Article from Swedish fashion & trend magazine 'Bibel', issue 11, october 1999
Transcribed and translated from Swedish by Lunargirl (lunargirl@i.am)
for Björk - the Ultimate Intimate (http://bjork.mmedia.is)
Please do not use this on your page since it took me several weeks to
translate and transcribe the text and scan and edit the pictures.

Stig Björkman got, as the only journalist, to visit the filming of the musical »Dancer In The Dark« and interview Lars von Trier about Hollywood:ish sob stories, »Sound Of Music« and the movie which has become the world's most expensive home video.

Stig talked with Catherine Deneuve, played pinball with Lars and saw Björk dance like crazy in a prison-dungeon. Then he wrote it all down on an old wordprocessor and faxed it over to us along with von Triers latest manifesto which he found in the Zentropa-office in Copenhagen.

LARS VON TRIER
a little song, a little dance, a little fucking great homevideo
To call Lars von Trier a man of surprises would be an understatement of huge proportions.
Expect the unexpected seems to be his constant message to his surroundings.

For almost 20 years Lars von Trier has been occupied by building a myth around himself.
Already with his departure-movie from the Danish filmschool, »Pictures Of Freeing«, he stirred up the Danish tv-viewers. The movie is set to the days after the German occupation, but instead of having a Danish resistance-hero as the main character, Lars chose a German soldier. And so, Lars had driven his first splinter into the danish conscience.

It has continued in similar ways, in movie after movie, and in manifesto after manifesto - for Lars is a vivacious fence-gluer. Nowadays, most of the earlier opposers and doubters have taken him to their hearts, after the successes of »The Kingdom«, »Breaking The Waves« and »The Idiots«.

Lars von Trier has become an as reliable Danish concept as ever was Aalborg and The Little Mermaid, and the trademark Lars von Trier has become hard cash. His movies sell like butter all over the world, and the incomes have become the foundation for a small movie-empire, Zentropa Entertainments Aps, nowadays Denmarks most powerful movie-corporation.

»Fuck traditions«, a motto borrowed from another dane, author Leif Panduro, could be von Triers motto. If he'd ever would want to have one.

Von Trier is and will remain himself. Not himself "nok" (enough), not anymore. Now his
quirky and powerful artistic temper is in harmonic unity with all the movie-workers
who gather to his filming-invitations. Because Lars von Triers filmings have more and more gotten the character of a party. By payfulness and ease. Even if complications and conflicts also are steady ingredients.

Von Triers relationship with the outside world - that is, the outside world beyond his own home in the suburbs of Copenhagen - is complicated. It's both completely closed and unexpectedly open. Now and then, he appears to spread a few bon mots or just sheer confusion around his persona and movie projects. Then, the notoriously withdrawn artist seems to have shed all his supposed fears and suits up in the expected role of a provoker. But these moments seem staged by von Trier himself.
As the main character of the ongoing story of himself, he knows to put colour to, and limits for his appearances, even if improvisation nowadays only has become a slogan for his movie-business.

It could hardly have escaped anyone that von Trier during the summer has dedicated himself to finishing his first movie musical, »Dancer In The Dark«, a movie with another scandinavian megastar in the head role, the Icelander Björk.

A Danish filmer recording a musical in an American environment about a Czech emigrant woman played by an Icelander in Swedish Trollhättan - it sounds like a saga. And sure you can call »Dancer In The Dark« a saga, or at least a story inspired by the tale. It is the third part of what von Trier calls "his goldenheart-trilogy" where »Breaking The Waves« and »The Idiots« were the first two.

Goldenheart was a picture-book which Lars got in is hands when very small.
it's the story about an uncommonly kindhearted little girl who goes out into the woods on her own with pieces of bread and other things in her pockets. And in the end of the book, after she has made it through the forest and shared all her belongings to everyone passing by, she finds herself standing there, naked and scraped bare. But goldheart's last line in the book reads trustworthily: "I'll manage allright anyway"

This piece of work about the martyr-role and it's utter most consequenses has left Lars von Trier with no peace. From here stems his self-sacrificial heroins Bess and Karen, from "Breaking The Waves" and "the Idiots", and now also joining them is Selma in »Dancer In The Dark«. Maybe she has a more rebellious piece of mind than her predecessors, but she can neither steer nor escape her fate.

