sequences instead, being ennobled by Dogma and claiming to represent avantgarde cinema.
In retrospect the Dogma manifesto above all appears to be a successful marketing concept to promote a more or less ambitious, low-budget auteur cinema, and a movement of defence and self-reliance against the growing dominance and concentration on Hollywood blockbuster cinema. An example for this strategy are the Zentropa Studios founded in 1992 by Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbæk Jensen which produced a number of Dogma films, the first being “Idiots”. Peter Albæk himself explained the background of the company to the participants which relies on the idea of decentralised production units, and producer Ib Tardini, with “Italian for Beginners” having turned out the most popular Dogma film, guided a tour through the studio grounds. Meanwhile Zentropa is the biggest independent film production company in Scandinavia and has established a number of production offices in several European countries. Hans-Christian Schmid’s “Storm” for instance was coproduced by Zentropa.
Mikael Larsson, theologian and consultant for cultural affairs of the Church of Sweden, in his lecture rather emphasised the implicit effects of Dogma on Swedish film artists. Focussing on Lukas Moodysson („Fucking Amål“) and Roy Andersson („Songs from the Second Floor“), the most remarkable auteurs of contemporary Swedish cinema, he found a similar social criticism and aesthetic radicalism exploring the realm of modern subjecitivity. The similarities, Larsson explained, can be recognised better in their artistic self definition than in stylistic features complying with the Dogma rules. (To read the lecture, please click here).
Finally Jes Nysten, pastor and film critic from Denmark, suggested a provisional evaluation of the Dogma movement in general. He referred to the end of Jesper Jargil’s documentary once again when Lars von Trier notes that a true Dogma film has not been created yet. From this notion, a mixture of pretention, irony and provocation characterising many of von Trier’s statements, Nysten developed an ambitious ideal of creation which he identified as constant impetus of Lars von Trier’s artistic work at least. True to his father figure, Carl Theodor Dreyer, whose teacup is stored in the Zentropa studios and around which the crew of finished films used to gather in order to baptise the new work, von Trier appears to regard his accomplishments only as preliminary steps to an imagined chef d’œuvre. For Dreyer, it was his Christ project he worked on for decades but never finished. When Lars von Trier accidentally met the participants in the Zentropa cafeteria they asked him about his next film. He only revealed its title: “Melancholia”.
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