The Dogma Experience
...decided that it was time to purify movie again. According to them there was an overwhelming presence of movies based on high-tech shooting technology, special effects and suchlike. It was time for action and they took it. They came up with The Vow of Chastity that consisted out of ten rules who directors had to follow when making a movie. A new genre was born: the dogma movie. Although the Dogme95 would not like to call it a genre on it own since hereby they directly break one of the ten rules of Dogme95.
Now, ten years later, it might be a good time to see what kind of influence Dogme95 had on contemporary Danish and international movies. What have ten years of dogma movies brought us? What has Dogme95 brought us? Is Dogma still alive?
This paper will start with giving some background information on the birth and content of Dogme95. Subsequently two of the most famous dogma movies, Festen and Idioterne, will be discussed. In the remaining part of the paper the influence of Dogme95 on contemporary movies will be discussed.
BACKGROUND
In March 1995 the young and very talented Danish director Lars von Trier thought it was time to say goodbye to the so-called professional movie that flooded the cinemas all around the world today. Instead one should make simpler movies, with a small staff, in contrast to the hundreds or thousands people working on a Hollywood movie, without any fancy special effects that are created by expensive computers, and so on. He teamed up with a fellow graduate from the Danish Film School, Thomas Vinterberg, and together it did not take them a long time to come up with the ten golden rules for making pure movies. “It was easy,” said Vinterberg. “We asked ourselves what me hated most about films today, and then drew up a list banning it all. It took half an hour and it was a great laugh” . These rules were presented by Lars von...
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