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Films
The
House That I Live In
(1974, 12 mins, 16mm, Silent)
"the
timelapse wonderment of everyday life"
Janice
Filipuzzi, Jolt Screening program Notes, MIMA May-June
1990
Me and Chris (1975, 10 mins, 16mm, Silent)
A film made
at 2 fps inside a room, during the day and night. It explores
the comic possibilities of stop action filming. Made on the spur
of the moment with no script, it is, in many ways, just a home
movie.
From
program notes: Fringe Network Series 2 Film and Video Screenings
1983
Running (1976, 30 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Walk down
a lane continuously. The film tries to destroy time by the cyclical
reworking of a short period of time. Gradually the image becomes
less discernible and the flashing positive and negative images
force the viewer to stare rather than looking at the film. As
the film progresses the viewer becomes trapped in a short period
of time.
From
pamphlet: "Films by Dirk de Bruyn", Vincent Film Library
AFI 1981
Zoomfilm
(1976, 28 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
As the name
suggests, Zoomfilm consists of zooming in and out of refilmed
events. Can the eye keep up? Is it supposed to? The image is often
hurled towards the viewer - at other times images remain for split
seconds only. Zoomfilm has its greatest impact when the
viewer gives up making sense of what is happening and lets the
eye take over.
From
pamphlet: "Films by Dirk de Bruyn", Vincent Film Library
AFI 1981
Kipling Street Garage (1978, 50 mins, 16mm, Silent)
An extended
2fps continuous shot and dance from the garage, day and night.
Frantic (1978, 20 mins, 16mm, Silent)
Most of the
film was made without a camera, by placing objects such as pins,
matches, dirt and coloured glass on the film-strip and turning
the light on. Very frantic. The actual filmed footage consists
of hands and the filmmaker/camera viewing itself through a mirror.
Subliminal abstraction. What do we see with our eyes closed? A
behind-the-eye experience. The film explores the experience of
closed-eye vision.
From
pamphlet: "Films by Dirk de Bruyn", Vincent Film Library
AFI 1981
Feyers (1979, 27 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Feyers
is de Bruyn's most complicated work employing the many techniques
he has experimented with over the years. Appropriately subtitled
'a dance', this film's interweaving of various experimentations
lends itself to a stunning, rhythmic effect.
Colour, vision,
excitement, breathless activity all collide here to create a cacophonous
poetic.
Janice
Filipuzzi, Jolt Screening program Notes, MIMA May-June
1990
Walk
(1980, 20 mins, 16mm, Silent)
The film
follows walking feet and progresses to a preoccupation with the
dancing shadow of the camera and the filmmaker. Much of the footage
was home-processed to obtain the golden colours and solarization
effects. In part the film documents the marking out of suburban
space. By that I mean, that in suburban property the front and
back yards form a private domain. This film tries to illuminate
that space.
From
program notes: Cineprobe. MOMA NY January 13 1986
Loopfilm
(1980, 2 screen, 5 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
This film
is built up from about 2 seconds of real time and consists of
single frames of positive and negative images embedded in the
black leader. The two eight foot loops are to be seen simultaneously.
Tension builds as the two images flicker in and out of phase.
The film builds upon how the eye perceives 'flashes' of image,
and the after images that these elicit. Only twenty percent of
the film is image, but the eye always sees some sort of image.
The sound is a re-edited soundtrack to match the flashes.
From
program notes: Filmmakers Visions: City Art Gallery, Wellington
21-26 August 1982
Experiments
(1981, 2 screen, 55 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Projected
on two screens, with two separate soundtracks, the always exceptional,
and occasionally brilliant, photographic images are enhanced by
de Bruyn's rigorous control over a wide variety of experimental
techniques. Without overindulging in any of them, de Bruyn uses
animation, optical illusions, time lapse, solarization, hand tinting,
flash frames, refilming and flicker effects, accompanied by a
dense atmosphere of word puns, dialogue, primal screams, music
and even recycled and letraseted soundtracks.
By setting
experiments entirely within his Moonee Ponds house, de Bruyn creates
such a complex sense of claustrophobia, the spectator, while recognising
the staid, conservative trappings of urban Melbourne, is presented
with the sort of art neurosis more commonly found in megacities
like New York.
The principal
actor in Experiments is the narrator, whose anarchistic
mind ruminates, struggles and screams from relief from the ravages
of suburban Moonee Ponds, and the psychological suburbia of his
mind..
.occasionally
the sheer aggression of the images threatens to overwhelm the
spectator, but in searching for explanation to the neuroses that
have become the human condition, the film confronts this issue
with all the intensity of a migraine.
