Dogme's Director

Thomas Vinterberg

Thomas Vinterberg (born 19 May 1969) is a Danish film director who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in film making, which established rules for simplifying movie production. In 1993 he graduated from the National Film School of Denmark with Last Round (Sidste Omgang), which won the jury and producers' awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools, and First Prize at Tel Aviv. That year Vinterberg made his first TV drama for DR TV and his short fiction film The Boy Who Walked Backwards, produced by Birgitte Hald at Nimbus Film. This film has won awards and accolades all over the world, including Nordic Panorama in Iceland, the International Short Film Festival inClermont-Ferrand, and the Toronto Film Festival.His first feature film was The Biggest Heroes (De Største Helte), a road movie that received acclaim in his native Denmark.

In 1995, Vinterberg formed the Dogme 95 movement with Lars von Trier, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. Following that dogma in 1998, he conceived, wrote and directed (and also had a small acting role in) the first of the Dogme movies, The Celebration (Festen). As per the rules of the Dogme manifesto, he did not take a directorial credit and IMDb has the film listed with no director. However, he and the film won numerous nominations and awards, including the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2003, he directed the apocalyptic science fiction love story It's All About Love, a movie he wrote, directed and produced himself over a period of five years. This movie was entirely in English and featured, among others, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, and Sean Penn. The movie did not do well, as critics and audiences found it idiosyncratic and somewhat incomprehensible. His next film, the English-language Dear Wendy (2005), scripted by Lars von Trier, also flopped, even in his native Denmark where it sold only 14,521 tickets . Vinterberg then tried to retrace his roots with a smaller Danish-language production, En mand kommer hjem (2007), which also flopped, selling only 31,232 tickets. On 1 August 2008 he directed the music video for "The Day That Never Comes", the first single off Metallica's album Death Magnetic. His 2010 film Submarino was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

Lars Von Trier

Lars von Trier (Danish pronunciation: [ˈlɑːs fʌn ˈtʁiːˀɐ]; born Lars Trier; 30 April 1956) is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective — an avant-garde filmmaking movement — although his own films have taken a variety of approaches. His work has frequently divided the critics.Von Trier began making films at the age of eleven. His first publicly released film was an experimental short called The Orchid Gardener(1977) and his first feature film came seven years later with The Element of Crime (1984). Among many other prizes, awards and nominations, he is the recipient of the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kristian Levring

He lived eight years in France. He graduated in editing at the National Film School of Denmark and has edited a large number of documentaries and feature films besides directing two feature films, among these, Et skud fra hjertet (1986). He is the recipient of some 23 Danish and international awards for his commercials.

The King is Alive (Dogme 4) is his third feature film. The King is Alive tells the story of a mixed group of tourists in Namibia, Africa, whose bus breaks down in a remote, abandoned village (formerly a mining town). Facing starvation, dehydration, cabin fever, and death, one of the group decides to stage a production of Shakespeare's King Lear and casts the others as characters. As the thin veneer of civilized behavior breaks down, the group experiences the absurdity of putting on a play (for no audience except one lone indigenous man) in such dire and fatal circumstances. Filmed in stark digital and adhering to the tenets of Dogme filmmaking, The King is Alive is a fascinating study in the dark heart of people under extreme stress. Herzogian in its theme and mood, the film's location (remote Namibia) is as much a character in the film as the actors, like the space ship in Ridley Scott's Alien. The King is Alive features Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Brion James (Blade Runner's "Leon"; Cabin Boy). Dark, tense, and desperate, it stands as a powerful piece of filmmaking. Levring's next film after The King is Alive is called The Intended and features some of the same actors from the former. Set in the jungle of Borneo in the 1920s, it concerns an isolated English settlement/ivory trading station. Similar in nature to The King is Alive, it focuses on what happens to small isolated groups under both internal psychological pressure and external pressure from the environment around them. As The King is Alive was filmed by Dogme rules and restrictions, The Intended instead has steady camera shots (rather than shaky/handheld) and ambient music throughout. Subtle yet powerful, the film explores Conradian contexts through the lens of a female perspective. Its influence can be seen in the Australian frontier film The Proposition.

Jean-Marc Barr

Jean-Marc Barr (born 27 September 1960) is a French-American film actor and director. His mother is French. His American father was in the US Air Force and served in the Second World War. Jean-Marc Barr is primarily known as an actor, but is also a film director,screenwriter and producer. Barr is bilingual in French and English. He studied philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, theParis Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. He went on to pursue an education in drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In London he met his future wife, a pianist and composer Irina Dečermić. Jean-Marc Barr began working in theatre in France in 1986.

After some television roles and film work, in particular, Hope and Glory (1987) by John Boorman, he was cast in the tremendously successful The Big Blue (1988). Luc Besson cast him in the role of French diver Jacques Mayol. He played in the role opposite Rosanna Arquette and Jean Reno. The Big Blue was the most financially successful film in France in the 1980s. In 1991, he starred in Danish director Lars von Trier's Europa, marking the beginning of a long friendship (he is the godfather of von Trier's children) as well as a significant professional relationship. He went on to appear in von Trier’s Europa (1991), Breaking the Waves (1996),Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2004), Manderlay (2005) and The Boss of It All (2006). Also in 2005 he starred in the French filmCrustacés et Coquillages.