The movie sets in the middle of the sixties. Selma, a 30-yearold woman from Czhechoslovakia, has settled down in a smaller industrial-town in the state of Washington along with her 12-yearold son. Selma works in a weavery, but she also takes as many extra jobs she can in order to save away some money for her son. He suffers from an heredetary disease which is theratening him with blindness. An operation could prevent this event.

Selma dreams herself away from the strifes of everyday into escapades filled with dancing and music, even when she isn't rehearsing in the musical ensemble which the local amateurs are setting up.

The story takes a dramatic turn when Selma gets robbed of all her savings and has to try to regain her lost savings with armed force. She leaves the town with her son, in a desperate escape with no turning back. There are probably more reasons to call »Dancer In The Dark« a "musicl tragedy" instead of a "musical comedy".
In any case you can bet your money on that this movie musical is going to differ a lot from what the genre usually offers.

I meet Lars in Copenhagen a couple of months before the filming starts. Björk has just signed a contract. She's not only going to play the main character in the movie buy also write the score and lyrics for all the songs in the movie. Catherine Deneuve recently came for a visit. Lars has just quickly rewritten the role as Selmas best friend directly for her. A black woman in her mid-thirties has transformed into a french immigrant in ripe age.


Björk and Catherine swing it at dance rehearsals.

But why the sixties?, I ask.
 And why Washington? And why a Czhech woman as a lead role?

- That I chose Washington has first and foremost got to do with the American code of laws. Some laws that I want to use were used in that particular state up until the sixties. 
- And also I liked to have a Czhech, an eastern state woman as an opposite pole towards the American. On top of that, I think that Selma is a great name. I have a daughter with the same!

The musical genre is one of the most traditional and conventional within films.
What do you want to do with it?

- I would like to give it the freshness that I see in the Dogma-movies or in "Breaking The Waves". I have some pretty clear ideas about how I will shape the song- and dance-acts in the movie. I am going to document them with help of one hundred videocameras which are going to be scattered around the shooting-site.
But I don't really want it to arise from a certain form or style. I want to work from the contents of the story. The idea with the heredetary illness which later in life can turn both Selma and her son blind is something I came up with while I reworked the manuscript.

- I got the idea from an animated movie. A totally impossible and horribly sentimental movie. It takes place in New York where a cop finds a doll in a junk-yard. He gives it to an italian who he obviously has a fancy for. The woman gives the doll to her young daughter. At one point the girl drops the doll and when she tries to find it she feels her way across the floor. First then, you realise that the girl is blind. It's a terribly efficient scene. After that, the girl starts talking to the doll - just like Bess in her conversations with God in "Breaking the waves". With the doll, the girl travels around the city and the doll becomes her eyes. The movie ends with that the girl can see her mother for the first time in her life. It was an insanely sentimental but incridibly driven animated movie.

- Blindness is a geniously melodramatic tool. I also came to think of Douglas Sirk, the Danish-American master of Hollywood:ish sob-stories in the fifties, and his movie "The Magnificent Obsession". It is a completely incredible story.
Jane Wyman is blind since a car-accident which Rock Hudson is to blame for. And he educates himself to be a doctor just so he can cure her! And then they get married! Of course! Hell yes, it's stong! But I haven't used such coarse strokes when writing »Dancer In The Dark«

The movie sets in the middle of the sixties.
Is that to connect with the old musicals that were made in the USA?

- No, if I wanted to make a pastich, I would have gone further back in time, at least 'til the fifties when many of the genres highlights were made. "An American In Paris", "Singing In The Rain" and "The Band Wagon".

- I would like to include a song from "Sound Of Music" in my movie. It would fit so well. But I doubt we'll get the permission to use it. We'll see. It would be fun to hear Björk's version of it. The song would appear in the local amateur-performance where Selma and the others rehearse. But the real musical era had passed when "Sound Of Music" came. Once in a while a few exceptions have emerged, like "West Side Story". Or "Cabaret".

