Directors: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier (DK)
Genre: Documentary
Denmark, 2003 / 90 min (16 mm & Video),
b/w, colour & sound

The Film
Together with Danish documentary film veteran Jørgen Leth, Lars von Trier enters the world of documentary filmmaking. They take on the task of challenging conventional ways of documentary and film production. In 1967 Jørgen Leth made a 13 minutes short film, The Perfect Human, a documentary on human behaviour. In the year 2000, von Trier challenged Leth to make five remakes of this film. Von Trier put forward obstructions, constraining Leth to re-think the story and the characters of the original film. Playing the naïve anthropologist, Leth attempts to embrace the cunning challenges, set forth by the devious and sneaky von Trier. He must deal with the limitations, commands and prohibitions. It is a game full of traps and vicious turns. The Five Obstructions is an investigative journey into the phenomenon of filmmaking.

Jørgen Leth
Jørgen Leth (b. 1937) is a film director, producer, poet and television commentator. Leth is a significant figure amongst documentary filmmakers in Denmark as well as abroad. He has made more than thirty films, many of which have been distributed worldwide. The poetic and visual qualities in his films have given viewers an awareness for sport as a classical drama. Furthermore, he is a professor at the National Film School in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the State Studiocenter in Oslo, Norway, and has lectured at Harvard, UCLA, Berkeley and other American universities. Among his awards are the Thomas Mann Award 1972, the Danish Academy’s Special Prize 1983, the Paul Hammerich Award in 1992, in 1995 the Drachmann Award for his literary oeuvre, and the Robert Award 1996 and 2000. Since 1995, Leth is a recipient of a life-long grant from the Danish State for his achievements in film-making. Jørgen Leths films have won numerous awards at international film festivals. Among others: the main prize in Oberhausen several times, and in the Perth, Adelaide, Portland, Locarno and other festivals, such as several Hugo awards at the Chicago International Film Festival. The most recent was The Golden Plaque in Chicago, 1996, for "HAITI, UNTITLED" as Best Documentary. Jørgen Leth has been living in Haiti since 1991, where he is the Honorary Consul appointed by Her Majesty The Queen of Denmark.

Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier (b. 1956) graduated from The Danish Film School in 1983. He is widely considered to be the prime mover behind the current revival of Danish filmmaking and has made a significant impact on a new generation of directors both in his home country and around the world, not least because of his central role in Dogme95.

Von Trier’s film work ranges from the avant-garde to reinterpretations of classical genres. His earliest shorts were stylistically inventive explorations of themes and symbols that would later play a central role in his feature films and von Trier developed a mode of cinematic expression that was at once heavily symbolic and emotionally intense.

Lars von Trier established himself both in Denmark and internationally with the Europa Trilogy. Illuminating the traumas of Europe in the future, the Europa Trilogy is characterised by a personal, experimental style of filmmaking. The trilogy consists of:

1984 THE ELEMENT OF CRIME
1987 EPIDEMIC
1991 EUROPA (ZENTROPA)

In 1991 Lars von Trier and EUROPA’s producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen established their own company, Zentropa Entertainments, which has grown to become a leading force in Scandinavian film production.

Lars von Trier has made two TV productions: MEDEA in 1988 and THE KINGDOM I & ll in 1994 and 1997, the latter co-directed with Morten Arnfred. It was with THE KINGDOM series that Lars von Trier created a technical style, which made it easier to focus on the story and the actors. It was an insight that would later draw him to the Dogme concept. THE KINGDOM was shot mostly with a hand-held camera, ignoring the usual rules of lighting, continuity and editing, resulting in distorted colours and grainy pictures. The series became von Trier’s first huge popular success. The level of Danish and international interest in THE KINGDOM made it possible for von Trier and his producers Peter Aalbæk Jensen and Vibeke Windeløv to fund his next big project.

The second trilogy, "The Golden-Heart Trilogy", was inspired by a sentimental children's book from von Trier’s childhood about a little girl who is always ready to sacrifice herself to help others. This trilogy consists of:

1996 BREAKING THE WAVES
1998 THE IDIOTS
2000 DANCER IN THE DARK

In 1995, Lars von Trier presented the Dogme95 Manifesto with its “Vow of Chastity” laying down 10 rules for filmmaking. The manifesto was signed by von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (FESTEN, winner of the Special Jury Prize in Cannes).

All of Lars von Trier’s feature films have been officially selected by the Cannes International Film Festival and they have been awarded seven prizes, including the Grand Prix du Jury for BREAKING THE WAVES and the Palme d’Or for DANCER IN THE DARK. His feature films and his work for television have won a host of international prizes, including an Oscar nomination for Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves”.

Lars von Trier is currently working on his third trilogy "USA -- land of opportunities" of which DOGVILLE is the first film. The second part of the trilogy, MANDERLAY, is currently in pre-production in Filmbyen, Denmark. In 2006 Lars von Trier will add another dimension to his career when he directs Richard Wagner’s ”Das Ring Des Nibelung” at the Bayreuth Festspiele in Germany. Pre-production for the opera has already begun.