New Wave Film Evaluation

Upon Completion of my Dogme 95 text, I believe it was successful in portraying the conventions of the Dogme 95 movement, with heavy technical inspiration from Thomas Vinterberg's 'Festen' and Ake Sandgren's 'Truly Human', which is evident through the use of flash-panning (inspired by Truly Human) and through defiance of the 30 degree rule (as seen in Festen), with one cut actually having the camera not move at all. Due to the little time I had and the non-existent budget, I could not produce a stereotypically 'Dogme' narrative in the essence that it was not about a shocking, taboo subject, as seen throughout Festen through the means of child abuse, so I instead produced a text based around the ideas of paranoia and isolation, and how these can cause a frantic, erratic lifestyle, and I believe the style of filming and editing within the Dogme 95 movement portrays this message quite clearly. The slow shutter speed causes a lot of motion blur within the film, which is something I was looking for when producing the film, as this can be seen throughout Dogme texts, as when shooting with 35mm there is often quite a bit of motion blur. Unfortunately I was not able to use a 35mm camera as I was limited to the equipment I had at hand and had no budget, so therefore used a DSLR and adjusted the settings to allow for the best Dogme look I could gain. As I was creating a text based on the Dogme 95 movement, I could not experiment with lighting or add any colour to the scene, as this would be subverting the rules of the manifesto, so all lighting in the text had to be natural, therefore certain scenes are under-exposed due to lack of lighting. I also decided to produce the title sequence through just writing down the name of the film. I also decided to incorporate rolling dice into the film to add an element of randomness and luck, so I decided to produce the 'Dogme certification number' through rolling dice. Unfortunately, the  actual Dogme movement ended over 10 years ago, therefore I was not able to gain actual certification, but this would have severely added time to the pre-production, as I would have to wait for the film to be certified before filming. All sound and imagery was produced from the camera itself, as I did not use any professional recording equipment, however the microphone on the Canon 700D is significantly better than the base microphone on any camera I have experienced before, as there is very little that the microphone was unable to pick up. overall, I am very pleased with my text, because in my opinion it perfectly displays the rules of the Dogme movement.

New Wave Film

Contextual study evaluation

The first stage of studying the Dogme 95 movement was to gather information from a variety of sources so that I could begin to develop my overall understanding of the Dogme movement, firstly by uncovering who the directors were behind the initial concept of the Dogme movement. After this, the next logical step was to look into the rules that these directors would have to follow in order to abide to the Dogme manifesto, and looking into what exactly 'the vow of chastity' entailed. After my knowledge of the new wave had been vastly improved, I proceeded to view texts within the movement, and analyse the texts whilst having the 'ten commandments' of the Dogme manifesto in mind, in order to see if the directors followed every rule to the letter, often finding that directors would bend the rules to their full potential, or break one or two rules but still manage to produce a text that has an overall Dogme feel, such as with 'Truly Human', as Åke Sandgren subverted the rule that 'The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice-versa', as in some scenes there is non-diegetic sound. Most of the research I acquired was from books and online in order to study different people's interpretations of the text whilst I had my own opinion. Whilst studying these books, I was careful not to stray into anything that was not relevant to the essay I was producing, as with the essay I was not able to stray from the subject at hand as there was very little leeway to "colour outside the lines" so to speak. I believe that after my study of the Dogme 95 movement, I have developed an in-depth opinion of the new wave, and I will be able to produce a piece following the majority of the conventions of Dogme 95.

New Wave Film Planning

When shooting, I will use only natural lighting, in order to abide to the rules of the Dogme 95 movement. I plan on shooting all of the footage on location, as to obey the Vow of chastity that I have sworn to follow. This vow of chastity also states that I cannot use and non-diegetic sound, so I cannot use any soundtracks or sound effects. I will also not be able to credit myself as the director, the film cannot contain any action that is deemed superficial, it must be handheld and there cannot be any optical effects or filters, so no overplayed titles or credits. The film must also take place in the here and now, so it cannot be set in New York in 1957 for example. The only rule I cannot follow is that it must be in Academy 35mm, so to compensate for this I plan on adjusting the ratio on the camera to get squarer footage and to shoot with a low shutter speed so that it is grainier.

