Playing The Waves

And now for a bit of self-promotion: here is my latest book and it is about the director who is staring you in the face.

The approach taken in this book is a game theoretical and game studies perspective. In the book I argue that Dogme95 is first and for all a game, and that the Dogme95 Manifesto should be read as an attempt to redefine the practice of filmmaking as a playful, game in which the filmmaker sets himself a number or largely arbitrary rules.

Von Trier has done so in all of his productions. Moreover, the narrational patterns and the remarkably consistent, if not repetitious structures of his stories can be very well explained by an (in)famous case from game theory.

Moreover, the book draws attention to the particular use of a much overlooked device in Von Trier's films: the editing. Through a particular kind of discontinous editing, Von Trier breaks away from classical and modern notions of 'representations' and brings cinema into the realm of simulation and the virtual. His style might be more aptly called 'virtual realism'.

Order at Amsterdam University Press or at Amazon

The PR Princess

Immediately after her death Tony Blair called Diana 'the people's princess'. As tremendously sholcked the Brittish people seemed to be by her unexpected, but spectacular lethal accident, allegedly caused by paparazi trying to hunt her down, just as soon the memory of Diana seemed to have waned. Already in the first summer after her death the expected droves of visitors - needed to pay for the construction and maintenance of the tomb massively stayed away. The Diana industry never really took off.
Luckily Diana's children have a genetically inherited sense of publicity as well. Well aware that today almost any cause is a good excuse for a globally broadcasted pop concert, they organized an huge concert in Wembley Stadium, for the benefit of charity, of course, but doubtedlessly also aimed at rekindling the love and memory of Diana and the reanimation of the almost defunct Diana industry. So, on your way to one of the many festivals, don't forget to visit Diana's grave, and please buy some mugs, t-shirts, posters, photographs and other parafernalia.