Dogme 95 | Hacker News Reader

Dogme 95

en.wikipedia.org

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"Automavision is a cinematic technique invented by Danish director Lars von Trier.

Developed with the intention of limiting human influence, in Automavision no cinematographer is actively operating the camera. The best possible fixed camera position is chosen and then a computer chooses framing by randomly tilting, panning or zooming the camera. In doing so it is not uncommon that the actors appear in the shots with a part of their face and head cut from the frame. With this technique then the blame for any "errors" are entirely attributable to a computer."

I always felt this was a bit of joke from Lars von Trier, though. I am not aware of any other film than "The Boss of it All" where it was used. A good joke after all. As von Trier says:

"If you want bad framing, Automavision is the perfect way to do it."

"The Boss of it All" takes place in some kind of IT software firm. I'm pretty sure "automavision" is inspired by the kind of online meeting camera which tries (and often fails) to focus on the person talking.

While most of the satire in the movie is unrelated to IT, there are some in-jokes. In one scene, a developer is getting suspicious towards the boss of it all (who is really a hired actor with no understanding of the business) and asks "do you even know what agile development means?" The actor who is trained in improvisational theater cleverly retorts "Well, can you explain what agile development is?", which shuts up the developer.

> a developer is getting suspicious towards the boss of it all (who is really a hired actor with no understanding of the business)

The Consultant is similar, though one of these obsessively weird for the sake of if productions.

You could extend this technique to realtime random framing. Shoot everything with a fisheye lens, then screen the film with a player application that randomly crops each scene at runtime (applying correction for the fisheye distortion).

Maybe call it Automascope.

Man, I’ve been thinking for years that I should re-watch The Boss of it All. IIRC, it was very funny.

Unfortunately not available on streaming anywhere. Hopefully available via “other means”.

I did recently, and it is still as good as that first time I saw it, together with one other person in an otherwise empty arthouse movie theater. I picked it completely at random, on a day I skipped work, and the whole thing felt completely magical.

Wonderful!

Can't recommend Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 "The Celebration" enough. Intense exploration of family dynamics and the Dogme 95 treatment is so appropos in that emerging time of camcorders.

Wholeheartedly agree that Festen a.k.a. "The Celebration" is the best thing to come out of Dogme 95. But even Festen doesn't fully adhere to the rules laid out in the Dogme 95 manifesto!

The closest cultural descendants to Dogme 95 now are certain methods of filming and editing YouTube vlogs. Emma Chamberlain and Casey Neistat now activate similar neurons in my mind to the idea of Dogme 95, perhaps aside from their use of music.

That, plus Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy is also canonical Dogme 95. That's before Refn became a mainstream director with his Drive. Despite the fact that most Danish directors have already abandoned Dogme you can still see its influence in their more recent films. I think Dogme 95 can be considered the New Wave Cinema moment of Danish cinematography, it's been incredibly prolific and influential.

Pusher is certainly not Dogme, e.g. it has a (great) soundtrack.

Frankeee…

Harmony Korine did an entry as well

> It is the first American film to be made in accordance with the Dogme 95 cinematic manifesto, and just the sixth overall to be recognized by the Danish movement since its inception in 1995. According to the strict filmmaking guidelines under this movement, known as the “Vow of Chastity,” the “supreme goal” of a Dogme 95 work “is to force the truth out of my characters and settings.” Through sourcing all props on location, eschewing a traditional score and dedicating the film to his own schizophrenic uncle, Julien Donkey-Boy is entrenched in a harrowing realism that reflects on Korine’s own connections to the film’s subject matter.

Just watched this again few weeks ago since 90’s. So good still. It seems that Succession has taken quite a bit of influence from Celebration. I think calling the pilot episode Celebration might have been nod to that direction. The somewhat restless camerawork in that series is where Dogme style lives on.

That's an interesting take! I'm always fascinated by the camera work in Succession. How the camera is most often positioned as a physical observer. The casual angles that are sometimes obscured or intentionally poorly framed.

Probably inspired by the Dogme project, for sure. Makes for a very visceral viewing experience.

I've seen it when it came out with my new girlfriend as a matinée.

When you can stomach this movie as a couple freshly in love just after breakfast you can stomach a lot as a couple.

Don't get me wrong. It's a brilliant movie but at times not easy to stomach.

Try "druk" by Vinterberg as well, it follows many of the Dogme rules like no music without an explicit record player

I think Festen (The Celebration) has a score of 10/10. Also appreciated Idioterne (The Idiots) but 7/10. Are there more suggestions here? I remember Fuckland was not well received in Argentina.

