DOGMA 25 🐾

Could be a license plate for a woman who owns 25 dogs!!

My friend Alisha, who produced Blow Up My Life with Ryan and I, recently sent me this information about a new “Dogma 25.” I don’t know these filmmakers but I love a manifesto!

Their bullet points are really interesting to consider. The status quo of the industry - and world - is not working, by any means. We are all looking for a new ways to create art and cinema (aka to BE!), so I’m very excited to hear new ideas from folks who are experimenting with creating outside the current system.

Their Dogma 25 shares a lot of similarities to what Ted Hope and others have been writing about on FilmStack: the NonDē movement. Artists all over the globe are feeling like a big change is needed! I also appreciated this Dogma 25 because it puts some concrete how-to’s into their philosophy — it’s interesting to see how they’ve taken ideas and translated them into their artistic practices.

I wanted to share some thoughts on their Dogma 25, below, and see what y’all thought of them, too!!

I love their use of the word “obedient.” I don’t want to see movies that are obedient to studios, to audiences, to the market. I want to see films that break all the rules!

Also note how their solution to algorithms, obedience, and AI is essentially an economic one — make films smaller, for less. It’s always interesting and important to remember how art, and especially cinema, is so tied into its economic/political context. But I don’t think “get smaller” is even the way to think about what this is, but maybe we think about that as “go underground” or going “NonDē” — Non-Dependent on anyone else!

I could definitely see using this Dogma 25 as a north star to reach for when combating “pointlessness and powerlessness.”

No filmmaker, film worker, or film lover should be dependent on any particular system or platform to develop, fund, collaborate, release, market, preserve, share, view or engage with the art , cinema, support, or the business thereof that we love and create. - Ted Hope’s NonDē

1. This is a COOL idea! I’ve been trying to collect ideas and scenes for a new screenplay all by hand and it’s true — hand-to-paper flows so freely and it prevents you from going online and getting distracted. I will likely type the screenplay on my computer, but this is a really cool idea to keep in mind.

2. Sure! In my case, it’s a reminder to cut down on exposition. One of my pet peeves is characters telling us about themselves or their past. Show me your personality, your actions. I want the mystery, I can fill in the blanks. And if my understanding of a character is different from the person’s next to me, that’s exciting!

3. I don’t totally get this one. What’s your interpretation of “internet is off limits”? I think we need to use the internet a lot when promoting our films, for example!

4. 1000%! This needs to be front and center, and a good argument for why productions need to be smaller — so you have no one to answer to.

5. I think this is totally do-able. We made Blow Up My Life with 9 crew members on set, it was a wonderful experience and I’d do it again.

6. I’m all for shooting on location. Though as you know, I also don’t have a problem with cinema being “artificial” — as in made on a set, or in a constructed space that reveals its artifice. After all, some films don’t take place in our world. But it’s also true that Virtual Production studios or wall-to-wall VFX sets remove the imperfections and humanity from the scene. They also prevent the coincidences, encounters, experiences and magic that come when filming out in the world and thus remove that deep humanity that Dogma 25 is trying to get back to.

7. Okay, sure! I wear make-up, so I’m fine with people wearing make-up if they want to. But CGI perfection is another thing, and I’m all for doing away with that. I understand that the intention here is to be real and HUMAN.

8. My first gut reaction is “oooh that will be very hard.” But okay, so what if this is baked into the design of the film — that you can’t buy everything and make it exactly how you want it, and you have to use what’s available? Maybe that actually creates new and exciting solutions!

9. Make a film in one year? This is another interesting idea that I would borrow from — write a script, prep it, GO GO GO. Yes! Momentum is everything. However, I love taking time in the edit. I think you need time in the edit to grow and gestate ideas. A rushed edit shows. Cut it until it’s perfect, timeline be damned.

10. Hell yeah!

What do you think about this Dogma 25??

Lateroni!

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