Epidemic
1988, NR, 106 min.
Directed by Lars von Trier, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Niels Vørsel, Lars von Trier, Claes Kastholm Hansen.

This early, scruffy 16mm film by Dogme 95 bad boy Lars von Trier is a low-budget movie about moviemaking, along the lines of movies like Fassbinder’s Beware a Holy Whore. Von Trier plays the director of the movie within this movie, who with his screenwriter loses the whole script in a computer snafu. The alternate movie they come up with on the fly is the medical horror movie Epidemic (presaging von Trier’s TV masterpiece The Kingdom). Long unavailable and circulated in bootleg copies, this revealing early work is finally making it to the screen.

This article appears in January 9 • 2004.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.