I plan on producing a text based on the subject of isolation and paranoia, based loosely on my own life, with the frantic nature of my life being portrayed in the film through the use of quick edits and sped-up footage. I also plan on writing out the titles and credits to follow the rule that there can be no optical effects. In terms of editing, I want the cuts to seem jarring, with at least one cut not following the 30 degree rule, as inspired by Vinterberg's 'Festen', and I also plan on producing quick panning cuts, as seen in Sandgren's 'Truly Human'. I plan on the narrative of the film to be very loose, with some improvised footage and little, if any, dialogue. I intend for an audience to gain their own reading from the text, so two people could gain completely different interpretations.

How was the Dogme 95 movement influenced and how has it since influenced directors?

The new wave of Dogme 95 was created in order to re-introduce realism into cinema, as they believed that cinema was becoming 'illusions via which emotions can be communicated'[1]. Dogme 95 is a new wave first introduced by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, two Danish directors who wanted to bring realism back into modern cinema, so came up with a manifesto that directors must follow if they want to be considered part of the 'Dogme Brotherhood', a sect of 4 directors, Von Trier, Vinterberg, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring. There are 10 rules a director must follow if he intends to make a Dogme film, and these rules are as follows: 1- A director must not be credited 2- All camera work must be handheld 3- All shooting must be done on location, no sets or props are permitted 4- All sound must be Diegetic(come from the film) 5-no superficial action is allowed(no guns, murders etc) 6- the film must be in colour, no special lighting is allowed 7-No optical effects or filters are allowed 8- no temporal or geographical alienation is allowed (must take place in the here and now) 9-Genre movies are unacceptable 10- the film must be in academy 35mm ratio. A key aspect of the Dogme 95 manifesto is that they believe that Auteur theory is Borgeois romanticism and is false, and when a director agrees to the rules they are no longer an artist, they are part of a collective, hence the rule that Directors must not be credited, as they must 'refrain from personal taste'[9]. The three films within this movement that I will be studying are Dogme 1: Festen, or The Celebration(1998)[2], Dogme 2: The Idiots(1998)[3] and Dogme 18: Truly Human(2001)[4], with reference to the US Dogme film, Dogme 6: Julien Donkey-Boy(1999)[5] to see how the style differs from the 'traditional' European Dogme films.





Festen was the first film to use the Dogme 95 manifesto, and even then at times it would not follow all of the rules laid out, as in the speech scene there is a Non-Diegetic score added to build tension for Christian's speech and Vinterberg also admitted to covering a window in one scene and even using special lighting, therefore going against at least 3 of the rules that Vinterberg himself and Von Trier had presented at the Cannes film festival in 1995. Åke Sandgren's 2001 film, 'Truly Human', also breaks one of the rules of Dogme 95 in the scene at the beginning of the film where Lisa is talking to her imaginary older brother P(or Ahmed) behind her wallpaper and we see a shot from his 'perspective' where everything is in negative, which subverts the rule that 'No optical effects or filters are allowed', which is also broken later on in the narrative when P becomes a real human and imagines he sees Lisa, and she is superimposed into the frame. Truly Human also breaks the rule that 'All sound must be Diegetic', as in the scene after Ahmed becomes real and is walking backwards through traffic and there is the non-diegetic sound of a child's music box playing, which shows the childlike state of Ahmed's mind. In 'The Name of This Film is Dogme 95'[6], a documentary narrated by Richard Kelly, there is an interview with Harmony Korine in which they discuss the fact that he had to use a prop when Chloe Sevigny got pregnant in the narrative and at this point Korine and Sevigny were romantically involved so Korine says 'I tried to get her pregnant, I wouldn't call it a sin cuts I really tried but I was just firing blanks' after Thomas Vinterberg criticised him saying 'There was one thing that definitely wasn't Dogme, the fact that she wasn't pregnant'. When von Trier was questioned in an interview regarding how he 'disregards the rules and makes new ones', he stated that 'I come from a family of communist nudists. I was allowed to do or not do what I liked. My parents were not interested in whether I went to school or got drunk on white wine. After a childhood like that, you search for restrictions in your own life.' and that 'I look for boundaries which restrict my range of activity and aesthetic freedom. Then I can concentrate all my energy in this small space. It's very simple: when you're in a prison, you're in a better position to think about freedom.'[8] Von Trier also stated in an interview 'if you have some limitations when you work... then you are forced to use your imagination' 'you either take control or give it away, these rules are designed for me giving away control'[10]


