Jan Buus/Zentropa Lars von Trier.While he prepares for his next act of cinematic provocation, the Danish director Lars von Trier is inviting audiences to engage in their own acts of button-pushing filmmaking as part of a user-generated project that seeks reinterpretations of well-known works by Paul Gauguin, August Strindberg and Albert Speer, among others.
On Monday, Mr. von Trier, whose films include “Melancholia,” “Antichrist” and “Dancer in the Dark,” announced the creation of a project called Gesamt, which is produced by the Copenhagen Art Festival and asks participants to submit their own entries of up to five minutes in length. As a news release for the project explains, the German word gesamtkunstwerk can mean “the universal work of art” or “synthesis of the art”; and entrants can create their works “through the lens of their camera or recording of sound.”
This being Mr. von Trier, there are some specific conditions that submissions must meet. In particular, they should take their inspiration from one of six existing pieces: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (which, as the news release mentions, was “once was banned in the United States because it was seen as obscene and lewd”); Strindberg’s play “The Father,” (“a striking example of a dysfunctional family”); Gauguin’s painting “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”; improvisations by the French composer César Franck; the work of Sammy Davis Jr. (“who stepped himself into the hearts of people through song”); or “the somewhat more controversial monument the Zeppelinfield in Nuremberg, created by Hitler’s main architect Albert Speer.”
As von Trier completists will recall, the director was barred from the Cannes Film Festival last year after he said jokingly about Hitler that “I sympathize with him a little bit.”
Submissions will be accepted through Sept. 6 and will be assembled into a larger work by Jenle Hallund, a Danish director who has worked with Mr. von Trier on films like “Melancholia.” That final work will make its debut on Oct. 12 at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. As the announcement for the project emphasizes: “Technical skills are not the biggest priority — originality and enthusiasm are much more important.”