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camera positions, and the dynamic choreography of actors and cameramovement. Hong Kong films thus seek to startle, amuse, and jolt audiences,often at the expense of believability.

Along with outrageous comedies and blood-drenched gangster sagas,Hong Kong has allowed for the production of more subtle films, such asClara Law’s Song of the Exile (1990) and Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (a.k.a. Actress , 1989), starring Maggie Cheung as the actual 1930s Shanghai starRuan Lingyu. Hong Kong’s most distinctive filmmaker is perhaps WongKar-Wai, whose portraits of urban ennui in Chungking Express (1994) and In

the Mood for Love (2000) reduce narrative to a minimum while featuring re-strained performances (achieved through improvisation with actors), lushimages, and inventive soundtracks. His distinctive technique of blurring im-ages (developed with cinematographer Christopher Doyle) makes his filmsresemble modern paintings as much as photographic images.

Following the end of Great Britain’s ninety-nine-year lease on HongKong in 1997, the return of sovereignty to China, and a severe economic re-cession in 1999, Hong Kong cinema has scaled back. Many of its mostprominent figures—including stars Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun Fatand director John Woo—have established careers in the United States,

though for many fans their Hollywood films haven’t matched the quality of their earlier work. Meanwhile, the influence of Hong Kong cinema is evi-dent in films ranging from the Hollywood sci-fi action kung-fu film The Ma-trix (1999, Figure 7.27c) to the French art film Irma Vep (1996), starring Maggie Cheung as herself. Retaining some independence as a commercialcinema, recent Hong Kong films are again exploring their simultaneously Chinese and international identities in stories that allude to recent history and politics. Despite fears that Hong Kong’s popular cinema would disap-pear under China’s administration of the island, creative work continues toappear.

Dogme 95

Like Italian neorealist films and French new wave cinema, the Dogme 95movement’s films take relations between well-developed characters as theirprincipal subject, but unlike neorealism, Dogme 95 films ignore, for themost part, the larger economic and social relations of their characters. Incontrast to most film movements, which are named and described after they exist, Dogme 95 began in the spring of 1995 when two Danish film directorstried to lay out what a film movement needed to do. Lars von Trier and

Thomas Vinterberg co-wrote the “Dogme 95 Manifesto” and its accompa-nying “Vow of Chastity” (for the Vow, see the feature on p. 333) and then in- vited two other Danish directors—Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and KristianLevring—to join the movement. Only then did each director produce aDogme 95 film. However, membership was not limited to the four founders;

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anyone was welcome to produce a film in accordance with the Vow of Chastity rules, apply for a Dogme 95 certificate, and, if granted, advertisethe Dogme 95 certification (Figure 7.38). Filmmakers were also under noobligation to make only Dogme 95 movies.

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Dogme 95’s The Vow of Chastity

“I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop isnecessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be usedunless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.(The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the filmtakes place).

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposurethe scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here

and now.)8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.

10. The director must not be credited.

11. Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear torefrain 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 meansavailable and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.

Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.”Copenhagen, Monday 13 March 1995

On behalf of DOGME 95

Lars von Trier Thomas Vinterberg

Source: <www.dogme95.dk/the_vow/vow.html>

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For von Trier and Vinterberg, the problem with contemporary film-making—not just Danish but Hollywood film—is its overproduced nature. Inplace of examinations of the “truths” of the “inner lives” of characters, contem-porary film offers “illusions” built of special effects, lighting, genre formulas,and soundtracks. Rejecting what they understood as a superficial and basically meaningless cinema that is highly dependent on current (expensive) technol-ogy, the Dogme 95 “brethren” (as they called themselves) attempted to substi-tute a much simpler aesthetic (in fact, the Vow of Chastity forbids any aestheticat all) that allowed the narrative and characters to express a film’s “truths.” Themovement’s filmmakers claimed that film should represent, as realistically aspossible, how people interact with one another. Consequently, the rules of the Vow of Chastity forbid the use of, among other distracting filmic devices, stu-dio shooting, “superficial action, . . . murders, weapons, etc.,” “sound . . . pro-duced apart from the images,” and genre movies. The Dogme 95 aesthetic, oranti-aesthetic, also suggests an ideology : Filmmaking has become the provinceof trained and well-financed professionals and needs to be “liberated” and re-turned to the people. As the group’s manifesto makes clear, because of im-provements in digital video and its low costs, “today a technological storm israging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratization of the cinema.For the first time, anyone can make movies,” and the Dogme 95 brethren sawthat their job was to help advance this democratization.

