Dogme

The following is another manifesto.  A manifesto for honest film making.  A style known as Dogme founded by a few northern European socialists.  The following is copied from their website Dogme95

Dogme 95

.. is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.

DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.

DOGME 95 is a rescue action!

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false! 
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!

Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition! 

DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as The Vow of Chastity.

Now not only is the following a beautiful song... 

Beirut are the best indie kids out there.  A bunch of folks from Albuquerque, at least one I think from Taos “eeee”, lead by Zach Condon.  They perform each of the songs from their album The Flying Cup Club captured on the streets of New York by the La Blogoteque Dogme theory of film.  Natural lighting, hand-held cameras, no sound dubbing.  Beautiful idea and exactly the essence that gives you the feeling of amazement that only comes from an intimate live show.  Lars Von Trier missed the mark with all his films except Dancer in the Dark, why?  Because that style of filming works best with the naked performance of music and choreography.  The second rule of Dogme is the most important and the most honest.

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

So check this out from the Take Away Shows and Beirut.  I am inspired. 

-ASC

BEIRUT - Forks and Knives (La fête)
by flyingclubcup