Dogma 95

Dogma Certificate for Susanne Bier's Film Elsker dig for evigt (Open Hearts2001), Dogme No. 28.

Dogme 95 (Dogme'95, in Danish, and known in Spanish simply as Dogma) was an avant-garde film movement, initiated in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the Dogma 95 Manifesto and the Vow of Chastity. The movement was a proposal rooted in Europe and in the self-styled "Danish complex" that arose with the idea of proposing something similar to the return of the Nouvelle Vague. The rules they established served to make inspired cinema on traditional values of story, acting and theme, and which excluded the use of elaborate special effects or technology. Later, Kristian Levring and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, also Danish, joined and formed the Dogma 95 Collective, also called Dogma Brothers. In addition, since 2001, Lone Scherfig, the first woman to belong to the movement, also joined. The Dogma finally fell in 2005, due to the inaccuracy of certain rules of the "Vow of Chastity".

The genre gained international popularity due, in part, to its accessibility. It aroused interest in unknown filmmakers, suggesting that one can make a quality film without relying on big budgets like the ones in Hollywood. The directors use subsidies from European governments and funding from TV channels instead.

History

Lars von Trier was one of the creators of the movement.

Friends Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg wrote and signed the manifesto and their “votes”. Vinterberg claimed that they wrote the pieces in 25 minutes. The manifesto initially imitated the wording of François Truffaut's essay Une certaine tendency du cinéma français (1954), published in the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.

They announced the Dogma movement on March 13, 1995 in Paris, at the Le cinéma vers son deuxième siècle conference. The world of cinema came together to celebrate the first century of movies and contemplate the uncertain future of so-called commercial cinema. In a call to speak about the future of cinema, Lars von Trier lured the audience with red pamphlets announcing Dogme 95.

In response to the criticism, von Trier and Vinterberg stated that they just wanted to set a new challenge: "In an extremely high-budget business, we realized that we must balance the dynamics as much as possible."

The first of the Dogma films (Dogma #1) was The Celebration/Festen (1998), by Vinterberg. It was critically acclaimed and won a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Von Trier's Dogma The Idiots also opened at Cannes that same year, but was less successful. In that feature film, the actors had to live and not act. Since the release of both films, other directors have made films based on Dogma principles that claim the pleasure of doing things with difficulty and slap you in the face. to the taste of the public.

American-French actor and director Jean-Marc Barr was the first non-Danish filmmaker to direct a Dogma film: Lovers (Dogma #5). The American film Julien Donkey-Boy, by Harmony Korine (Dogma #6), was also classified as a Dogma film.^{[citation needed]}

On November 4, 1999, in an interview with Lars von Trier, he is asked why the films The Celebration and The Idiots are classified as Dogma, if they are recorded on video and not on 35mm. Lars von Trier replies that, speaking with Soren Kragh, they came to the conclusion that it is very difficult for a cameraman to carry a 35mm camera and that, furthermore, for a budget issue, they decided to record on video, and he clarified that this rule it was modified: it is the distribution format that should be in 35mm.^{[citation required]}

To better understand the evolution of Dogma 95, we can divide its history into three periods: the release of the manifesto and the first films (1995-1998); openness to outside influences (1999-2001) and self-dissolution, with the consequent hybridization/distortion (2002-today).

Het Zuiden (2004), directed by Martin Koolhave, included a thank you to Dogme 95. Koolhoven originally planned to shoot it as a Dogme 95 film, and it was co-produced by von Trier's company Zentropa. The director chose not to allow Dogma principles to limit his creative process. ^{[citation needed ]}

Dogma films are characterized by displaying a certificate that grants the authenticity of the project and a registration number. This certificate is issued by a committee of judges who evaluate the film and verify that it complies with the "Vow of Chastity". The Blair Witch Project, by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, was rejected for not fulfilling vote number 8, as it was a horror film.^{[citation required]}

Objectives and rules

The Dogma collective's goal is to purify cinema by rejecting expensive and spectacular special effects, post-production modifications and other technical tricks. The filmmakers concentrated on the story and the performance of the actors. Directors seek to resist the cultural canon in treatment, themes, risks, and try to give greater importance to the creative and communicative processes than to the profits that can be obtained from the films. His idea was that this improvement of the approach could to attract the audience, since they were not alienated or distracted by the overproduction, and thus, it could form an audience with which it was possible to have a dialogue.