Because many of the thirty-three official Dogme films received only limited distribution and have not been transferred to video or DVD, mostare difficult to locate and view. However, several are readily available in theUnited States and give a sense of the movement. Thomas Vinterberg’s TheCelebration ( Festen, 1998) shows a family reunion on the occasion of the fam-ily patriarch’s sixtieth birthday, developing several of the characters in greatdepth. The elder son announces that he and his sister were sexually abusedas children; the assembled family, guests, and employees react to this infor-


FIGURE 7.38 Dogme 95Films that earned the Dogme 95 seal could advertise their certifica-tion, as here on this poster for Mifune (a.k.a. Mifune’s Last Song ,1999), the third film to earn the Dogme 95 seal. The film’s openingcredits also indicate that Mifune is the third Dogme film. In the com-mentary on the DVD version, the director often discusses followingthe rules of the Vow of Chastity. There were challenges: the need tofudge on a detail occasionally, working with only available light, andrecording the sound while filming in 16 mm. Overall, though, he

says in effect that working within the rules was not a big problem.Birgitte Hald and Morten Kaufmann; Sony Pictures Classic

ideology: The influential un-derlying social and political be-liefs of a society or socialgroup.

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mation; and the father grapples with the son’s accusations (Figure 7.39). Thefilm’s representation of the social relations between fully developed, compli-cated characters illustrates Dogme 95’s success at encouraging directors tocreate credible characters who relate to one another in plausible plots. Simi-larly, Lars von Trier’s The Idiots (1998) shows a collective of young men and women experimenting with communal living and “spazzing,” pretending tobe mentally challenged to point up the frigidity of bourgeois Danish life.Both these films were shot using digital video (although this is not a Dogme95 requirement), which gives them the look of home movies or documen-taries. Using numerous digital video cameras, sometimes attached to a char-acter’s glasses or positioned near a ceiling, Harmony Korine directed thefirst U.S. Dogme film, Julien Donkey Boy (1999), which offers viewersglimpses of what life is like for Julien, a schizophrenic.

In addition to producing a series of intimate plot- and character-drivenfilms, Dogme 95 can be credited with making some filmmakers more mind-ful of their craft. While many directors have felt affronted by the Vow of Chastity’s rules and various commentators have thought that the rules weremerely an attention-seeking ruse, the rules might be understood as a provo-cation. Perhaps the point is less to obey them perfectly (and not even thefour founders have done so) than to think about why and when they need tobe followed or broken. Understood this way, the Vow is not a set of stric-tures but a call for filmmakers to take responsibility for their aesthetic andeconomic choices. After all, it is not difficult to imagine an unspoken set of Hollywood film “rules”: “Special effects are mandatory.” “Some of theshooting must be done in a studio.” “The soundtrack must be saleable whenseparated from the film’s images.” And so forth. The Dogme 95 Vow sug-gests that these “rules” need to be questioned.

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FIGURE 7.39 Dogme 95 1Seen here in the family wine cellar nearly forty-three minutesinto The Celebration (1998) are the two main forces in the firstDogme 95 film: the sixty-year-old family patriarch and theson who has recently announced before the assembled gueststhat the father sexually molested both him and his twin sister

when they were children. As was done throughout the film,this scene was shot on videotape with a small handheld cam-era and available light; later the footage was edited and trans-

ferred to 35 mm film for theatrical showings. During themaking of The Celebration, the filmmakers followed most of the rules of the Vow of Chastity . Frame enlargement. Birgitte

Hald; October Films

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As a formal movement, Dogme 95 existed for seven years, by whichpoint thirty-three movies had been officially certified as Dogme films. In2002, the Dogmesecretariat (the business end of Dogme 95 that maintainsits Web site and archive) announced that Dogme 95 had almost acquiredgenre status and therefore was disbanding as an organization. But the secre-tariat’s press release announces, “In case you do desire to make a Dogme-film, you are free to do so; you do not need to apply for a certificateanymore.” The press release adds that the Vow was meant to inspire film-makers, not to be a brand name or copyright.

As the Dogmesecretariat notes, in spite of themselves, the Dogme 95 di-rectors established an aesthetic. Even an anti-aesthetic that consistently avoids using any mechanical means of moving the camera during filming orusing supplementary lights is recognizable as an aesthetic of sorts. TheDogme 95 aesthetic became characterized more by the filmic instruments of production and techniques that its followers refused to use than by thosethat they did use. Dogme 95 made it possible for some low-budget films without slick production values, such as Lone Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners (2000), to gain some distribution among art houses in the United States andabroad. In addition, the movement’s attempt to shift more people across the

divide between consumers and producers was, and can still be, a revivifyingforce in cinema.

Classical Hollywood cinema is so much a part of the world that most of us were born into and grew up in that many viewers do not easily adapt toother cinemas; initially other films seem odd and perhaps too demanding.But in seeing more of these films, studying them, and learning about thecontexts in which they are created, many viewers come to enjoy and appreci-ate them and to broaden their understanding of the possibilities and achieve-ments of the fictional film.


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