Screens August 12
Documentaries about Australian experimental filmmakers are something you just don't see, a fact that may support Dirk de Bruyn's claim that experimental cinema occupies “a negative space in Australian culture”. De Bruyn, who migrated with his family from the Netherlands as a child, views himself as a displaced person in more ways than one, and this portrait positions him as a solitary figure: the soundtrack is dominated by the artist's own monologue, delivered in a singsong tone that has some of the same trancelike effect he aims for in his “flicker films”. Much of de Bruyn's work is abstract or nearly so, but he's by no means a pure aesthete: he acknowledges the anger propelling his abrasive early work, and while the discussion of his career proceeds proceeds in roughly chronological order, it eventually circles back to suggest how that anger may stem ultimately from a traumatic childhood. A modest production meant for a niche audience – director Steven McIntyre tellingly doesn't bother to explain a casual allusion to the great Canadian “structural” filmmaker Michael Snow – the film nonetheless shines a rare and welcome light on a whole area of Australian culture that should be far better known. It screens with de Bruyn's new short Empire.
