BREAKING THE WAVES by Lars von Trier will be the 2nd to the last film in the Films About Love series. It includes the radical idea that a sacrifice for the sake of a loved one can come from a violent self immolation. It is a dark proposition with an underground logic which von Trier manages with a sure handed off- handedness. He insists on a shaky hand- held feeling which seems, at times, mannered, but all in all this film has both a raucous energy and a seriousness of purpose. This is easily Emily Watkins best role and my favorite film of von Trier’s.

It is the second film from the Danish Dogme style in the series, the first being THE CELEBRATION. I am glad to be living in a time when foreign cinema produces directors such as the ones we have featured. However, my intention is to wake up similar instincts and artistic ventures here in America although I doubt we will ever completely recover from the Hollywood system and it’s pedagogy.

I say so because in spite of the late 60s and 70s work of the Cinema Verite artists (Wiseman, Leacock and Pennebaker, the Maysles Brothers, etc.) in documentary and John Cassavetes in the dramatic feature, the film schools still begin their syllabus with Hollywood values: Hallmark card pretty pictures, frames rock steady as the walls being built on the Mexican border, three act screen plays which spend a preponderance of time explaining the obvious to the oblivious, and the use of pretty people and over- amped charismatics to create a hunger for STARS, rather than everyday people with character, passion and crucial oddity.

Wouldn’t it have been better to assume that the films like FIVE EASY PIECES and KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (Bob Rafelson), EASY RIDER, (Dennis Hopper), THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, (Peter Bagdonovich), and of course SHADOWS and FACES, (John Cassavetes) trumped Hollywood industry practice, and that learning should begin with the superior new and innovative styles rather than the inferior tired old Sin City models.

I can understand why Art students must learn to draw (although most of them now get through school without a clue). Drawing is a requisite to approaching form and composition in all the plastic arts, even the most abstract ones. But a camera does the drawing for you in the cinema, so however and wherever you point your camera, whether it is Ozu- still or Dogme- shaky, with any kind of eye you are composing in space and the drawing is as good as your ability to point to the right places and focus. The patterns to make are the patterns which please and amaze. Editing is the bottom line of experimentation. Failure is the best teacher and success is second best. It’s also not bad to have a Mentor you admire, rather than a teacher you can’t avoid. But you don’t usually find the Army training their raw recruits on muzzle loaders when they have M4 Carbines available.

The screening will be on July 25 at the Edwin Johnson Screening Room, 1418 5th. St., Berkeley, down the driveway to the back, at 7:00 PM. Hope to see all you die- hards.