Hacker Cinema
The Five Obstructions
De fem benspænd
2003 · Film · documentary · 88 min
Directed by Jørgen Leth, Lars von Trier
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
3 comments on Hacker News
The Five Obstructions is a beautiful example of how constraints - counterintuitively - make creativity easier not harder.
Lars Von Trier challenges Jørgen Leth to remake his classic short ‘The Perfect Human’ five times under increasingly ridiculous constraints.
Really worth a watch.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0354575/
Thanks for writing your experiences down so precise and readable. While reading, I had to think multiple times abouts the movie The Five Constraints[0], where a profound link is made between restrictions and a boost in creativity and new thoughts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Obstructions
> sometimes constraints can be lenses for creativity, instead of shackles.
This seems to be the case in just about every field. People who aren't very familiar with classical music hear about musical forms and highly restrictive techniques like fugue and think "Oh, classical music must be so stuffy and formulaic" or a common geek response I've heard: "Wow, Bach's music is made up of algorithms!" (cringe).
But in reality those restrictions are where creativity is born, why composers are still writing fugues. Remove all restrictions from the process of composition (including self-imposed restrictions) and you have noise!
Another example I wanted to share: in the documentary "The Five Obstructions" (an epic film about the creative process) Lars von Trier tasks the Jørgen Leth to re-create his short film "The Perfect Human" in five different ways, with five different sets of rules and restrictions.
The one that Leth is most thrown off by at first is the task to re-make the film without any instructions from Lars. It's an awesome movie.