The dogme movement made Danish cinema synonymous with no-frills filmmaking, now documentary-makers have adopted the dogme brand – with mixed results. Ross Whittaker reports on the 'dogumentary' movement, and the fruits it has borne to date.

If anyone wondered what would happen if Lars von Trier got to work his will on documentary film, they had a chance to find out last November at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival where eight new non-fiction films, labelled 'dogumentary' had their premiere.

'Dogumentarism' was born out of a discussion among a group of Danish documentary filmmakers who felt that too many elements of fiction filmmaking were encroaching on the documentary form, and that a more modest stylistic approach might bring them closer to the truth. Eight directors were commissioned to make documentaries on topics of their choice, though when the completed films were showcased at CPH:DOX not everyone was happy with the result.

'I watched some of the other dogumentary films and some of them were very good, but some of them were totally crap,' Klaus Birch, maker of the dogumentary Typically Danish (Typisk Dansk), tells me by phone from Copenhagen. 'I couldn't stand it, one hour of it was terrible. As an experiment it was very good, but I don't like the result of it. If you take the eight then the result was poor. My documentary was shown in the cinema, and I think only ten people showed up. They haven't been broadcast on Danish television, and I'm not sure if they want to show them at all. Maybe they just want to forget about it.'

Michael Klint, maker of Get a Life, also thinks that it is unlikely that his dogme-documentary will be broadcast. For a long time he wanted to make a documentary in Africa about the disease Noma, and because the dogumentary code insisted that the director could choose his own topic, he saw this as his opportunity to make a film about the disease. Few people may get to see it.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 104.