The idea of a Dogme film is to retain a “Vow of Chastity” or a promise to create a film as innocent, pure, and untouched as possible. Looking at The Celebration (1998), directed by Thomas Vinterberg, the ten restrictive rules established in the Dogme 95 movement can be found. The main location of the film is a home where the protagonist of the film grew up with his siblings. This home, the forest around it, and the road leading up to it are pretty much the only footage in the film, this means it could have easily been shot on location and not in a studio. The camera is clearly handheld. This can be seen in a few of the beginning exchanges between Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen) and Christian (Ulrich Thomsen). Also the shot where a car pulls up the driveway, a camera follows it, then points up, and falls back down to follow it again, sort of like a rainbow pattern. Another cool handheld shot came from above and below a stair banister to see the siblings walk upstairs. While filming at night, the images on screen were extremely dark and only illuminated by the light of the sky, which was very little. This can be seen when Christian frees himself from the tree he was tied to. I find the idea that Dogme films may not contain superficial action interesting because it immediately made me think of the sexual abuse information and how it was a director’s choice to not flashback to those moments or even show the father abusing the sister before she committed suicide. It also makes it clear that Helge (Henning Moritzen) was physically beaten on screen by Michael which intensifies the situation. Rereading this description on no superficial action, I am realizing now that the sex scene must have been live action… All of these characteristics are interesting in combination and seem to work. I would like to know why the Dogme 95 movement was so impactful and why filmmakers felt it was necessary to create films in this format.