Post 993897219

"Back in 1995, two Danish filmmakers named Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg stepped back from their industry, took a hard look, and decided it was time for a change. The film business, they concluded, had become overly dependent on special effects, fancy camerawork, and other techniques of production. Rather than being built on the bedrock foundations of drama - actors playing real human beings in a story - movies were becoming more and more dependent on gratuitous action, special lighting, impressive sets, optical effects, audio engineering, and all the other gee-whiz paraphernalia of showbiz. The vital essence of film, dramatic narrative, was in danger of being submerged in glitz. And as if this weren't enough, they also concluded that the cult of personality surrounding the film director was detrimental to making good films. Movies are not the work of a single visionary, they argued, and too many directors spend time making 'artistic statements' to gratify their own egos when they should be concentrating on characters and story.

Von Trier and Vinterberg devised an outrageous challenge to the film business: a set of ten rules, called the Vow of Chastity, which would place certain limits on filmmaking technique. Directors who took the Vow of Chastity would become 'brothers' in a new movement called Dogme (the Danish spelling of 'dogma') 95 and their films could be certified as 'Dogme' films."