DEEP DIVE: THE RESTLESSLY INVENTIVE WORK OF DIRK DE BRUYN

Dirk de Bruyn (1950–) has been one of the most adventurous, consistent, underrated and productive filmmakers working in Australia over the last 50 years. He has also been a significant figure in Melbourne screen culture working as a curator, writer, administrator and teacher. He was the president and a founding member of the Modern Image Makers Association, an active member of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group and an associate professor teaching animation and digital culture at Deakin University, writing extensively on experimental cinema of various kinds. His often-experimental work blurs the boundaries between fiction, documentary, animation, found footage, materialist, structuralist, personal, performative, political and culturally sensitive filmmaking. Following some of the leads of filmmakers like Stan Brakhage in the 1960s, in his exploration of closed-eye vision, subjectivity and trance-like states, De Bruyn’s restless cinema fuses personal concerns with broader questions of film form and (multi)cultural history. This program cherrypicks four films from De Bruyn’s agitated and large body of work across Super 8, 16mm, 35mm and various formats of digital video. It includes two features which explore daily life and the connections it makes with deeper histories, emotions and relationships: the widely celebrated Homecomings (1987) and the more recent timelapse opus, Telescope (2012). De Bruyn continues to produce new, challenging work and his practice over the last ten years is represented by two evocative shorts: Re-Vue (2017) and Flinders (2024). Although the Cinémathèque has screened a number of De Bruyn’s films over the last 40 years, we are proud to present this first retrospective program.

Wednesday 9 July

7:00pm HOMECOMINGS

Dirk de Bruyn (1987) 98 mins – Unclassified 15+

Last screened at the Cinémathèque in the year of its production, De Bruyn’s hybrid feature is one of his most personal and significant films as well as a key work of Australian multicultural cinema. Documenting a trip to the Netherlands by the filmmaker’s family, it combines an extraordinary array of approaches and techniques including autoethnography, timelapse, diary making, rotoscoping and other forms of animation to address questions of belonging and identity.

Preceded by Re-Vue Dirk de Bruyn (2017) 6 mins – Unclassified 15+. This response to Mike Hoolboom’s Colour My World from the same year is an intense montage of animation, found footage, leader, poetic written text and incantatory voiceover.

Program to be introduced by the filmmaker.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Homecomings
by Mike Hoolboom

9:10pm TELESCOPE

Dirk de Bruyn (2012) 78 mins – Unclassified 15+

Scored by a montage of audio sources reflecting on the colonial legacy of terra nullius, De Bruyn’s provocative “documentary” explores the contested space of the suburban backyard and the histories and practices of dispossession it acts to erase. Shot over a 20-year period on a range of different formats including Super 8 and digital video, it is a remarkable timelapse document of presence and absence, occupation and haunted history.

Preceded by Flinders Dirk de Bruyn (2024) 13 mins – Unclassified 15+. This timelapse record of Flinders Street Station over a period of 24 hours combines the contemporary affordances of digital video with the chiming bells of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Program to be introduced by the filmmaker.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Telescope
by Sean Redmond