The king is alive is also good.

Even beyond Dogme 95, the 90s were such a great moment for independent and low-budget films.

And this was before the epoch of 24P and digital!

So indie and very low budget films should be much cheaper to make today than in that era of film.

But I feel like the innovation isn't there today, especially in America.

I feel like there should be a market for adult themed movies and writing. I know I am, and others are, hungry for such movies, and production quality doesn't have to be millions of dollars. The writing has to be very good, though.

Where is the Christine Vachon of this generation? Where are the low-budget indie production companies? Are we due for a renaissance here? Is it really just that no one cares about 2-hour films anymore, it's all content content content? (Hard to believe this, I feel the 3/multi-act dramatic experience is hard-wired in us, we need a return to cinema..)

Not all American movies but most:

Have you watch Pig (2021)? It wasn't even nominated to the Oscars. Also IMHO Tar (2022) is an excellent movie. J'Accuse (An Office and a Spy...) (2019), The Father (2020), Also liked The Northman (2022). IMHO The House of Gucci (2021) is the best acting of Adam Driver that made me forget he acted in Star Wars.

Sorry but I need to continue with Boiling Point (2021), Dune (2021), Riders of Justice (2020), The Mauritanian (2021).

Dune was a 165M movie.

They mentioned 10 movies, that's your take away? Are you arguing in bad faith here?

Embracing constraint has been, in my experience, a far more effective driver of innovation than any other tactic.

I think of Muxtape far more fondly than I do of Spotify or iTunes.

Yes, constraints are underrated. Knowing them in advance, you can build around them and do things other people think can’t be done.

Constraint is a creativity supercharger, and its antithesis - excess - is why so many modern entertainment products have gone off the rails.

(And there’s an even wider reading: profligate consumption is responsible for so many ills, while the simple life looks ever more attractive).

I disagree.

Constraint does nothing (or just harms) if the reasons - what’s bad and what’s to avoid - are not understood.

But if one understands the reasons, they no longer need the constraint itself. It becomes a primitive crude limitation, missing any nuances. Like training wheels - needed for the first time(s) but after one learns how to balance they’re only making things worse.

Unless the constraint is for a tech demo (“watch how I can fit this into 64KiB”/“watch how I can shoot this without any filters” - cool but totally irrelevant to a consumer who doesn’t care about the making process itself) or if one doesn’t trust themselves and their environment.

Any constraint, including the ones you have no control over, are opportunities for creative solutions you wouldn’t have otherwise tried. It is massively relevant to the consumer, because the result of that situation is what they see.

Read the story of the best-selling jazz solo album; there were so many unforeseen constraints it almost didn’t happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K%C3%B6ln_Concert

I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced.

A solution is something that requires a problem. In your concert example constraints were the source of problems (or few obvious steps from them, such as substandard instrument => weak bass notes => can’t perform as originally intended), requiring a solution. That’s pretty much straightforward. I agree with you here. Situations like this are exactly what you describe.

But I think it’s different with a manifesto that imposes various constraints for the sake of them, like we have here. The manifesto barely hints (I’m not even sure it does) about the actual issues.

Yes, if your original intent is flawed and only relies on a something that works if you can shove it under the rug with special effects, it would become comparable to the concert example. But it’s not the effects that are the issue!

Please correct me if I’m wrong - as I get it, making a movie is drastically different from performing an already planned piece at an event, it’s an iterative work. And if the team starts working on a film and thinks “okay, we want this, it’s typically done this way but {we have this constraint|it’s crappy approach because of this and that} - so how can we do it {without hitting the constraint|in some proper way}?” and they solve it then they don’t need the actual constraint anymore, because they’re past the point of that constraint. See how the bits in the curly brackets are interchangeable but only one is on point and another is just a distraction?

I don’t know a thing about playing music, but I suppose those improvisations no longer require a substandard piano? And maybe using those techniques when having a proper piano can improve things even further? (I could be wrong here, of course, analogies are complicated.)

Genuine or involuntary constraints require creative workarounds, that may succeed or fail, but this can’t be helped. However, artificial constraints, imposed voluntarily are surely different? Yes, it’s ultimately up to finding a hidden problem, as a part of finding the solution, but it’s so weird…

The constraints in Dogme were about removing the artificiality of filmmaking. I’m paraphrasing (it was a long time ago) but the question was, could they make compelling art using only natural light, ambient sound, etc? Film had become (and remains) so artificial that the medium itself seems to have been subsumed by technology.