- "West Side Story" probably is my absolute favourite because it treats such an arch-American subject. "West Side Story" for me stands for the in all ways most successful movie musical. Maybe because that movie brought the musical out in the streets.

- Of the old musicals, "Singing In The Rain" lies closest to my heart. Not least because of Gene Kelly. Fred Astaire was an incredibly talented dancer, but Gene kelly wasn't only that, but also one of the most imaginative and innovative choreographers. Gene Kelly was just about the most American thing you could imagine, radical in many ways. But he more or less disappeared off the big screen. But he did appear in Jaques Demy's "Rochefort Girls", opposite just Catherine Deneuve...

* * *

DENEUVE
From Cherbourg to Trollhättan - the
world's probably coolest woman
speaks with Stig about Lars.

It's said that you contacted Lars von Trier about any possible co-operation. How did that come about?

- I wrote him a letter. But that was a couple of years ago. It wasn't in connection with »Dancer In The Dark«. I didn't have a thought in mind to end up in this movie. I had seen "Breaking The Waves", and it was very moving. It awoke strong feelings.

I have understood that when you choose a project, you don't just go by the story that is told, meaning the manuscript, or the role you're suggested to play. Who the director is is just as important - if not more.


- Yes, that is true. The role I play in »Dancer In The Dark« is not actually an important role. It's "une role sécondaire". But the interesting thing in this case is that we have had the opportunity to develop the roles of our characters during the course of filming.
Of course the character is defined in the manuscript, but at the same time it is an open portrait which you have an ability to make an impact on and can develop. You could say that the portrait is drawn in black and white and that we supply our own palette of colours.

So you have had the ability to work with Lars when it comes to deciding this character?

- You could say that. Kathy doesn't really have a history of her own, you know very little of her background and earlier experiences. There were some space to fill in yourself. Lars has let us improvise around the written dialogue. 

I suppose that it's harder to improvise that way in another language than your own...?

- Of course! Reading and learning lines is one thing, but to be the free master over a language which isn't your own is a bit frightening. In the beginning I told myself "what am I actually doing here?". This is the first time I throw myself into a context on such loose grounds. It is not easy, not even in french.

But has this challenge been positive?

- Yes, I have enjoyed it. It represents a sort of free form of film which we haven't been total strangers to in France either.
- It has been very stimulating to work with Lars. I like the seriousness of him. Maybe it is sort of a nordic seriousness. But he possesses a very strange power. At the same time he is very sensitive, and tormented.

In an interview in 'Cahiers de Cinéma' you speak critically of directors who bench down infront of a monitor and sho little or no interest for communication with the actors. That's the way Lars was a couple of movies and some more years ago. Now he sees the actors as some of the most important working-partners.

- His contact with the actors is extremely direct and present. He stands behind the camera himself! And this close presence is calming and stimulating. It creates a trust which makes it easier for the actors to take the risks that he expects us to take for him.

You say at one time in the interview, about your relationship with art - with movies, literature, painting - that you want to go on an adventure-hunt, as if you were going through a jungle.

- This experience might not have offered a jungle, but of course it has meant taking a few steps into the unknown. Thus there have been things to discover and observe, and theer have been reasons to watch your steps.

In the movie there are both actors with a long experience of movies, like yourself, Peter Stormare and David Morse, and one novice like Björk. Has that brought any difficulties?

- Not for me. But I know that it has ment a lot of conflicts for Björk. Her empathy for the role is total. maybe she hasn't got the same ability as us to go in and out of the role we play. She has identified herself with Selma so much that it has become hard for her to bear. And thus caused difficulties for others, not least for Lars. But both Lars and Björk are to strong artistic tempers, both very stubborn, so of course there have to be collisions.

- Björk also doesn't like retakes. She would preferably play her scene only once. That is also why there is such an intensity in her acting. Just because she with such seriousness has taken Selmas fate to herself.

I know you don't usually want to look at takes while you work with a film, but have you seen anything yet of »Dancer In The Dark«?

- Only a few scenes, one being the songnumber on the train. It was very original, very energetic.

Are you going to sing in the movie yourself?

