Stella Sims talks to director Elaine Dunn about the challenges involved in making her award-winning debut feature, Gypo, the first certified British Dogme movie.

Article first published: Autumn 2005

Gypo centres around an everyday family in Margate and how they are affected by the arrival of Czech immigrants into their community. Dealing head on with the issue of asylum seekers in the UK, it tells the same story from the family’s three widely different perspectives – the father (Paul McGann), the mother (Pauline McLynn) and their daughter (newcomer Chloe Sirene). This is director Jan Dunn’s debut feature and she has gained critical admirers for the film’s intense and realistic feel.

But arguably one of the main reasons Gypo has got people talking is that it is the first certified British Dogme film. Says Jan: “We just made it into Ten Years of Dogme – they talk about brothers of Dogme all the time, but I now consider myself one of the ‘sisters’ of Dogme.”

The vow of chastity

In early 1995, two Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg got together to “start a new wave” and drew up a 10-point filmmaking manifesto entitled The Vow of Chastity. Angry at the state of modern cinema, they believed feeling and depth were being lost beneath post-production gloss and superficiality, and demanded a purer and simpler approach to making films. Aiming to “force the truth out of characters and settings,” The Vow Of Chastity stated that, among other things, the film must be shot using only a handheld camera, on location with no outside props or artificial lighting. In addition, sound must be recorded with the images, never in post-production, while music must not be used unless it occurs live in the scene. Special effects and gratuitous, showy action are forbidden, while the rules also reject the ‘genre movie’ and the director’s ego, stating that the director must not be credited. Vinterberg and Von Trier released the first two Dogme films respectively in 1998 – Festen (The Celebration) and the now notorious Idioterne (The Idiots).

Other Danish filmmakers were fast to join the Dogme collective. In 1999 Sřren Kragh Jacobsen released his Mifune’s Sidste Sang, while Kristian Levring and Lone Scherfig followed in 2000 with The King of Alive and Italiensk For Begyndere (Italian For Beginners). Rather than seeing the rules as a limitation, compliant directors felt that Dogme stripped them of many clunky filmmaking peripherals, allowing them to concentrate on the creativity and dramatic elements of filmmaking. While the last 10 years in Danish cinema has since been referred to as the Age of Dogme, the phenomenon also permeated the rest of the globe – around 34 Dogme films have been made, with only 10 being Danish. In 2002, the Dogmesecretariat website stated that it would be closing because Dogme had become a genre in itself – one of the things most forbidden. Von Trier and Vinterberg have gone on to find more recent mainstream success with Dogville and Dear Wendy. While some critics call Dogme a short-lived publicity stunt, it is generally acknowledged that the movement stamped its mark on world cinema and inspired new and unconventional methods of filmmaking. With its fervent declaration of rebellion, Dogme remains an exciting part of film history that has grabbed the attention of filmmakers such as Jan Dunn. One of The Vow Of Chastity’s stipulations is that the film must take place “in the here and now.” This, along with other aspects of its technique, has made Dogme a useful filmmaking method for filmmakers interested in exploring the state of modern humanity, making a very immediate and realistic comment about society as it is. It is perhaps fitting therefore, that Jan Dunn has chosen to use Dogme to shine an uncompromising light upon a very topical subject and put the asylum issue under the microscope. While the Dogme method throws up many challenges for producing a deliverable and watchable film, Gypo’s realism is heightened by the unflinching nature of the Dogme camera and production process.

The decision to go Dogme

So what made Jan consider making a Dogme film? “I met Elaine [Wickham, producer] through Screen South’s new talent initiative,” she says. “I suggested I write something using the local contentious asylum-seeking issues as a backdrop to the story. If it was to be a gritty, social-based drama, I suggested that it could suit Dogme. Elaine got very excited immediately – I didn’t know her very well then and didn’t realize she was a huge Dogme fan and knew a lot more about the whole ethos than I did. We didn’t know until a few weeks later when we had a meeting with David Nielsen, the Dogme advisor in Copenhagen, that we would be the first UK dogme film.”

Jan considered that the Dogme way of making films was particularly useful for the themes they were exploring. “I planned from the beginning that the film would be quite raw and would certainly use hand-held camera; with the social realism of the piece it just seemed obvious to shoot a Dogme film. The stripping down of technicalities encourages the use of more domestic environments and in that sense it suits family dysfunction and character-driven stories, which is certainly the case with Festen and Julien Donkey Boy. It was fantastic that Elaine was such a champion for Dogme because the production values sometimes limit the exploitation ability of a feature film. Fortunately it hasn’t stopped distributors picking up Gypo. In many ways it was creatively liberating – but I won’t shoot a Dogme film again.”

