“What I had to do was create an emotional space with room for the uncontrollable… I would deliberately place myself in near impossible situations to see what kind of energy that created. That was really one of the constants on that film, creating an odd vitality or energy in the camera that forces situations that would never normally occur.” – Interview with Anthony Dod Mantle from an article by Liselotte Michelsen and Morton Piil and from ‘Exposure – The Magazine,’ Summer 2003
Festen (The Celebration) was the first of the Dogme 95 films, which are known for having strict rules about how they can be produced. Some of those rules are: the sound must be recorded with the image, color film with no special lighting or filters, and it must be shot on location with hand-held cameras. It is this last one that sets Festen apart from most other films as unique.
While there have been many other dogme films that have used hand-held camera work and even other genre films that have utilized hand-held shooting, Anthony Dod Mantle shot it in a way that is interesting and informative about the scene without being too sickening in its movements.
I’ve never been a fan of works that use hand-held camera; whenever I work with a video camera, I always prefer to use a tripod at least. And this is simply because looking at all the shaky motion tends to make me feel sick. One of my favorite movie series, The Bourne series, is almost unbearable to me because of how much the camera is unsteady, especially in chase scenes.
Yet there are reasons and instances why using a hand-held camera is important, and that is to get quick shots that would be missed when on a tripod because it is too slow and cumbersome. One of my favorite shots in Festen is the one where the car speeds by as it is driving up to the hotel and quickly stops in front of it. Because the camera was handheld, the adrenaline of the moment – a car speeding past you – is caught as the camera is able to quickly pan and catch the entire sequence. The fact that the ending part of the sequence is shot through the front gate of the hotel is interesting too, because it makes you feel like you are right there and the camera is your eyes.
That is the energy that Mantle was talking about, well one of them anyway. There are energy waves throughout the entire film, and they vary based on what is going on.
One of the things Mantle explains about what he did on the shooting of Festen was tell the actors to move around wherever and however they wanted. He noted that this confused them greatly as they would have no idea where the camera was going to be. And you can see that throughout the film, especially in the scenes where large numbers of people are in the room – they are looking all over the place, trying to navigate through everyone, and are sometimes surprised when they finally see the camera.
But this creates the emotion of the scene so well, and tells us everything we need to know about what it is like to be in such a large group of people. The grand sweeping pans of rooms also sets the scene by allowing us to see everything in the area, exactly as it is set up. It tells us a lot about what is going on.
Aside from the slight nauseousness I get from viewing hand-held camera films, I was able to appreciate what Anthony Dod Mantle was going for. The camera puts you in the story and immerses you in the events that unfold. You feel all the energy and experience all the emotions.
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The interview excerpts with Anthony Dod Mantle can be found here: http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/dod%20mantle.htm
Festen (The Celebration) Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKe_AxTFGXc
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Senior Film Reviews - The Movie Industry 
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