EPIDEMIC (Lars von Trier - Demark 1987).<br /><br />This second feature by Lars von Trier reveals many of the director's obsessions with cinema. Here the self-imposed limitations on film-making in many ways foreshadow his obstructions upon Jorgen Leth in THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (2003).<br /><br />Or is this again von Trier's little joke on all of us? This is essentially a film about his own obsessions, or a grand parody on horror, as some suggested. Von, Trier, frustrated by the delay of his never realized project, "The Grand Mal", about two gangster families in divided Berlin, made a bet with film consultant Claes Kastholm of the Danish Film Institute, claiming that he could make a feature film for one million Danish kroner. Resulting partly in an amateur movie about a film director and a scriptwriter who must write a new manuscript in five days, interspersed with scenes from the film they are working on - about a young idealistic doctor in the late 20th century, who tries to fight an epidemic, but only manages to spread it further. The film culminates with the outbreak of a deadly plague, not in the past but in the present. Throughout the film, Von Trier shows his fascination with Germany, for example, during a ride through the "Ruhrgebiet", the industrial core of Europe, or the world, at least during the '80s.<br /><br />I watched this with interest, but despite the sometimes fascinating introspective of Von Trier the filmmaker, or the filmmaker in general, this hardly is a great film, but he manages to make something unique with this strange mixture of Dogma-style improvisation and carefully enscenated scenes as the one with the doctors in the basement of the University Libarary.<br /><br />Camera Obscura --- 8/10