After the release of the Dogme manifesto, there have been a number of distinct phases throughout the movement, the first of which was apparent from 1995-98, when it was dismissed as a silly attention grabbing stunt, and due to this the Danish Film Institute decided to not supply the brotherhood block funding for the first 4 Dogme films. The second phase became apparent in 1998 with the release of Festen and The Idiots, which clearly established that abidance by the Vow of Chastity’s rules could result in genuinely innovative and worthwhile cinematic works. The third phase was introduced in 1999, when there was an increasingly global circulation of the Dogme concept, and in this phase, the Dogme brotherhood decided 'the director himself is solemnly to declare his adherence to the Dogme manifesto', which happened after they had to decide if Julien Donkey-Boy adhered to the Vow of Chastity[9]. Phase 4 overlaps with the third, seeing Dogme's rule based manifesto extended to other forms of creative expression, such as dance. Lars Von Trier added to this phase by releasing 9 rules of 'documentary', to subvert the non-realistic style of documentaries at the time. 6 Scandinavian directors have made documentaries following this code. By 2001, a fifth phase was apparent, where the term 'Dogme' had become a 'virtue term', used to signify opposition to oppression. By 2002, Dogme had become a 'well-established brand' [9].



Many, if not all of the films that follow the Dogme 95 manifesto cover dark subjects, such as seen in 'Truly Human', which deals with paedophilia as Ahmed/P's only interpretation of real life comes from the mind of a little girl, therefore from P's point of view we understand why later on his childlike mind is often confused for him being a paedophile or mentally handicapped in some way, as he barely speaks in any language and he plays with children because in his mind he is a child, but characters in the film often confuse this with a sexual desire for children, which gets him fired from his job, kicked out of the swimming baths, arrested and even kidnapped and brutally assaulted by a group of men who live in the same block of flats as him. The film also deals with the extremely disturbing topic of a young girl dying, as Lisa dies towards the start of the film, which causes P to become a real human. Not long before the death of Lisa, her parents Charlotte and Walther Thomsen discuss with friends at a dinner party that they had an abortion, and this is why Lisa believes she has an older brother. When Lisa leaves the room, they talk about how they would have been happier without ever having children, which the young girl overhears, and could be the reason she decides to sit in the front seat and is subsequently suffocated by the passenger seat air bag. After the house is demolished and P is brought into Lisa's parent's lives, we see their relationship breaking down as the parents are engaged in affairs and are barely seen together after the car crash, except for the unfortunate incident when they are both supposed to be dating their respective partners but end up being place on the same table by the confused waiter due to them having booked with the same surname. After P is placed in a refugee camp by Walther, he learns some of the basics of being a human, learns some Danish and even gives himself the name 'Ahmed', the refugee camp allocates him with a job at Mr. Stromboli's shoe shop and he is moved into the same block of flats as Charlotte and Walther, which causes some controversy at first but eventually they accept him and begin to confide in him. Ahmed manages to bring out the realisation in each of them how much they miss and love Lisa, which ultimately causes the film to reset to the car crash and this time Lisa survives, but not until after he is investigated by the police as a suspected paedophile (although he doesn't understand sex, as we know from the scene where Tanja comes to his flat and they shower together naked but take the relationship no further) and is then assaulted by a group of men who live in the flat who spray paint the letter 'P' on his back, leaving him on a roadside, after which he goes to a building site and hides in the wall, saying 'Lisa, I don't have to be a real human being anymore', the opposite of his catchphrase throughout the film 'I want to be a real human being'. In the book Purity and Provocation, the authors talk about how 'Sandgren manages to get the viewer to accept and even be intrigued by these rather dramatic ontological shifts in whiten what is otherwise a universe governed by the laws of everyday reality'[7]


