Paul Gauguin's "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?," 1897. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Photo courtesy of artchive.com.
Lars von Trier has invited the public to submit five-minute films for his video project Gesamt. Von Trier, the man behind such films as Melancholia and Antichrist, has selected a handful of delightful options for you to choose from: James Joyce’s Ulysses, August Strindberg’s play The Father, improvisations by composer César Franck, a Nazi meetinghouse designed by Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, Gauguin’s Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?, and Sammy Davis Jr. Films will be selected and edited together into a final “Gesamtkunstværk” (a longer film) by director and former Lars von Trier collaborator Jenle Hallund. We’re guessing that if Lars von Trier has anything to do with it, your home video will be heavily laden with slow motion and classical music, then intercut with flaming wreckage and slow, assiduous violence to weave an overall portrait of a Hieronymus Bosch-like Hell. Or maybe it’s just a nice group project.
