Synopsis: As despised in some circles as he is admired in others, Danish director Lars von Trier has undoubtedly earned the reputation as one of modern world cinema's most mischievous provocateurs. Through interviews with frequent von Trier collaborators, as well as von Trier himself, TRANCEFORMER... As despised in some circles as he is admired in others, Danish director Lars von Trier has undoubtedly earned the reputation as one of modern world cinema's most mischievous provocateurs. Through interviews with frequent von Trier collaborators, as well as von Trier himself, TRANCEFORMER tells the story of this button-pressing auteur, from his childhood up through the production of his 1996 tour-de-force, BREAKING THE WAVES. Raised with an inordinate amount of freedom by his liberal parents, Lars Trier eventually landed at the Danish Film School, added the "von" to his name, and a startlingly new cinematic voice was born. An instigator from the very beginning, von Trier's first films to receive critical acclaim, THE ELEMENT OF CRIME, EPIDEMIC, and ZENTROPA, all relied on bold technical innovations to tell dense, moody tales. This heavy reliance on the technical side of filmmaking gave way to a new, more humanistic von Trier, when he began to embrace actors and search for a path directly into the audience's hearts. After developing a more direct approach during the filming of the made-for-television drama THE KINGDOM, von Trier raised the bar with BREAKING THE WAVES, a melodramatic fable that comes across as a grittily realistic documentary. TRANCEFORMER is a must-see for fans of the Danish auteur, or fans of filmmaking in general. This film was screened in April 2001 as part of a retrospective called Breaking the Rules: The Cinema of Lars Von Trier at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. [More]