Paedophilia and rape is also the topic of Christian's speech in Vinterberg's 'Festen', where he reveals on his father's 60th birthday that his father Helge used to rape him and his twin sister. In this scene when Christian first gives the speech, no one believes him and thinks he is crazy, and Vinterberg states in 'The Name of This Film is Dogme 95' that none of the other characters knew that Christian was going to give this speech, because he wanted them to actually be shocked and react in a normal way, which is essentially the goal of the Dogme movement, to subvert the 'illusion of emotion'. the party continues, but later Christian continues his toast with 'to the man that murdered my sister'. After Helge threatens Christian, they go back and act normally, but during the mother Else's speech, where she calls Christian over imaginative, he interrupts, asking why she never stopped him, recounting an incident where she walked into the study, then goes on to call her a 'cunt'. This incident is seen as the last straw, and Michael and 2 other guests violently escort him from the premises, beating him unconscious and tying him to a tree in the woods. The cinematography within Festen mirrors this dark narrative, as the use of natural lighting gives the film a very dark tone. The mise-en-scene within the film also adds toward this, as all of the characters are wearing black suits, which almost makes the birthday party seem like a funeral, which it essentially is because at the end of the film the family is in such turmoil that the father may as well be dead to the rest of them, especially his children. Festen also deals with the dark subject of adultery, abuse and abortion, as Michael, the youngest son, had in the past had an affair with one of the waitresses. When she talks to him about it she reveals she was pregnant, but 'got rid of it', implying that she had an abortion and you can easily just get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. She tells him 'you're as crazy as your Father' and he beats her unconscious and exclaims 'don't diss my family'. Michael is also the cause of another controversial topic, as he is shown to be racist towards Helene's black boyfriend Gbatokai, as when he turns up in a cab (with a cameo from Thomas Vinterberg as the cab driver) Michael tries to get him to leave, telling him it's a 'private party'. Later in the film, after the two have a quarrel, Michael starts singing the Danish children's song 'Jeg har set en rigtig negermand', or 'I have seen a real negro man' in a racist way to try and offend him, inviting all of the party guests to join him. Yet another dark topic is discussed in Festen in the form of suicide, as Christian's twin sister Linde had recently committed suicide in the family-run hotel where the film takes place by drowning herself in the bath, leaving a note that reveals that she killed herself because the memories of her father's rape had come back to haunt her, which Helene reads towards the end of the film, confirming that Christian's speech was true. After this, a drunken Michael attacks Helge, telling him he will never see his three grandchildren again, confirming that the family is well and truly 'kaput' in Michaels words.


Lars Von Trier's 'The Idiots' also deals with the fairly taboo subject of people 'releasing the inner idiot' or 'spazzing', something which is deemed socially unacceptable, also the topic of public nudity, and people wanting to give the characters homemade 'electro-shock therapy' to cure them of their idiocy by connecting their heads to a car battery.Von Trier has since said that 'After making Breaking The Waves, everyone wants to see number 2 but I can't do that anymore and I don't want to do that because I want to grow up. That's why it's important for me to make a film like The Idiots now and if people don't like it, well, I don't care'[10]



