New-ness, Sequelization, and Dogme logic in Kristian Levring’s The King is Alive

This article discusses the workings of aesthetic death and rebirth in one of the most recent manifesto-movements, Dogme 95. Founded on what appears to be an insistent opposition to the sequel phenomenon in recent cinema culture, Dogme’s uniform methods of film production exit from the throng of cinematic ‘likenesses’ to create and champion ‘new-ness’. The Dogme ‘phenomenon’ is argued in this light to invoke many of the patterns that it claims to oppose. The sequel is further regarded in this article as a vehicle for the interrogation and reassessment of the concept of ‘original’ in order to establish a set of differences, to query the ‘authority’ of an auteur, and to impose a new set of (seemingly relevant) methodologies upon a production previously prescribed to the popular consciousness. By pronouncing both the sequel phenomenon and the auteur as irrevocably ‘dead’, the film offers Dogme’s manifesto as a replacement by which ‘new-ness’ and collaborative production can lay the foundations for a ‘new’ cinematic aesthetic in the manner of its new wave predecessors.