DENMARK STORYTELLERS FESTIVAL

Hi everyone!

This Friday, I got up, and I went to school, there I saw Jette with a big screen to show us different movies.

We spent all morning watching movies, all kind of movies, action, love, scary, but the most powerdul was that all those movies were from Denmark or from Danish Directors.

I think that that morning we saw more celebrities and actors than in some festival like Oscars, Goya´s awards or Cannes film festival . But all of them good movies and actors. Like most of you know, I love movies and cinema, and this is the most important reason because I enjoyed that lesson.

I learned a lot about cinema, especially about Danish cinema, because I know a lot about cinema and directors of this world, but I didn’t know too much about Danish cinema.

Jette help us to know more about it, she started to speak about Dogma 95, ¿What’s that? This was the first question that I had in my mind when she told that. DOGMA 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. This movement was so important for Danish filming producers. It is an attempt to do cinema more natural, like the life, without special effects and special motions.

The main goals of this movement were:

1. Filming must be done on location. (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed).

3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen.

10. The director must not be credited.

Jette explain us all about tis movement and she show us some movies as exemples, in my poit of view, I think that one of the most powerful movies that she shown, was Dogville, written and directed by Lars von Trier, the film is a parable that uses an extremely minimal set to tell the story of Grace Mulligan (Nicole Kidman), a fugitive from mobsters, who arrives in the small town of Dogville and is provided refuge in return for physical labor.



All movie is filmed like in the theatre, using words to say which place it is showing on the screen. The sky is like a picture, everything seems a town but it is a studio.



Other stylish movie is Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen, she is a Danish author from Denmark, and she tell her life in Kenya. It is a romantic story about Africa and coffee, where love re always in mind of the main actress, Meryl Streep.





Definitely, I enjoyed this lesson as I´m enjoying of tell it, it´s means that I want to have another lesson like this, because I think that it was one of the best lesson of my eramus experience, and I can say today that I know a lot of things about Danish movies.

PS: In this festival, the winner is... ¿which movie do you think that is the best from DOGMA 95?