The Editing style of the Dogme 95 movement is often jarring, as can be seen in Festen, as there are often points when there is a cut and the camera completely disregards the 30 degree rule, sometimes even keeping the camera in the exact same place as before the cut. Also, at times there is a cut to a shot with someone/something directly in front of the camera, such as during the dinner scene where there is a cut to one of the waitresses blocking the whole shot. Also, much of the Dialogue contained within this scene is superfluous, as in it gives no insight into the narrative, such as when some of the family members are discussing what kind of soup it is they are eating, with someone saying it is lobster and someone else saying it is tomato. This kind of superfluous dialogue is kept in the film because it shows the realism in the scene, as it shows a real life conversation as much of the dialogue is improvised. The handheld nature of the camera allows the camera to follow a subject, rather than in mainstream cinema where the subject follows the camera. The use of handheld camera is exceptionally prominent in 'Truly Human', as many cuts are done by simply moving the camera quickly into place, so a 'Shot-reverse-shot' will be done by spinning the camera 180 degrees, often breaking the 180 degree rule. Dogme 95 films have a certain fluidity to the camerawork unlike that of any other film movement, as the handheld camera style is utilised so well in the movement. Other, more mainstream films that employ handheld camera are often found to be shaky and jarring, however Dogme 95 has a completely different feel, although some shots are shaky (often action scenes like the fights in Festen) this style is not over used, as well choreographed shots such as fluid cuts like those seen in Truly Human give the film a much more artistic feel than that of mainstream cinema, as a cut sometimes takes place whilst the camera is moving quickly, making seem as if the cut didn't happen at all, which significantly differs to the style of 'Festen', therefore showing the technical style differences between the first/second phase of the wave and the fifth phase that came to be in 2001 the year Truly Human was released, a film which heavily plays with the idea of 'opposition to oppressive realities'[9].




Since the Dogme movement was first introduced, a number of the films have received critical acclaim, such as Festen being nominated for 'best film in a foreign language' at the Golden Globes in 1999 and the BAFTA awards in 2000, winning the Amanda Award for the best Nordic feature film in 1998 and winning a series of Robert awards in 1999[11]. The Idiots was also awarded with a Robert award in 1999 for Best Actress (Bodil Jørgensen), also winning 3 Bodil awards in 1999 for acting, and winning a FIPRESCI prize at the London Film Festival in 1998 'for its attempt to rethink film language and social rules from scratch and willingness to accept the limitations of both its method and cultural assumptions'[12]. Truly Human was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI film festival in 2001, in 2002 it was awarded the Golden Key for best direction at the Art Film Festival, also winning a special mention. Nikolaj Lie Kaas also won a Robert award for best actor in 2002 and the film went on to receive multiple awards at foreign film festivals. The Dogme movement is often regarded as 'low-budget', however the Dogme manifesto does not stipulate anything about budgets, and the budget for Festen is estimated at around $1.3million, proving that because something is Dogme does not necessarily mean it is low-budget[14]. In 1998, when both Festen and The Idiots were released, both Dogme films were selected for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, so the popularity of the Dogme movement could stem from this double exposure. In 1998-99, the Dogme brotherhood invited many established directors, including Spielberg, to join the movement and create a Dogme film, but all of them declined[14]. It could be perceived that the Dogme movement inspired many indie films, most notably of all the Blair Witch Project (1999) which clearly adopted the convention of only using handheld camera, natural lighting and on location shooting, and is even shot in the same format and aspect ratio as traditional Dogme films. The most notable aspect that the Dogme movement brought with it was the recognition of Danish technical prowess and skill, with Danish films now being recognised throughout the globe, with Von Trier even stating in an interview that Danish advertising companies were coming to him and his brotherhood saying that 'it had to be Dogme'[6] and that they believed following the Dogme manifesto would sell their product, with Lars stating that the purpose behind Dogme had just been overlooked, as it was meant to bring realism back to fiction film, not for monetary gain.

It is clear that the Dogme 95 movement had a significant impact when it comes to subverting the typical conventions of mainstream film and questioning the social conventions of reality, such as can be seen in Festen through the subject of an abusive, molesting father, in The Idiots with the topic of normal people acting as if they are mentally handicapped and also in Truly Human through the character of P coming to life, something which could never happen in reality, but in Dogme they make it seem like this is a feasible topic through the use of the 'natural' technical conventions. The realism in Dogme films make these unrealistic, unspoken and explicit topics seem as if they are natural conversation and the movement almost added an element of taboo into mainstream culture, as modern cinema seems to have expanded into a more accepting medium where anything can be talked about, as long as it doesn't affect the real world of human existence where people can live their normal lives and be unaffected by these topics because they are not contained within their day to day routine.

