In the film, Von Trier gives Leth, his friend and mentor, the task of remaking The Perfect Human β one of Leth's seminal short films and von Trier's favorite film β five times, each time with a different 'obstruction', or constraint, given by von Trier. In the first obstruction, for example, von Trier asks Leth to remake the film in Cuba and no shot can be longer than twelve frames. In another obstruction, Leth must remake the film as a cartoon.
It's a fascinating look at the creative process, filmmaking, problem solving, and β I'd argue βdesign. I'm on the record of being an adoring fan of this film since I first saw it nearly five years ago.
My friend Rory and I used it as a framework for a project to remake our own work and talked about it twice on the podcast we used to make. For five weeks in , Rory and I asked each other to remake one of our previous projects five times.
We had one week to complete the obstructions, which were chosen by the other person. One week, I told Rory he had to use hand-drawn type and he asked me to only use black and white.
In another week, I asked him to use photography and he had me create a typography-only booklet. Both the film and our version of the project provided a way to look critically at our own process and break out of our default modes of work.