I mean for gods sake they make special “paper” bags on movie sets that make less noise than real ones. Nothing you see or hear in a movie was created realistically, no matter how real it looks or sounds. https://kottke.org/23/03/how-noiseless-props-are-made-for-mo...

So in my opinion these constraints are about refocussing on the medium. They are not artificial, it’s just about getting back to basics. It’s actually about making film less artificial. About the skill of the people on set rather than those in post.

I don’t have a problem with the use of special effects, foley artists, sound engineers or anything else. It’s all good. But Dogme said, in part, let’s see if we can make good films without these things. And they did.

The first paragraph says:

> It was supposedly created as an attempt to "take back power for the directors as artists"

But the actual "vow of chastity" says:

> Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a “work”

So is the director an artist or not?

Ctrl-F for terms like "directors as artists" in the Google Books view of the cited source has no results. I think the "directors as artists" quote may be a fabrication.

If you read the manifesto I think it explains it well. I don’t understand how there isn’t an English translation that the article can link to. I’ve only read the original Danish version.

But yes, your first quote defies the stated purpose of the manifesto (but you could argue that it’s actual purpose was to give the director power)

In essence, the manifesto says it is not the director, but the movie itself that has to “take the power back.”

The director even vows not to be credited.

“Director as artist” means that the film is the work of a particular person.

Do those rules actually cover the writing (it the broadest sense) and it’s just Wikipedia article having a weird focus on production aspects, or it’s like that in the manifesto?

Because I don’t believe either of listed limitations help or hurt the quality per se. Academy 35mm? I think this stuff only matters if someone gets off to filmmaking/production nuances, the casual viewer doesn’t even know what this means.

As a person whose primary focus on a non-primarily-visual movie (i.e. a movie not about special effects or technology demos) is on the story rather than how it was made, this manifesto sounds pretentious yet weird and - most importantly - badly missing the point. I mean, nothing in the rules makes a movie a good one or a bad one. From a viewer standpoint, all those limitations feel just irrelevant.

And writing-related things like “here and now, with no alien props” in my peasant opinion sounds a lot like a poor man’s attempt to say “consistent, well-designed and thought out to the fine detail including the history/lore of the place and characters” (and that’s so obvious and natural to except of any movie that has characters or places I don’t think anyone ever states this, we only blame when movies fail at this to the extent it gets subjectivity noticeable). Just with some extra artificial restrictions that make zero sense to me. It’s like someone doesn’t trust themselves and their QC team, so they decide to do only one particular thing (which is fine, but not pretending that this is The Way). Or, well, maybe it’s like 64KiB demo and aimed on those who are interested in filmmaking rather than movies themselves.

The rules in the manifest are very much about production, and the manifest itself is very high brow in my opinion. It says things like

> The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby… false!

(From a translation published in a Danish university magazine: https://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_10/section_1/artc1A.html)

“Alien props” simply refers to things you bring yourself. It’s not things that would have been out of place in such a scene.

Again, the rules are very production focused.

When you talk about a QC team you are shooting way above what they are talking about. Take Festen.

Basically they tell all the actors “we’ve rented a retreat where a well-off man could reasonably invite his family for his 60th birthday. Here’s the script and this is your character. Pack your suitcase with your own stuff as if you were going to a weekend retreat for you dad/brother/uncles 60th birthday. Production team will bring 1 camera and 1 microphone.” (They did break the rules about lighting for this movie)

It's totally about "production aspects," those specific 10 rules as listed there. At least on its face.

As for it being overly restrictive, or provoking, pointless, irrelevant, pretentious, weird... I mean, yeah. And that's partially the point: it is knowingly referring to itself self-importantly as "dogma," after all.

But look at those rules and they're all about removing choices: aspect ratio, sets, props, lighting, music, color grading. It's all the stuff other than the story and the acting that you might otherwise turn your attention to as a filmmaker (or a viewer). It's not uncommon to find value in being restricted when making art, whether that's for reasons beyond your control like available technology or budget, or something self-imposed.

I'd think of it as something very similar to Oulipo in literature.

The rules are mostly focused on production, but obviously it puts a lot of constraints on the writing that you can't use sets and costumes.

> this manifesto sounds pretentious yet weird and - most importantly - badly missing the point.

Yeah, well, it worked. So.

Dogme is like the "worse is better" of filmmaking.