- No, my character only has a few sung lines. And no, I don't sing. I can't sing. Sadly.

by Stig Björkman

* * *

It's summer now. Mid-summer. Month of July. At May 17th, the filming of »Dancer In The Dark« took off in Trollhättan. All exteriors for the movie has already been shot, one in Dalsland and Värmland lightly camouflaged to a northwestAmerican factory-commune.

Now, the shooting has moved to Köpenhamn, to Zentropas newly purchased ateljé- and office-area Aveldö-lejren. The production-team has moved into a closed-down military aera. Come autumn, a couple of other film-companies will also install themselves here. The Aveldö-camp is planned to become a new vital centrum for Danish movie-production.


Aveldö-lejren

The filming of »Dancer In The Dark« is coming to an end. 
Bearing in mind the size of the movie, the work has gone astonishingly fast, hardly three months. Three hard-working months. You can tell that from those who are seated in the trailer with the monitor-equiptment. There's Lars. There's the choreographer, Vincent Patterson. The Director's assistant Anders Refn, who hardly even gets an opportunity to sit down. He scoots between the trailer and the movie-studio with new bulletins and messages of camera-placements. Anders is a somewhat older colleague of Lars' and, in addition, father to Nikolaj Winding Refn, who directed "Pusher". Sitting in the trailer are also a couple of other video-technicians inserting images on a dozen monitors.

The scene is a prison hallway. Selma is being taken from her cellby the prison-guards.
They hardly even open the barred door before the music and song begins. Selma leaves reality behind and sings herself into a fantasy-world without any threats or fears. The song, and the image of Björk, is just as simple as direct. She counts the steps where she dances forth from cell to cell and greets her fellow prisoners. All while the guards move in a more and more rigorously choreographed stroll. Björk's featherlight dance and the guards incorruptible prompting and rhythmical parading shows with all desirable clearness how a dream about freedom can be sabotaged and smashed into pieces.

The video-technician zaps between the different cameras, and it's astounding to see all the visual possibilities which appear on the many monitors. Not least the images where Björk almost falls out of the frame, has a seldom seen power of expression.

Second retake. Third retake. In some views a camera is in the shot.
"But we don't give a shit about that", says Lars. "We have so many other views to choose from". Instead, there is something in Björk's performance he wants to change. "Would you be so kind as to ask her to show some more joy in this scene?", he asks the choreographer. "You do it. If I tell her, she will just do the opposite."

Another take. The lightness and grace is there anew, strengthened with a somewhat suggested euphoria. To be on location of a filming as only a spectator can usually be pretty monotonous and boring. Here, you don't even feel that for one second.
It's overcoming to see Björk act and hear her free and strong voice. The simple but almost hypnotic song can stand being heard over and over.

Today's takes are finished already by two o'clock. It goes impressively fast.
Thanks to the hundred cameras, you don't need many retakes. If all the collected material from today's filming would be put together, it would be enough for 20 full-length movies. Before the work is called off forever, it's time for the obligatary class portrait, the picture of the crew and the star of the movie. Lars poses with both his daughters, Agnes and Selma, who are visiting.

Then, we are supposed to continue talking about the movie and the work with it. We go to Lars' workroom which is fit into a newly-built barrack a little off the side to the rows of old military houses. In the room next door sits Thomas Vinterberg and works on his new script. The glass door is wide open, and he seems to, like many others, welcome a distraction to get away from the demanding word processor.

Lars' room is spacious and sparsely decorated. A desk, a bookcase, a small sofa group. On the table lies a fax from Blur. "Dear Lars von Trier, we would like to ask you if you would be interested in making our new music video. We are great admirers of you and your films..."

By one wall stands an Indiana Jones pinballmachine. Lars isn't really in the mood to discuss his movie. He suggests a round of pinball instead. The scoreboard shows that Lars is in third place. That must feel sour. His record is at 360.000.000, three times as much as the production-cost of »Dancer In The Dark«. 120 danish millions makes the movie the most expensive one to ever be filmed in Scandinavia. 

After having heard Cate Capshaw for the tenth time calling for help to Harrison Ford the pinballs feel all more heavier. "Tomorrow", says Lars. "We'll talk tomorrow."


