1 GOD LOVES A TRIER
Dubbed ‘The Mad Prince’ by the Danish press after winning three prizes at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival for stylised WW2 tale Europa, Lars von Trier first mumbled the word “Dogme” to producing partner Peter Aalbæk Jensen back in 1993 on a sleeper train. “We had the kind of intimate moment that you get when two men are lying naked together in the dark,” recalls Jensen. “Then Lars piped up, ‘I want to do something called Dogme.’ I said, ‘It's a stupid title, go back to sleep…’”
The next time Jensen heard it, it was March 1995. Along with fellow Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, von Trier had crafted a manifesto with 10 rules designed to purify the filmmaking process. Arriving at a conference on cinema at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe Paris, von Trier had bags of red leaflets proclaiming Dogme 95's so-called Vow Of Chastity. When asked a question, von Trier responded by scattering the papers over the balcony and into the audience below; “It was a very boring conference…” he said.
So von Trier has always had a penchant for mischief but there can be no doubt that Dogme 95 elevated him to one (Dogme#2), about a group of able-bodied people who feign mental disabilities in public, may not be his most celebrated work but it typifies his output: controversial, taboo-busting event cinema.
