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I found this write-up about the Dogme 95 movement and how Lars von Trier made The Idiots really interesting. This article covers the Dogme 95 films and the movement that created them.
Who Wrote The Vows
Dogme 95 is a Danish idea with a loud birth. In 1995, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg put a manifesto into the world: strip the cosmetics off cinema, stop hiding weak scenes behind money, and force the film back onto story and performance. Later they were joined by other Danish filmmakers, but those two names are the ones to remember if you are trying to understand why the rules exist.
They called the rules the Vow of Chastity, which is half joke and half dare. You can read a fuller history in our guide to what the Dogme 95 film movement actually was. This post is the practical one: the vows, two films that show what they feel like, and how to shoot in that spirit now.
From Wikipedia:
The goal of the Dogme collective is to purify filmmaking by refusing expensive and spectacular special effects, post-production modifications and other technical gimmicks. The filmmakers concentrate on the story and the actors’ performances.
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They believe this approach may better engage the audience, as they are not alienated or distracted by overproduction. To this end, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg produced ten rules to which any dogme film must conform. These rules, referred to as the “Vow of Chastity,” are as follows:
The Ten Vows
- Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
- 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, i.e., diegetic.
- The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
- 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).
- Optical work and filters are forbidden.
- The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
- Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
- Genre movies are not acceptable.
- The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
- The director must not be credited.
That list is the whole dare. Location instead of a built world. Sound that belongs to the room. A camera in someone’s hands, in the action, not parked on a tripod waiting for a pretty frame. Colour, no lighting package, no filters, no “and then they shoot each other” as a way to create a plot. Here and now. Not a genre costume. Academy 35mm. And no director’s name on the film.
I hope the vows are useful as a checklist even if you never call the finished thing Dogme. Most of us will not. The certificate era ended. The useful part did not.
The Celebration And The Idiots
Two films are the examples I keep coming back to, and they are the ones the movement is usually introduced with.
Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (Festen) is Dogme #1. A family gathering, a speech that should not be given, a room that cannot quite absorb what has been said. You feel the vows as pressure: real locations, bodies in the same air, a camera that has to stay with the people. It is not “handheld for energy.” It is handheld because the camera goes where the action is, and the action is a dinner that has gone wrong.
Lars von Trier’s The Idiots is the other early marker, and the film that write-up I mentioned was circling. It is messier, more argumentative, more interested in what a group will do when they decide to stop behaving. I am not going to dress that up with box office stories. Watch it as a performance experiment under a set of bans. If the scenes work, they work because the actors have to carry them.
You do not need to copy either plot. You need to notice what happens to directing actors when you cannot light your way out of a weak beat, and you cannot score your way out of an exit. The scene has to be true in the room or it dies in the room.
How To Shoot Dogme-Style Today
If you want to make a Dogme-style film now, do not get stuck on period hardware. Take the spirit: digital handheld, available light, diegetic sound, locations that already contain what the story needs.
Location (vow 1). Pick rooms that already have the objects. If the scene needs a piano, find a house with a piano. Do not dress a studio to look like a house with a piano. This will limit your story, which is the point. Write toward what you can enter.
Sound (vow 2). Record the room. If there is music, someone in the scene has to be playing it or putting it on. That is the opposite of the usual student-film habit of laying free music under everything in the edit. Dogme-style, the needle-drop only exists if a character chooses it. Silence is allowed. Traffic is allowed. A bad fridge is allowed.
Camera (vow 3). Handheld, in the action. You can still compose. You just cannot build a separate, prettier geography over there on sticks while the actors work over here. A lot of iPhone filmmaking already lives here, for better and worse. The vow is not “shake the camera.” The vow is “be present.”
Light (vow 4). Available light. If the room is too dark, cut the scene or put a lamp on the camera — the vow’s own escape hatch. This is where modern lighting for video knowledge still helps: you are not hanging a kit, but you can still choose which window you face, which hour you shoot, which practical in the location you switch on. Choice of place and time is still direction.
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Colour, no filters, no fake genre (vows 5–8). Shoot colour. Leave the LUT cosplay in the drawer. Do not write a heist or a slasher and then call it Dogme because you handheld it. “Here and now” means this city, this week, these people — not a period pastiche and not a mythical elsewhere.
Vow 9 Is Period-Specific
Vow 9 is the one that dates the manifesto: Academy 35mm.
In 1995 that was a real restriction. It meant a particular frame, a particular cost, a particular way of working with a camera department. It was also a way of saying: we are not making this on whatever tape format is fashionable, and we are not hiding in widescreen spectacle. Today, insisting on Academy 35mm as a purity test is a costume. The spirit of the vow, if you still want one, is: pick a simple, consistent capture format and stop shopping for a look in post. Digital handheld is enough. The cameras for beginners article on this site is useful for choosing a tool; Dogme-style, the cheaper honest camera beats the expensive one you are afraid to take to a real kitchen.
I would not call a film “Dogme 95” just because it is 4K and handheld. I would call it Dogme-style if the other vows are doing real work on the production: no imported set, no score, no lighting truck, no genre scaffolding.
Vow 10 And Festival Credits
Vow 10 says the director must not be credited.
That was always the most political rule, and the most awkward one to live with. Festivals and submission forms are built around a director’s name. You will be asked for it on the entry, the slate, the poster, the catalogue. If you want a historically strict Dogme film, you can keep the director off the on-screen credits and still have a name on the paperwork. If you want a Dogme-style film today, decide in advance whether anonymity is part of the experiment or whether you need the credit to get the film seen.
The useful version of vow 10 is not a vanishing act. It is a reminder that the film should still work if nobody knows who “authored” the camera.
Use the ten rules as a production diet: location, hands, available light, sound from the room, here and now. Leave Academy 35mm in 1995. Settle vow 10 on paper, not the night before you upload the screener.
I hope this was informative.
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