Lars in front of his 100 cameras.

"How did you get the idea for these 100 cameras?", I want to ask Lars as I hopelessly try to localise him at the huge studio area the next morning. Someone thinks he is playing tennis, someone else points me towards the scenography workroom. A third claims to just have seen Lars in the little house with all the cutting-rooms. And Thomas Vinterberg just saw him in his room a few minutes ago.

Lars is as swallowed by the earth, like some of the spectres from "The Kingdom". He doesn't feel like talking about his movie, I think, distrustfully. But those thoughts are shamefully vanished when he, all of a sudden, steps into the picture again. He appears in full figure. Like a smug landowner who has taken an early noon stroll to inspect his manors. It's a day for preparations and he's got all the time in the world.

- It was actually my dear old friend Tómas Gislason, the cutter whom I have worked with on several movies, who came up with the idea. We sat around chatting about what a musical should look like. We discussed it back and forth. And one thing that we agreed on was that you have to seek away from the artifical. That should be the purpose of a modern musical. 

- I can compare it to if you would shoot a scene with a juggler. Then you can either hire a real juggler who knows his business or you take an actor who jusr stands and makes hand-movements in the air, and then you copy in a few balls artificially. These both scenes could be almost completely identical. But the feeling isn't the same. If someone stands there juggling, we experience it deifferently than when we see one who just pretends. It's the same with stuntmen. The feeling is different if it's a stuntman who throws himself off a height than if you throw a doll.

- That's why we also wanted to start from that all song numbers with Björk also have to be live. That it all the time should function as a direct transfer of a performance. For some reasons that proved to be directly impossible. But the basic intention was that the singing should be live, and when we later filmed those scenes we have at least originated from that feeling.

- The most and the best musical-numbers from the classic musicals are shot with a very movable camera. But right now, I'm at a stadium of my life where I've had enough of elegant camera-movements. The classic way of shooting a musical is with a crane and dolly and a very sophisticated camera choreography, with song- and danceacts who have to be shot in a studio. I didn't want that.

- That's why it felt so important to shoot these scenes exclusively in static pictures. I too have a taste for luxury. And luxury for me is not to use a camera crane, just when that would be the most obvious thing to do. It's a sort of perverted luxury to rig one hundred cameras just to catch one scene. So that everything in every scene gets documented, no matter what. We haven't been able to follow this completely in every musical-number, and I can only apologise for that. But we have at least come as close to this idea as possible. Now, »Dancer In The Dark« is no Dogma movie, so I don't feel compelled to work by any strict rules. But the intention was to give an appearance of a live performance.

And also only a couple of cameras are manned with photographers?

- Yes, in first hand to get some closeups of Björk. The musicscenes are shot on such large areas and the biggest value in these song and dance-acts lies in Björks presence. But when push comes to shove, we should have had one thousand cameras in these scenes! Two thousand, I told the producer Vibeke Windelöv, the producer, bearing in mind the new millennium.

And then you would have made it into the Guinness Book Of World Records?

- That's right.

And then every musical scene would take one month to edit & cut...?

- Oh no! With Avid, the computer-controlled cutting it goes significally faster. A cutters assistant is right now testcutting some of the songscenes. In spite of all the cameras, I don't think that the scenes should be cut up too much. It all depends more on a choice of images, of "correct" and normally expressive pictures and some of those who give that random effect i was talking about earlier. Do you want to see?

On the cutting screen another songnumber scrolls up, temporarily cut together. Björk is situated on an open freight-wagon on a slowly moving train. Beside the train runs a short-breathed Peter Stormare, who plays Selmas boyfriend Jeff. On the freight-wagon there is also a dozen male dancers, surrounding Björk on the rather minimal space. Björk sings "I've Seen It All", a song with rather ironic meaning bearing the illness in mind which both she and her son suffers from.

- It's one of the two songs I've written the lyrics for, Lars confesses. The rest of them are written by Björk. I don't think she was too thrilled by my attempts at a writer. But she is still loyal enough to perform them.

It's a funny and inventive scene. An unexpected actingplace which suddenly seems completely normal for a movie musicalnumber. The landscape slowly rolls by.