One of the rules is the director must be anonymous. Obviously this didn't happen, and it is pretty clear the Dogme directors didn't take the manifesto that seriously.

The genius of the Dogme concept was it took the limitations of low-budget filmmaking and turned them into a virtue and a strong branding and marketing tool.

> ″Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a “work”, as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.″

If someone holds to a philosophy where they refrain from creating art, and they create art, is it success or failure?

As with much of film making, Dogme defined a set of rules which were a departure point, and film makers went about finding ways to break them. Some of Harmony Korine’s most important films like Gummo were influenced by Dogme but are not pure Dogme 95 films. Films that do abide by most of the rules, like Von Trier’s The Idiots are almost unwatchable - and that film in particular would be considered porn in the US. Those films are like a reference implementation in the software world.

I almost agreed with this comment until I read the part about Idioterne being unwatchable or being considered porn.

I find Idioterne beautiful, deep, and riveting - from beginning to end - it’s one of my favorite films, and I’ve seen a lot of films.

Not for one second did I find adherence to Dogme 95 rules distracting or diminishing - they truly contribute to the sense of authenticity.

I loved most of the Dogme files - including the idiot, Festen and a few others. Not at all unwatchable, but certainly uncomfortable.

In my opinion, great art and great entertainment are two independent dimensions of filmmaking. Dogme films were (imo) great art, but difficult entertainment.

I had to stop watching that sort of thing after von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (not a dogme film). I felt awful for a week.

Dancer in the Dark just went too far, meaning it eventually threw me like one of those mechanical bull things. As I watched it, I had such a powerful reaction to her exploitation that I was emotionally wrecked, but about 80% of the way through, her agony became so extreme that I ... started laughing. He just went to far, and I was like, OK, we just broke suspension of disbelief, and now her suffering is so extreme that it feels like someone is daring him to see how far he can go. Like in "Mother" (film): it went from tortuous to off-the-fucking-rails in a really funny exciting way. It didn't help that Kristen Wigg was an executioner, because I already think she's hilarious.

That’s von Trier for you - and me. I believe the progressively darker themes may be a reflection of his personality and possibly alcoholism.

I loved Festen.

Everything else is pure garbage.

Italian for Beginners is fantastic, unquestionably the second best Dogme movie. It stands out from the rest by being completely wholesome, romantic and charming, unlike the more well-known Dogme films.

The King Is Alive was not garbage. It was good!

I loved it too, as I loved Idiots.

It's pretty impressive what's achievable in these limits.

Here's a short one: The chapter title shots of the movie "Breaking the Waves" by Lars Von Trier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6xEinLh4eA

These are all great shots but they would be great in any film. The video doesn't demonstrate the idiosyncrasies of dogme films, like the restrictions on sound and lighting.

(Also was the soundtrack added just for this YouTube video, or is Lars Von Trier breaking his own rules?)

The soundtrack is from the movie, but Breaking the Waves was not a Dogme movie.

Ever stop to smell the flowers once in a while?

Sure, but the most interesting thing about the dogme movies is what they manage to do in spite of the restrictions, as you said. These are beautiful shots but they don't have anything specifically to do with those restrictions.

breaking the waves is not dogma 95

You're actually correct. It sounds like he founded dogme 95, then immediately after released this which broke most of those limitations

Guess my film buff neighbor was misinformed when he showed me this

Came expecting it was one of those classic Linux themes like Chicago95 or Redmond 95. Left educated and disappointed.

This being a tech-focused site, I was also primed to expect something related to Windows 95. There was tons of software with "95" in its name as a result of that.

It would be interesting to try and apply some of these rules to managing windows.

Sound can only be heard from the currently focused window, if a window is covered up it is killed (so you can only use what you can see on location), windows stuck to their default spawning positions, etc

Windows 95 would have benefited from such a perfection of execution.

I expected it to be Doge x Windows 95, like Hannah Montana Linux

I'm not really into experimentalism, I want to be entertained and that's about it. So said, I watched Dogville and appreciated it as an experiment, though I'd not want to watch it again.

If you like pushing boundaries then Dogville, and may I also suggest Russian Ark; an odd film done in one take.

If only we could get Dogme 95 for documentaries. There's always music telling you how to feel.

It exists, and it's called called Cinema Verité. It's best are interestingly Americans, even when the rest of American documentaries are pure garbage. Most European film universities still teach proper documentaries, with stories telling themselves, without music or overtalk.

