Page 6 - Fujifilm Exposure_25 Jean Francois Robin_ok

CREATING
CREATING
VISUAL ENERGY
VISUAL ENERGY
AN INTERVIEW WITH ANTHONY DOD MANTLE DFF
A nthony Dod Mantle, the award-winning cameraman
on films like Festen (Celebration), Dogville, 28 Days Later and Julien Donkey-Boy gives every impression that he cannot
quite believe his luck.
A late-blooming DP, the diffident 48-
year-old did not leave film school until he had turned 30, spending the early part of his twenties travelling the world.
It was while in India that he began to recognise his growing love of stills photography.
“My mum’s a painter and my dad’s a scientist,” he explains, “and they were always trying me out with any- thing artistic – everything from the piano to painting.
“When I came back from India I applied to the London College of Printing, got in and studied there for three years before getting my degree.
“So I started off in stills photogra- phy and then moved into film. I remember shooting my first film proj- ect on a CP 16 camera which was a lit- tle strange, a little box with a funny long lens and what looked like a spare tyre balanced on top of it.”
Encouraged to pursue his growing fascination with film, Dod Mantle found himself in one of only five available places at the National Film School of Denmark, drawn to the country he admits because of a “vague, linguistic connection.”
He adds, “I was 30 by the time I left there but I was qualified then and
familiar with the Danish tradition.” That Danish tradition would form the backbone of a filmmaking ideology that shook up cinema in 1990s, and helped establish Dod Mantle’s reputation as a master of digital cinematography.
The Dogma Manifesto, published in 1995 with Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg as the two co-sig- natories, eschewed the traditional arti- fice of movies, and sought to find a visual truth that would have echoes with the kind of subjects the filmmak- ers sought to tell.
Challenging the expectations of both audiences and critics Dogma came of age when Vinterberg won acclaim and awards for (Celebration), a Jury Prize winner at Cannes in 1998 and BAFTA nominee. This too marked
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