His collaboration with von Trier put him on track to start directing his own work. He debuted in 1999 as a director, screenwriter and producer with the intimate love story Lovers. This film became the first part of a trilogy; the two subsequent parts being the drama Too Much Flesh(2000) and the comedy Being Light (2001) which he co-directed with Pascal Arnold. He may also be recognized for his role as the attractive divorce lawyer, Maitre Bertram in the Merchant Ivory film le Divorce (2003). He appeared as Hugo in The Red Siren in 2002. He appeared as the main character in the video for Blur's 1995 single, "Charmless Man". He is set to play author Jack Kerouac in the upcoming film adaption of the Beat Generation autobiographical novel Big Sur.

Paprika Steen

Paprika Steen was born in Denmark to musician and conductor Niels Jørgen Steen and actress Avi Sagild. As a teen, she started her career performing on stage in various contemporary stage productions and has been associated with the Royal Danish Theatre since 1997. That same year, she wrote and performed in the satirical television series “Lex og Klatten,” which became a TV and music classic in Denmark. In 1998, Steen became an active participant in the internationally acclaimed Dogme 95 film movement as the only performer to appear in the first three movies: Lars Von Trier’s “The Idiots,” Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Celebration,” and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s “Mifune’s Last Song.” Often referred to as the “Dogme Queen,” she most recently appeared in Susanne Bier’s “Open Hearts,” for which she won a Bodil Award and a Robert Award (Oscar equivalent of Denmark) as Best Supporting Actress.

Steen won her first Bodil Award as the Best Supporting Actress in 2000 for “The One and Only.” In 2002, she won the Bodil Award, the Robert Award, and American Film Institute’s Grand Jury Prize for her leading role as the controlling loudmouth Nete in “Okay.”

Steen made her directorial debut with the award-winning 2004 drama “Aftermath,” and followed with the 2007 comedy, “With Your Permission.” One of Steen’s biggest triumphs on stage was her sensational, critically acclaimed 2008 performance as Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Harmony Korine

Harmony Korine busted onto the indie film scene in 1995 at the age of 19 as the scribe of Larry Clark's controversial film Kids, a brutal, raw look at the highly sexual lives of a group of young teenagers living in New York City. Korine followed that effort two years later with his directorial debut, Gummo, a story again of teens and teen alienation. Gummo was a kinetic and fragmented mix of what looked like home video footage, a blurry acid trip and a hyper-realistic freak show. It was described by various critics as "remarkable" and "unforgettable," while at the same time earning the New York Times accolade, "The Worst Film of the Year." Despite - or because of - these notices, Gummo went on to garner Korine a cult following that includes not only young fans, but filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant and Werner Herzog (the latter playing Julien's father in Korine's latest, julien donkey-boy).

   With his second film, Korine has grown up just a bit, and shifts his focus away from the purely grotesque of Gummo to the mind and life of a schizophrenic young man. Ewen Bremner plays Julien in what has to be one of the most realistic portrayals of mental illness ever seen in a feature film. Whatever one's feelings about Korine's filmmaking style, Bremner's performance is a powerful one, and will certainly earn the actor strong critical praise.
   In julien donkey-boy, Korine is still obsessed with scattered images, strangely juxtaposed scenes and oddball characters, but there is more of a structure here, perhaps because he was under the strict guidelines of the Dogme 95 manifesto. Korine was, as he says, "invited to join the brotherhood of Dogme 95" by founders Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg . Dogme 95, for those who have not yet heard, is a short set of strict rules for filmmakers. For example, the manifesto forbids the use of artificial lighting or any kind of manufactured set dressing. 

   The guidelines are meant to return the focus of filmmaking to the pure art of storytelling, without any extraneous distractions. Although this realism can sometimes lead to the unraveling of story structure, for Korine, it appears to have narrowed his gaze on the characters and, in doing so, helped the audience to understand their actions. 
   IFILM met with Harmony Korine in Los Angeles to discuss Dogme 95, his use of hidden cameras and how his next film, Fight Harm, landed him first in the hospital, and then in jail. 

Richard Martini

Film director, producer, writer Richard Martini is the first to admit that his journey into the movie making world has been pretty unusual. It all started at a train station in Rome where Rich trusted the simple flip of a coin to help him decide whether to stay in Rome and be a writer, or to go to Los Angeles and seek his fortune in film-making.

"Heads I'd stay in Rome, tails I'd go to L.A.," recalled Rich. "It came up heads and I said, 'OK, I'll give it 2 out of 3,' and because of that, I realize maybe it was time for me to split. That's how I wound up in L.A., studying film-making at USC."

At USC, Rich made a super 8 film about the wheelchair races titled "Special Olympian" which won the grand prize for the 1980 Mexico City International Film Festival.

"That was pretty amazing to me and it really showed me that it's not about the delivery, as much as it is about your content," said Rich. "If the content of your story is powerful, it doesn't matter what medium you've shot it in. You really can affect people."

In 1999 and seven feature films later including "You Can't Hurry Love," Rich was approached by his friend, Bruce Haring, who at the time was a writer for USA Today working on a prosumer video equipment article. Bruce asked Rich what was the least amount of money someone could spend to make a feature film; and if just about anyone could make one with the right tools.

"Bruce wrangled up some camera equipment for me and I ran off and made a film about a video camera that gets stolen from a store in Santa Monica, CA, and goes on an adventure around the world," said Rich. "Every time you take the lenscap off, a new story begins. That feature film 'Camera' wound up costing me just $300, the cost of the videotape, and features appearances by Carol Alt, Angie Everheart and Rebecca Broussard."

"Camera" later earned the distinction of being designated as "Dogme #15," the second American film to do so, by the founding fathers of Dogme 95. The do-it-yourself professional filmmaker movement was founded by Danish avante-garde filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.