Customer Reviews

The Name of this Book is Dogme95

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I disagree with the reviewer below who criticises the book for not exploring more thoroughly the impact of Dogme95 on digital film-making - while Dogme production so far proves that DV is a perfectly viable way to make films, that's not what it set out to do. The authors of Dogme95 themselves have repeatedly said that this wasn't about digital video at all. The book clarifies that Trier's and Vinterberg's initial motivation for the Manifesto was to prohibit all those things that make Hollywood untruthful, unrealistic and annoying. It also confirms that the Dogme rules were set to be broken, to encourage other filmmakers to create rules of their own, and to generally revive what Hollywood has turned into a technology-led industry where the director and writer hardly have a say any more. The fact that the Dogme rules require a greater immediacy in the approach to making a film naturally led the directors to use DV, to 'shoot from the hip', but that was a side-effect of the movemenet and not its objective.

I actually like the simple, interview-style approach Kelly has to the material. There's been so much hype around this movement, so much misunderstanding, that the best way to explain it is not to try to explain it, but to let its authors say it in their own words.

Kelly maintains respect for his subject while not taking himself too seriously: the book is a quick and easy read, sprinkled with self-deprecating Brit humour.

I would just encourage readers to see the movies first as there are necessarily quite a few spoilers in the book.

Richard Kelly decided to research the Dogme95 movement launched in March 1995 by Danish director Lars von Trier and three of his friends as part of a "new wave" of avant-garde film of simpler, more truthful, and less boring movies. But with the emergence of such Dogme95 films as Festen, The Idiots, Mifune, and The King is Alive, Danish cinema was galvanized, energized and engaged in a show of solidarity against the Hollywood mainstream. The results of Richard Kelly's journalistic inquiry is now published, available, and highly recommended to film students, movie critics, cultural historians, film school reference libraries, and the non-specialist general reader as The Name Of This Book Is Dogme95.

There doesn't seem to be any voice to the author. This book is like a college term paper on DOGME--I give it a C. The book reads like a collection of magazine articles or an unauthorized biography. We have seen most of this material covered in indie filmmaker magazines countless times before. Dogme is a niche component of a larger digital film movement that is sweeping cinema and threatening celluloid. I would have appreciated more discussion of the impact and influence of dogme on the current mavericks of digital filmmakers that are arising and gaining respect. Digital filmmaking has greatly impacted the short film industry. Where does dogme and short film co-exist