The most interesting pictures are precidely those random camerashots, where the pictures are bumping around and Björk and Peter Stormare seem to have to fight to keep themselves in focus.

Lars pushes a few buttons to show me what one of the clean shots looks like.
It's a long, improvised scene with Björk, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare, the american couple David Morse and Cara Seymore, and the boy who plays Björk's son in the movie, Vladan Kostig.


Björk and Catherine swing it at dance rehearsals.

The whole scene is shot by a handcamera by Lars von Trier himself. He stands for approximately 90% of the photowork. Robby Müller, who shot "Breaking The Waves", does the lighting. The methods of working is the same as in "the Idiots", even if this concerns a big production in Panavision. Lars has run around with his camera on the shoulder, as if it has been the worlds most expensive homevideo.

Bearing in mind how Lars managed to compress similar long scenes in "the Idiots" he probably can get the same density and intensity here aswell. Cutting the movie will probably be like picking gold nuggets out of an almost immense material.

What immediately strikes you, is that there is no level-difference whatsoever among the actors, despite the mix between more experienced actors and pure novices like Björk and her movie-son. When Lars shows me one of the movies most dramatic scenes, the one where Selma is forced to kill the person who tried to steal her life savings, you are surprised by Björk's intense, naked and despairful acting.

So what has been the most positive thing about the filming of »Dancer In The Dark«?

- The most positive...? Well, now that we've cut down the script as much as I have, and simplified it to the extent that it has made the characters almost soap-like, we  have gotten clear and good scenes which are grateful to work with together with the actors. Because the scenes have turned almost scetchy. They contain the basic conflicts where you have peeled away almost all the overconstruction. Someone is going to die, over there some people are going to love eachother, and so on.

- This method of working was also used by Carl Dreyer. He strived towards an always bigger simplification. With the difference that he never let his actors come with any input at all. That goes against everything I am trying to do here. I want to give the actors the freedom to build on with their own ideas. It's similar to a game, a sort of 'cops and robbers', where the conflict is clearly defined from the start.

But there still is a written dialogue which you and the actors go by?

- I have followed the same guidelines as in my last movies. In the first takes, we have stuck as close to the script as we could, and by every new take we have reworked it further and further away from the written. The scenes that I now am most pleased with are the ones who are completely improvised, where we have gone very far away from the original dialogue. Catherine Deneuve is horribly good at improvising!

- Something which could have seemed worrying is that I have given the actors instructions in the middle of the takes. I shot the most of the movie myself, and sometimes it's happened that I have directed them in the middle of a scene. Like I did in "the Idiots". But all the actors have accepted it without any fuss. 

- If it comes easy for an actor to express certain things, it can be fun for them if we complicate the situation for them. There is a whole lot of pedagogy in what I'm currently doing.

It seems like you through this method - as in the song and dance-scenes with the hundred cameras - are on the hunt for the unexpected.

- You could say that. The advantage with the hundred cameras is that we get everything we expected out of the scene, and on top of that, we get all these randomly selected images, pictures captured as it happens, which can be very speaking and expressive.

»Dancer In The Dark« is taped on video. What problems / advantages do you see in that?

- I see no problems at all. On the contrary. »Dancer In The Dark« is shot on video and in Panavision-format. The tests of transfers to film-material that I have seen are fucking great! Hell yes! The pictures have a strong film-feeling in them, at the same time as you are aware that they have been created by a transfer from video. Fucking awesome quiality! I bet that in a couple of years, every movie will be shot on video.

- I'm still very fond of the old videofootage, where Neil Armstrong takes the first steps on the moon. The picture with the strange object in the corner, an object which looks like a tripod. You spent the whole night up looking at these fucking pictures over and over. They looked like they were shot in a studio! Then there were these rumors that they had been filmed in a studio back on earth.

With the method you've chosen to film »Dancer In The Dark«, you manage to get out a mixture of stylizing and a strong reality-impression, of control aswell as total visual anarchy

- Yes, this is the bearing idea of the movie, a meltdown of humanity and abstraction... or, how the hell should I put it? Humanity and the artificial. The true and the untrue. Because the songs are born in Selmas head, and Selma is a humanist before anything. She values things which people in general don't see any value in. Noise and commotion and the fragility of mankind. And all this turns to music and dance. By sheer thought.