Jan comes from an acting background, mostly in theatre. She made her first short in 1997. She feels that being an actor has really helped when it comes to basic storytelling skills and working with actors. “I feel these are the most important skills a director should have,” she says.

It took just eight weeks from Jan and Elaine’s initial chat about Gypo to the first day of principal photography. “We have a very similar gung-ho, ‘let’s just go ahead anyway’ attitude. We argue all the time, but our arguments always conclude positively. We seem to find ways to meet in the middle for the greater good. It is total collaboration.”

Gypo was made out of frustration and with no funding support – distribution came only once they had a completed film. “Interest in me because of the earlier features I’d been attached to meant our first screening at The Hospital in London was packed with some really excellent industry people. We signed with sales agent Swipe Films, and then with Redbus for distribution. Swipe has sold it to several overseas territories already, including the all-important US.”

“I’d worked with Pauline McLynn before on a short comedy,” recalls Jan. “There is so much more to her than Mrs Doyle [from Father Ted], so I wanted to write the part of Helen for her – it’s a very dramatic role and she carries the film. I’d originally written the role of the father with Paul McGann in my head and we arranged to meet with him over coffee. He engaged in the conversation straight away. He was a little apprehensive about the improvised dialogue because he hadn’t really done much of that before, but he got completely into it – wanting very little rehearsal. His performance is amazing.

“I colour-coded the script with a colour for each day so the actors wouldn’t get confused about what they were wearing on what day, because there’s no art department. Other than this, the Dogme rules didn’t really affect them. They were more concerned with improvised dialogue, which is nothing to do with Dogme, but how I designed the script. Elaine and I call it ‘spontaneous dialogue’. Every other problem anyone, including the actors, had was entirely budget related.”

Editing

Editor Emma Collins had the biggest headache. This was not just to do with Dogme rules of all sound having to be shot to picture, but also because Jan had designed a script with improvised dialogue. “Emma and I talked a lot about the scenes we knew would be problematic. She got editing the dinner sequence straight away as it was shot quite early. With a single camera and five people eating, handheld camera and spontaneous dialogue, she knew this would be tough, but she did such a great job it’s pretty much still intact from her first rough assembly of it.

“Michelle Mascoll was our sound engineer, but I think she had an absolute nightmare because she’s used to having complete control over sound and making it perfect in post, but of course the Dogme rules say everything has to be shot to picture with no laying in post. She’s very good at what she does but because it’s Dogme, ultimately the film won’t sound great.”

Dogme forbids using artificial light other than a small camera-mounted lamp. “Our cinematographer is Danish and it’s his first Dogme too, so he really wanted to stick to the rules. All I cared about was that the audience see what’s going on. There are three different revelatory stories in the film and I wanted a completely different look in each of them. We shot HD and Jacob designed specifications of grading on a chip in the camera. Dogme forbids grading in post or using special opticals, and Jacob had a long conversation with David Nielsen in Copenhagen to discuss if this would be permitted. David thought it was an ingenious way to work with the rules. I think under Dogme constraints, Jacob has shot the film beautifully.”

One particular scene caused problems with the rulebook. “There is a blow-job scene in the film which was shot in the dark, so we parked the van under a street lamp and Jacob attached his camera light (the one we are allowed) but when we saw the rushes it looked floodlit – completely inappropriate – and I made a decision to grade down to make it look like it’s night. We didn’t have any other problems during production apart from bringing a prop, a prosthetic penis, instead of using Paul McGann’s real one in the blow-job scene [in Dogme props must not be brought in from outside the location]. I didn’t even ask him if we could do it for real, maybe I should have. We dressed the caravan with some Christmas props, which were at the hotel where the crew were staying, so they were available at the location and that’s OK by Dogme.”

The first public performance of Gypo was at the San Francisco Frameline Film Festival, where it won best first feature award. At the end of August 2005 it was shown several times at the Edinburgh Festival, where it was selected for the Michael Powell best feature.

“I come from a theatre background,” says Jan, “where I have worked on plays with no props and minimal lighting, so this was not an unusual step for me to take. I have learnt how important it is to have a film you can sell when you’ve completed it; no matter how great the story is, you need to have some level of standard on production values. I hope we achieved this with Gypo under very constrained circumstances. We’re shooting the next film, Ruby Red Chequer this year and hope to have a completed film ready for Cannes 2006.

Stella Sims Stella Sims, a graduate of American Studies from the University of Sussex, gained a love of film from Harold And Maude to Anchorman while shovelling popcorn at her local art house cinema. As well as being an aspiring film journalist, she is curating the film programme for Ladyfest Brighton 2005, a cultural festival celebrating feminism and women in the arts.