1-Dogme 95(2008) The Manifesto [online] Available from: http://www.dogme95.dk/dogma-95/ 

2- Festen (1998) Film. Directed by- Thomas Vinterberg

3- The Idiots (1998) Film. Directed by- Lars von Trier

4- Truly Human (2001) Film. Directed by- Åke Sandgren

5- Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)Film. Directed by- Harmony Korine

6- The Name of This Film is Dogme 95 (2005) Documentary. Directed by- Saul Metztein

7- Hjort, M
    MacKenzie, S (2003)
    Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95
8-  Nicodemus, K (2005)
     Lars von Trier: 'I am an American Woman'
9- Livingston, P
    Plantinga, C (2009)
    The Rutledge Companion to Philosophy and Film  -Chapter 44, Dogme 95.

10- Lars from 1-10 (1998)Interview. Directed by- Sophie Fiennes and Shari Roman
11-IMDB Festen Awards [online] Available from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154420/awards
12-IMDB The Idiots Awards [online] Available from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154421/awards
13-IMDB Truly Human Awards [online] Available from:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273326/awards
14-Schepelern, P (2013) After The Celebration: The Effect of Dogme on Danish Cinema. Kosmorama. [online] Available from: http://www.kosmorama.org/Artikler/After-The-Celebration.aspx

A brief introduction to Dogme 95

How Did Dogme 95 influence the cinema industry?

Lars Von Trier

Thomas Vinterberg

Kristian Levring

Søren Kragh-Jacobsen

Dogme 95 Certificate for 'Festen', aka 'The Celebration'

Dogme 95 was an influential period in cinema. In 1995, Lars Von Trier, a Danish Film-maker teamed up with Thomas Vinterberg to create "The Manifesto, or "The Vow of Chastity", a list of 10 'commandments' a film-maker has to abide by to create a Dogme 95 film, a set of rules composed in order to break away from the things that Von Trier and Vinterberg hated about modern cinema. These rules are:
1- Shooting MUST be done on location, no props or sets can be brought in.
2- All sound MUST be Diegetic.
3- The camera MUST be hand-held.
4- The film MUST be in colour. No special lighting is permitted.
5- Optical filters and effects are forbidden.
6- The film MUST not contain superficial action.
7- Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (The film MUST take place in the here and now)
8- Genre movies are NOT acceptable.
9- The film format MUST be 35mm
10- The Director MUST not be credited.

Dogme 95 regards this as false, saying that no Dogme film is personal.

The creators of this manifest believed that in order to break away from mainstream cinema, they had to give up their identities as 'Auteurs' calling the entire theory of Auteurism 'a bourgeois romanticism from the very start', as in Dogme 95, film is not individual . They also believe that mainstream films are an illusion to convey emotions to an audience through trickery, so they wanted to create a way for the film to feel real, so to Dogme 95, film is not an illusion. I am going to study the social and contextual impact of these rules, and how the production of these films have affected producers and audiences all over the world.
An interesting subject that I discovered when watching 'The Name of This Film is Dogme 95', a documentary detailing the origins of the New Wave by Richard Kelly, is that Von Trier and Vinterberg never actually intended for Dogme to become a 'New Wave', they intended to make a couple of films as a group of friends as a way of breaking away from the mainstream, however after they produced Festen and The Idiots, every Danish commercial maker wanted their commercials to be 'Dogme like', so it became the mainstream in Danish cinema, also many other countries decided to jump on the bandwagon, so the brotherhood decided to just let film-makers classify their films as Dogme if they believed they had followed the 'Vow of Chastity'.

Dogme 95 research

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

Reference List:
1- http://cinetext.philo.at/reports/dogme_ct.html
2-http://www.moviemail.com/film-shop/collection/509-A-Beginner-s-Guide-to-Dogme-95/
3-http://www.dogme95.dk/dogma-95/
4-http://www.dogme95.dk/the-vow-of-chastity/
5-The Rutledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga- Chapter 44, Dogme 95.