heart of light: the danish wave in cinema september 10 - 19, 1999 photo: THE MAGNETIST'S FIFTH WINTER

back to main program Heart of Light: The Danish Wave in Cinema has been organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in collaboration with the Danish Film Institute. Special thanks to the Consulate General of Denmark in New York for its support. The Film Society is pleased to welcome WRT audiences to our second foray into Danish cinema. Our first, 1997's Dreyer, von Trier and Beyond, paid homage to Carl Theodore Dreyer, that Old Master of cinematic illumination, and Lars von Trier, one of his contemporary heirs. Also surveyed were new Danish filmmakers from Thomas Vinterberg to Nicolas Winding Refn, along with veterans such as silent stylist Benjamin Christensen and Jan Troell. Introducing this national cinema, Richard Peña remarked on the extraordinary use of light by Danish directors: "Perhaps living in a northern country with long dark winters has made [these artists] especially sensitive to the power of light on spaces, architecture and...people." With that remarkable tradition in mind, we have subtitled our second Danish program Heart of Light. That's the name of Jacob Grønlykke's first film, to be screened here along with Nicolas Winding Refn's BLEEDER, the second chapter in a trilogy about contemporary folk living on the edge. These Danish investigations into the very heart of light will take us to a Scotland only Lars von Trier could have imagined (BREAKING THE WAVES), the Faroe Islands (BARBARA), northern Sweden (THE MAGNETIST'S FIFTH WINTER) and Greenland (Grønlykke's debut). And of course light in its most natural state is one of the aims of those filmmakers like Thomas Vinterberg (THE CELEBRATION), von Trier (The Idiots) and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen (Mifune) who've propounded Dogma 95, an aesthetic manifesto aimed at holding the line against "the highly expensive, traditional, conformist feature film apparatus." In the coming week, prepare to be dazzled by our Danish Wave. Panel Discussion: The Nouvelle Vow-or Is the Danish "Dogma" Movement For Real? Presented in collaboration with the Center for Communication, Inc. Sat Sept 18: 4:15 pm Admission is free with any valid ticket for a Danish film shown at the Walter Reade Theater Sept 18 or 19. Over the past 18 months, no development in international cinema has caused more heated controversy than the emergence of the Danish "Dogma" films-thus far (in the U.S.), Thomas Vinterberg's CELEBRATION, and the soon-to-be-released Idiots by Lars von Trier and Mifune by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. Brandishing in their credits a certificate which signifies the filmmaker's agreement to abide by a set of filmmaking rules (no artificial lights, no tripods, no canned music, etc.) Dogma seems a conscious return to a more direct, more "imperfect" cinema in an age of computer-generated imagery and megamillion- dollar budgets. At Cannes this year, it was announced that an additional 15 international filmmakers had signed up to create certified Dogma productions-but is Dogma really anything more than a publicity stunt? Join Paul Morrissey (slated for an upcoming Dogma film), Jesper Jargil (director of THE HUMILIATED) and producer Anthony Bregman (Good Machine) for a discussion on Dogma's present and future impact on filmmaking.