ABSTRACT
First announced by Danish director Lars von Trier, at a centennial celebration of film in Paris in 1995, Dogme 95 is a rule-governed, manifesto-based, back-to-basics film initiative that was intended from the outset to generate a movement. More than a decade later, the official Dogme website (https://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm) provides evidence of the successful realization of von Trier's intentions, with more than two hundred films listed from countries (or subnational entities), including Australia, Denmark, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Chile, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Korea, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Quebec, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the United States, and Wales. Spanning six continents, this list does not include the films by directors (in Hong Kong and mainland China, for example) who claim to have been greatly inspired by the Dogme program, without having felt compelled to abide by all of its rules in the production of bona fide Dogme films. In 2002 Ryan Gilbey called Dogme 95 “the most radical film-making movement since the French new wave” (Gilbey 2002: online) and more recently German filmmaker Wim Wenders claimed that “over time Dogme 95 will come to be seen as one of the most important developments in European film at the turn of the century” (Skotte and Møller 2005: online). Along with other aspects of its basic orientation, Dogme's manifesto-based and rule-governed nature makes it an inherently philosophical project, and the films and the now globalized movement to which they belong have in fact attracted the attention of a number of philosophers. Dogme 95 raises key philosophical questions having to do with rationality, creativity under constraint, rule-following, realism, and the psychology of fantasy and fiction. Before exploring the role played by some of these philosophical issues in the Dogme phenomenon, it is necessary to provide some basic information about Dogme and the various phases of its development since 1995.
