29/03/2005

March 1995. Theatre de l’Odeon in Paris. During a symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of cinema, the enfant terrible of European cinema Lars von Trier came to the stage and with a typical gesture of defiance threw over 500 red leaflets to the audience promoting a different way of filmmaking. Without any artificial light, sound or optical effects. Where films should be shot on location and the camera handheld. Those were among the ten rules or "Vow of Chastity" of the Dogme 95 manifesto.

March 2005. London. To celebrate the release of the tenth Dogme film In Your Hands [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Annette K. Olesen and the tenth anniversary of the famous Dogme film movement, Curzon Cinemas, the Danish Film Institute and the Danish Embassy have organized from 1 April to 1 May, a film season with screenings of all Dogme films and documentaries, preview screenings and a Masterclass.

The ‘Ten Years of Danish Dogme’season will open with the screening of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration), the first Dogme film ever made, followed by seminar attended by the director, the film’s Dop Anthony Dod Mantle and producer Marla Rubin.
Two preview screenings will also be followed by Q&A sessions: On 21 April, Susanne Bier’s Brothers [+see also:
trailer
film profile] will be presented by its scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen ahead of the film’s UK release on 6 May through Soda Pictures, and on 28 April, another talented Danish scriptwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson who wrote the script for the Berlin competition film Accused will be at the Curzon Cinema on Shaftsbury Avenue to introduce the tenth Dogme film In Your Hands. The film will be released in the UK on 29 April by Metrodome Distribution.

Another highlight of the Dogme celebration will be the masterclass ‘Dogme And Beyond’ organized by the UK-based filmmakers organization The Script Factory. Writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen will be joined on stage by his Danish counterpart Kristian Levring (The King Is Alive) and both will discuss the actual process of writing a Dogme screenplay.

(For further information on the Dogme movement, the Danish Film Institute has just published a special issue of its magazine FILM called ‘10 Years of Dogme’. )