Festen (The Celebration) is one of my all time favs. A couple years ago I decided I had to own it because it was so hard to find. Incredible how hard it is to find movies like these from 15-30 years ago. Someone needs to step up and conserve them.

> Someone needs to step up and conserve them.

It's part of the Culture Ministry's Canon for 2006, so it's widely available at Danish libraries. The publisher probably also has digital copies.

https://bibliotek.dk/linkme.php?rec.id=870970-basis%3A476191...

You can also watch it online, if you have a library login:

https://fjernleje.filmstriben.dk/film/2605375700/festen

Correction, I can only watch it online. And maybe not even that as I am Swedish and not a Danish citizen.

We have something similar in Kungliga Biblioteket, but they don't have this movie.

>Materialet kan desværre ikke bestilles

>Der kan dog være andre muligheder for at få adgang til materialet. Adgang til streaming for brugere tilknyttet skoler og biblioteker med abonnement på Fortælletid

Unrelated to "Dogme 95", but a couple of low-budget films I enjoyed, were high quality, and did well in reviews. "Beasts of no Nation" was made for $6M, but it barely avoided losing money. "Upgrade" had a budget of $3M, and fared a little better with a $17M box office draw.

Well, that’s a Wikipedia article in need of a good editing if I ever saw one. So many language misses.

I enjoyed some of the Dogme 95 films, particularly Festen, but it's hard for me to watch them now being aware of what an abusive environment both Jensin and von Trier presided over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_von_Trier#Sexual_harassme...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/10/lars-von-trier-...

Apropos Lars von Trier's auteurist style, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZfM1lkLuMI

This guy never was well

Just to be clear, this is The Onion, not actual clips by Lars von Trier.

I stand corrected :)

Are any of those films even good? Or pretentiuos pseudo artsy films with obligatory porn scenes?

They are probably not for you.

Both! (Festen is great.)

Pretentious bullshit.

Have you watched any? If you like cinema, you might dig it. Or not. I can see how it is hard to appreciate just "director+camera" if all you've ever watched are hollywood blockbusters. "Julien Donkey-Boy" is a really good starting point. Some really creepy scenes with Werner Herzog and Spud from Trainspotting.

I've watched several, it's overhyped. I'm not a fan of blockbusters either, but that doesn't mean any alternative is good.

Storytelling is probably better though, less formulaic than Hollywood. If you're Danish you appreciate a few things about for instance Festen that are a nice nod to local culture. If I watched it today I'm not sure what I'd think about the big reveal either, that part is somewhat predictable. Big family secrets tend to be of a certain genre.

But the whole wobbly camera thing, meh. Not sure what it adds. The characters don't become more realistic from natural light or whatever the technique is supposed to be.

Agreed: like they can't even hold a camera still? Camera operators figured that out in the goddamn 1910's! I think it would have more interesting outcomes if experienced and established directors applied the rules as opposed to upstarts and students. You have to master the basics before you can be a Mondrian or Rothko.

How can something be over-hyped when practically no one knows what it is, and it is mainly directed at students and practitioners of cinema? It's not like it is crypto or day trading or something, where it is plastered across every square inch of media and billions of dollars are spent shilling pyramid schemes. I'd call that over-hyped. But an esoteric cinema style that a small minority appreciate isn't really. Taste is taste. At least you tried it, good on you.

I’d say Von Trier was overhyped in my personal echo chamber/network at some point.

I can imagine, GP’s “overhyped” probably means the same thing about this Dogme stuff. Too many information sources (be it some mass media or peers) claim some exceptional quality and GP’s personal opinion digresses.

Dane here. Hated the Dogme movies. Appreciate the idea of doing something more authentic and focusing more on the story and characters than the CGI, just never liked what Lars came out with. Pretentiøst lort!

Yeah same. LVT stuff, I thought it actually smelled like gimmicks. Look at Riget, what the heck was that? What's the idea with the cleaners with Down's Syndrome talking about the plot? Why the weirdness with the Mo-ar baby thing?

If all these odd things add up to something, great. Otherwise you're doing the adult equivalent of mooning everyone.

Having said that, I appreciate having a non-Hollywood way of telling a story. Enjoyed the one a couple of years ago about the guys getting drunk during the day.

I think it's a good starting point, and if you follow the rules but don't adhere to them 100%, it still works.

For example, I think The Wire (and the conceptual successor We Own This City) follow these rules to achieve a great effect (they break some of the rules due to subject matter, but rules are made to be broken after all).

That is what Lars von Trier does best.

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