Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood and Dogme 95

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Summary: REVIEW FROM VARIETY
Review: If you're keen to shoot a digital video feature and make contacts, check out this book for hot tips, horror stories and useful phone numbers. . . Shari Roman, film editor for Flaunt magazine, swings open production company doors to investigate the past, present and future of digital video cinema and looks at the vague possibility of film's decline. Reading something like a thoughtful film professor's stapled-together classroom packet, the book compiles essays by and interviews with an impressive list of producers, directors, cinematographers and critics (Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Lars von Trier, and Variety's own Todd McCarthy, to name a few) . . . Roman's writing style is admirably enthusiastic, and she asks questions in rapid-fire rhythm . . . This collage of opinions is a pioneering survey of the inchoate digital landscape. Roman promises film is far from finished, but she schools ... that DV is cheaper, holds up longer on movie screens and is getting better all the time.

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Summary: FROM THE PUBLISHER
Review: Los Angeles, CA - We live in a Digital Babylon, a world saturated by hard data, new technologies, insatiable for the pleasures of fresh images of ourselves and our universe.
With an irreverent intro by Dogme bad boy Harmony Korine, a perceptive riff on the DV future from Jean-Luc Godard and tasty details from the eccentric personal life of Lars von Trier, Shari Roman delivers a vibrant exploration of the influence of Dogme 95 style filmmaking and the new technologies that have brought film and video making within everyone's reach.

Conceived in 1995, Dogme 95 has become a cinematic movement and revolutionary cause, kicking up more media fuss than any film "movement" since the French and Czech New Waves, and the American underground movement of the '60's. In a series of interviews and essays this entertaining, insightful account on Dogme's impact on digital filmmaking introduces the personalities and philosophical scuffles behind the doctrine. Then connects it to American DV filmmaking through the POV of key players such as Wim Wenders, Thomas Vinterberg, Miquel Arteta, Scott Macaulay (producer of julien donkey-boy) and Rick Linklater.

Roman is the film editor of Flaunt Magazine & the L.A. correspondent for The Face (UK). Her documentary short, on the Dogme of Lars von Trier, "Lars from 1- 10" premiered at Sundance 1999 and has since screened at film festivals around the world.