The Belgrade Manifesto - Profound or Indulgent?

At the recent Belgrade film festival an attempt was made to draw a line in the sand for filmmakers; a line that attempted to declare No More to shallow, puerile, pointless cinema and foster a focus on quality engagement with cinema as an artform for the human experience.

The document entitled the Belgrade Manifesto (which can be read here) opens with the declaration:

“There is a crisis in cinema today, a deep malaise, a feeling of artistic exhaustion, of pointlessness. The evolution of cinematic language that is so vital to the continued well-being and relevance of the medium has pretty much come to a standstill. Good films are getting fewer, the informed and knowledgeable audience that is so important for their success has shrunk. The older generation don’t go to the cinema any more because so many films are for young people, and the young people today have little idea of cinema’s capacity for depth, excitement and complexity. The critics, who should be guiding and educating that audience, are mostly inadequate, and the distribution structures no longer work.”

Its hard not to read such a document without seeing comparison to Dogme95, the Manifesto of Chastity in Filmmaking that began in Denmark and stamped its place in cinema history across the world. Dogme95 reads:

DOGME 95 is a rescue action!
In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby … false!
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!

“I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95:

1.
Shooting 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).
2.
The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3.
The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
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. must not occur.)
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 film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10.
The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a “work”, as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.”


There no doubt that the creators of the Belgrade manifesto would have been looking and hoping for some of the success of Dogme95 but I have my doubts that this act of defiance will make anything more than an ignored ripple in world cinema.

Dogme95, defiant though it was, had a good dose of humour, self-deprecation, dare I say fun about it. You only have to watch any of the wildly successful Dogme films such as Mifune and The Idiots to see the exuberance for cinema pop right out from the screen. Dogme95 in many ways didnt actually take itself that seriously. It was framework and a creative ideology rather than a socio-political one. And its that which I fear fails the Belgrade Manifesto.

No one deplores Hollywood excess more than I; no one finds shallow, mindless, lowest common denominator Hollywood filmmaking more distasteful and infuriating than I do. But its hard not to read the verbose prose of the Belgrade Manifesto as anything more than self-indulgent, pompous bitchin and moanin.

The story is given exaggerated importance; the study of its crude mechanics has become an industry in itself with consultants and experts in every financing agency and production house, part of an ever growing and unproductive bureaucracy whose purpose is to sniff out the trends and fads of the day and to select and develop (and distort) productions in accordance with those predictions.

Whilst Id be first to deplore the industry of self-help, instant success, screenwriting formulas (something I wrote about here on DigitalBasin after presenting at the Los Angeles Screenwriters Conference) the declarations that The story is given exaggerated importance and that Nobody pays attention to form, without which, as our predecessors understood, nothing worthwhile can possibly develop seems to me to be exertion towards Style over Substance, something I would have thought the authors of the Belgrade Manifesto would be seeking to fight against.

I find it hard to read the Belgrade Manifesto and Not picture a whole bunch of filmmakers (no-doubt wearing black and sporting designer eye-ware) who cant find the success they believe they deserve, gathered together and looking to find someone to blame for their un-success. Complaining that theres too much focus on story? and we need more focus on Form? Youve got to be kidding me! That’s exactly the problem with the worst of Hollywood all glitz and no guts; all effects and no engaging narrative.

The Manifesto singles out cinematic language as failing to move forward but I simply do not think this argument can be sustained; evidently the authors dont get out much or view very widely. The range of cinema craft techniques that deliver new language constructs for cinematic meaning has never been more diverse. If you were to watch only banal feature films you could be forgiven for buying into this perspective. But look a little wider than the narrow confines of the multiplex  to the flood great TV drama over the past 8 years, computer gaming, online video, hybrid documentary, interactive forms, music videos, motion graphics, media art  these are not the fringes of cinematic language, this is the mainstream. The virtual camera, multiple layers, blended imagery, 3D environments, motion capture control, motion tracking, low-fi cameras, handheld devices, DV and HDV; the shift in cinema language driven by new technologies has never, ever, been more dynamic. The moving can do things now that it has never been able to do before; the boundaries of cinema language have never been more pushed than they are now  perhaps not in mainstream every day move theatres but Everywhere else. If youve missed it then youre eyes havent been open.

Where Dogme95 was simply about crafting a Point of Difference, a way to make films unlike that which dominated cinematic form, the Belgrade Manifesto seems little more than a public whinge session about how hard it is to be an artist. I feel like shouting  “Shut up and go make a film!”

Its only at the end that the Belgrade Manifesto I think finds any traction of tangible and proactive energy:

“it is now possible, because of the huge reduction in costs, to bypass existing funding channels and make high quality films WITHOUT PERMISSION. In addition, we need to adapt and develop those models of distribution and exhibition that are already being pioneered and begin to identify new sources of minimal funding. It is time to take responsibility for our own future and establish a committed, interactive community that can share ideas and work together to find viable ways to make and show our films and build audiences that will want to see them.”

I do love the line make high quality films without permission  yes indeed! That is what the digital age demands we do. I fear that if the authors of the Belgrade Manifesto put as much energy into making the films they want to see as they did into the writing and publicising of the Manifesto they may have achieved more credibility.

The fact that the Belgrade Manifesto has less than 70 signatures world wide saids perhaps Im not alone in feeling this way.