Vow of Chastity

Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg laid out ten rules that any Dogma film should abide by. These norms, known as the "Vow of Chastity", are the following:

1. The shoots have to be carried out in real locations. You can't decorate or create a "set." If an article or object is necessary for the development of history, a location should be sought where the necessary objects are.
2. The sound cannot be mixed separately from the images or vice versa (music should not be used unless it is recorded in the same place where the scene is rolling).
3. Camera will be rolled in hand. Any movement or immobility due to the hand is allowed. (The film should not be where the camera is; on the contrary, the film should occur where the film is given).
4. The film has to be colored. No special or artificial light is allowed (if the light does not reach to shoot a certain scene, the scene should be removed or, in rigor, a simple focus can be plugged into the camera).
5. Any optical effect and filters are prohibited.
6. The film may not have superficial action or development (weapons cannot be shown or crimes may occur in history).
7. Temporary or space alienation is prohibited. (This is to corroborate that the film takes place here and now.)
8. No gender films are accepted.
9. The format of the film should be the 35mm Academic (1.37:1).
10. The director's name should not appear in the credit titles.

Uses and abuses

The rules of the Vow of Chastity have been circumvented and broken since the first Dogme movie was produced. For example, Vinterberg confessed to having covered a window during the recording of a scene in The Celebration. With this, he bought props on set and used "special lighting." He also did not respect the academic format, instead a 1:1.37 format was used. Von Trier used background music (The Swan, by Camille Saint-Saëns) in The Idiots, and also broke with the format, as a 1:1.33 was used. ^{[citation required]}

Since 2002, starting with the thirty-first film, a director no longer needs to have their work verified by the original board to identify it as a Dogme 95 work. The founding "brothers" have begun working on new experimental projects and have been skeptical of the common interpretation of the Manifesto as a brand or a genre. The movement finally collapsed in 2005. The directors sign an online form and file a token stating that they "certainly believed that the film...has obeyed all Dogme 95 rules as stated by the Vow of Chastity." ».

Criticism

Remodernist filmmaker Jesse Richards criticized the movement in his Remodernist Film Manifesto, stating in connection with point 10: "Remodernist film is not Dogma 95. We don't have a pretentious checklist that must be precisely followed. This manifesto must be seen only as a set of ideas and suggestions whose author can be mocked and insulted at will." American film critic Armond White also criticized the movement, stating that it was "the manifesto that brought us closest to making movies." amateur porn. He believed that the move would be dismissed as insignificant by film historians.

Featured Dogma Movies

The full list is available on the Dogme95 website (via Internet Archive).

Background

• Dziga Vertov, with The Man with the Movie Camera (1929), which were part of the kinoks, a group of Soviet filmmakers dedicated to the production of factual cinemas, in the life captured unexpectedly, avoiding the use of scenery, accessories and elements of the cinema of representation.
• John Cassavetes, who worked with friends, little budget, little lighting, very dense stories and few media. In addition, he freed himself from the tripod in Faces (1968).
• Sex, lies and video tapes
• Tenesse Williams Theatre, with repressed, dark and hidden passions.
• Breaking the waves, of Lars von Trier himself, 1996, where they already pointed out features that were then consolidated in the manifesto.
• Nouvelle Vague. At the end of the escape (1960) by Jean-Luc Godard.
• As I had done the Italian neorealism before, Dogma took the camera to the street: see Rome, open city (1945).
• Alfred Hitchcock simulated, in The rope (1948), a strict real time, without apparent assembly.
• Take advantage of the actors' improvisations, as Ken Loach continues to do, Raining stones (1993) and Robert Altman in Cross life (1993).