- I have written a small rulebook, a sort of manifesto for this movie, where the character and performance of the song and dance-acts are described. Nothing there has been followed there word by word. But I think that it has been useful to those who have made the music and choreography.

How did you find the choreography for the movie?

- A first condition for the movie was of course Björk. And she would write songs which fit the spirit of the movie, menaing a music which at the same time expressed Selmas humanity and the inhumanity of the musical genre.

- The thought was that we would express something similar through the dance. I have been looking quite a lot at something called stomp, which is in fashion right now. It's a dance where you use any possible thing to create a rhythm. At first I thought about getting an older choreographer, an old fox who had worked in the musical genre and who could be amused by smashing it to pieces. But it was hard to find someone.

- So I started to look through a lot of musicvideos. And one of the few videos which I had earlier caught my eye and which i thought was both fancy and challenging dance-wise was Madonnas video for "Vogue". And the choreographer there was Vincent Patterson. He had also choreographed a couple of Michael Jackson-videos. So I thought that, if we're gonna take anyone of these videofellas, it'll have to be him.

Originally you had intended Stellan Skarsgård in the role of Selmas boyfriend Jeff...

- Yeah, and he couldn't, because he was gonna participate in some norwegian crapmovie. I've got Peter Stormare now instead, and that's very interesting. Because he's a lot different, he gives a completely different character to the role than what I think Stellan would have. The teamwork with Björk has become more charged and funny. Because with Peter Stormare the movie is added a type, which is a strong contrast to the other actors. Stellan would probably have contributed with a more naturalistic acting style. 


Björk and Peter Stormare

Stellan Skarsgård is still in on a corner. He has a small guest-role as the doctor.
In the movie, other familiar faces from the von Trier-connection also appear, like Udo Kier and Jean-Marc Barr.

In the middle of August the last scenes of »Dancer In The Dark« were shot in Seattle. No, Lars von Trier didn't come along. His fobia against travelling is not overcome yet. The final scenes were left to Anders Refn, with a more detailed to-do list and a detailed schedule of instructions in his luggage. 

»Dancer In The Dark« premieres in Cannes next year. It's no secret that Lars has his eye on the golden palmtree.
Despite that his movies have been praised in Cannes - "The Element Of Crime", "Europa" and "Breaking The Waves" - he has yet to receive the biggest award. We'll see if he gets a reason to put on his old tux again and enter the stage in the festival palace.

* * *

  
SELMA'S MANiFESTO

»Dancer In The Dark« is not a Dogma-film.
But of course Lars von Trier wrote the "Selma-manifesto"
to explain how the story about Selma (played by Björk)
should be told. Here is an excerpt.  

About Selma:
Selma comes from the east. She loves musicals. Her life is hard, but she can survive because she harbours a secret. When things become too unbearable she can pretend that she is in a musical... if only for a minute or two. All the JOY that life cannot bring her is in there. Joy is not to live... joy is there so that we can bear to live.

Selma loves "Sound Of Music" and other great song and dancemovies. And now it is her who will play the leading role in an amateur-production of "Sound Of Music"... At the same time she is in the middle of accomplishing the goal of her life. It looks like dream and reality finally is melting together for Selma.

So, the popularmusic and the famous musicals are what fills the shelves if her mind.
But she is not just a dreamer! She is someone who loves all life! 
She can feel strongly for all the wonders which every inch of her (rather cruel) life can hold. And she can see all the details... every single one. Strange things that only she can see or hear. She is a true contemplator... with a photographic memory. And it is this doublesidedness which makes her an artist; her love and enthusiasm for the artificial world of music, song and dance, and her strong fascination for he real world... her humanity.
er art consists of the musical fragments in which she flees when whe needs... the fragments of Selmas very own musical... it resembles no other musical... it is a collision of all shreds of melodies, ditties, sounds, instruments, lyrics and dances which she has experienced in the cinemas and the real life with the same elements as she - through her gift - can find there.

About the movie:
To tell Selmas story, the movie has to be able to give a concrete form to her world. All the scenes which do not contain her musical-fantasies have to be as real as possible when it comes to acting, set, etc. Because the scenes from Selmas daily life pose as models for what she puts in her musical numbers... and these have to be truthful. What she sees in the movies is error-less... painless... which is completely opposite to the real life... where it is the pain and errors that makes it glow. So the events that are a part of the story will, to an extent, be expressed trhough the foremost, most controllably beautiful music, recorded according to doubtful methods - and mixed with all the flaws and plump mistakes that real life can contribute with.

This is also the principal for Selma's musical. Punk is the word that I would use to emphasise it all: as I see it, punk is a collision between tradition and nature. It isn't destructive... it isn't snobby, because it seeks back to it's origins... by confronting the system with a modern, and therefor a more truthful, view of life... and force life into what has become stagnant and closed-up... by force! This is probably the only violence Selma is a part of?

About the music:
The musical inserts which contain instruments and melodies come from the musicals she loves. It can be fragments interwoven into other situations... or instrumental sound-inserts which are used in an unusual way.

Selma lives the cheapest effects. Riffs and other clichés... and she uses them beyond all that has to do with good taste... but these segments are mixed with the sounds of ordinary life and through that she becomes far from banal. She loves the simple sounds of living expressions... hands, feet, voices, etc... (the sighs that emerge from the hard work?)... the noise from machienery and other mechanical things... sounds of nature... and above anything the small sounds that emerge from deficiency... the floorcreaking which may arise from someplace where a floorboard has some defect.

What is important is that what is artificial will remain and sound artificial... we have to be aware about where everything comes from... the musical clichés... and more important the sounds from the real world... they shall never be "enhanced"... the closer to reality the better... we prefer a rhythm performed by hand on a windowpane over a sampled ditto... of a sample has to be included, it will have it's given place on the artificial side. Music shall flow from one side to the other... let there be opportunities when only the natural sounds rule. (stomp)

About the dancing:
The principal is the same: Selma uses and loves the big effects: the poses, the similarity... the glamour... but she binds all this to real people... with real movements and flaws. She can see the possibilites in every little unexpected thing. The dancers can use anything they like as a tool in their dance and music. She has worked on the factory long and she rejoices at every little form of human expression of movement. She knows what a body can perform... when it does it's best to achieve perfection in the dance, and she knows how the life's daily pain and joy can be expressed in one little movement.

Selma herself dances like a child... to herself... in extacy... it may look terrible... but suddenly, for an instant of a second, the room is filled with unity... and she's a queen. The dance has no façade... it goes into every direction... it has no limitations... a fingertip moving across a surface is a dance!

About the singing:
The songs are Selmas conversation with herself... even if it sometimes is put in the mouths of other people who gets to speak for her and express her doubts, fear, happiness, etc. They are naive songs, with all the big words from the popularmusic... but often things won't work out for her... and sometimes some deeper truths seep out... When that happens, Selma is quick to turn it all into a game again... and play with the words... or fragments of the words... like a child... the pure thrill of letting sounds leave your mouth!

And remember that she likes to imitate... she can sound like a machine or a violin. A mistake can also be used as an effect... one mispronounced word can get it's own meaning when 30 people pronounce it the same way!

About the decor:
Super-realism! Nothing more or less. Nobody shall be able to say that this isn't a movie which hasn't been shot on location... and that these places never before have been documented by a camera. Every thing that are in these places and are used in the dance or music... has to be there because of the story or the location or the people.

Here we go totally against the musical-principal... there is NOT suddenly 10 identical things for a dance. the same goes for the clothes... there will not be one dancetroup with the same outfit. Clothes are also an expression for realism and they tell a story about the person who wears them.

text: Lars von Trier
  

Article from Swedish fashion & trend magazine 'Bibel', issue 11, october 1999
Transcribed and translated from Swedish by Lunargirl (lunargirl@i.am)
for Björk - the Ultimate Intimate (http://bjork.mmedia.is) 
Please do not use this on your page since it took me several weeks to
translate and transcribe the text and scan and edit the pictures.