Experiments,
its cacophony of images flickering on two screens, throws up everything
from schizophrenic madness to baby nappies, inviting you to participate
in the cathartic recesses of a personal nightmare.
As autobiographical
filmmaking it is a tour de force, and should not be missed by
anyone with even the remotest interest in this style of experimental
filmmaking.
Rod
Bishop from an unpublished review for The Melbourne Times
1982
Discs (1982, 3 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Discs
is a document of a friend's record collection shot on a hot day
long ago. When you recognise an image, the next six are missed,
such are the machinations of our brain.
Program
notes: Scratch Film Festival. UWA. Perth 1997
Culture
Shock (1983, 16mm, 10 mins, Silent)
Picking the
notes of the everyday while standing on a street corner in Elsternwick.
Saturday
Nite Fever (1983, 9 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
A pixilated
mixture of sport and sport sampled from Saturday night television.
Migraine Particles (1984, 12 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
A hand drawn
film dedicated to Len Lye.
Light Play (1984, 7 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music by Michael
Luck)
An abstract
play of light, colour, geometric shapes and patterns synchronised
with synthesised music. The image patterns have been created by
scratching, drawing, painting and overlaying directly on clear
and opaque film and fragments of photographed positive and negative
images.
National
Film and Video Lending Service Catalogue, ACMI.
223 (1985,
6 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music by Michael Luck)
There are
those films that are formalistic by design - the materialist films,
which can't be accused of doing injustice to their subject matter.
Most notable in this area has been Dirk de Bruyn's "Direct on
Film" series. The resulting films (Vision, 223,
among others) comprise of frantic flashes of colour and shape
- very annoying to the viewer. But once the filmmaker (or someone)
explains that the films are visual music, it's surprising how
watchable they become! This example points to the importance of
the viewer in the experimental film scenario. Whilst the modes
of viewing for particular types of films take time to learn, a
certain facilitation of them is possible if the viewer is open
and adaptable.
Bill
Mousoulis Filmnews, December 1987.
Boerdery (1985, 11 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music by Chris
Knowles)
A time-lapse
document of a farm house in the Netherlands mapping the changing
seasons, the light and shadows.
From
publicity pamphlet: AFI Distribution.
Vision
(1985, 4 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music by Michael Luck)
No photographed
images. All handmade. It's all these squares, lines. The main
techniques were bleaching and dyeing and sticking letraset-type
material to the film strip. Used the pos/neg thing, inserting
film strips to sustain shapes, otherwise you're talking about
the one film all the time: it begins to look the same. There is
a growing need to sustain shapes, patterns, etc. Hence the squares,
lines. Breaking away from the rush of shapes. It's more of a problem
to get away from in Vision because there are no photographic
images. A very ordered film. Very Dutch. Took it all out of 800
ft. of this type of stuff and ended up with 150 ft. of selected
squares and circles. The images don't rush, they much more fold
over the top of one another. Mondrian-inspired.
Notes
from NY Filmmakers Co-op Catalogue.
224 (1987, 7 mins, 35mm, Optical Sound, Music by Michael Luck)
224
is a 35mm expansion from the Direct on film 223.
224
is a palimpsest of pulsing images that fold over one another.
The core of the film is a handful of photographs from the filmmaker's
past that have been reworked by scratching drawing and adding
Letraset directly to the film's surface. Using 35mm allows for
more control of such techniques. The film should be approached
from a physiological level in that there is a continual pos/neg
pulsing of images which leave after-images on the eye. The film
plays with the idea that what one sees does not exist in the film
itself.
Program
notes; 1987 AFI Awards.
Homecomings
(1987, 100 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music by Michael Luck)
De Bruyn
just recently has also combined his particular filmic effect/interest
(rhythm) with the tangible reality around him. In Homecomings,
which had its premiere screening in the October MIMA program,
there is an incredible sense of the filmmaker living and breathing
his practice. In what is essentially a diary film of a man going
back to his homeland, strange things start to happen: photos are
animated too quick to catch, actions are sped up through timelapse,
and, most profoundly of all, certain shots get transformed into
their drawn-on-film equivalents. When we see (from behind) Dirk's
son Kees sitting at a table drawing and then the same scene/action
but obviously hand-drawn onto the film, it speaks volumes about
the filmmaker and his interaction with the world, and is also
a sublimely new configuration (in cinema's history) of sight and
sound, of signification if you like. Homecomings is a long
auto-biographical/diary film one step ahead of Corinne Cantrill's
auto-biographical film, In This Life's Body, in that it
combines the filmmaker's life with the filmmaker's practice.
Bill
Mousoulis Filmnews, December 1987.
Cha Hit Frames (1988, 20 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound, Music
by Michael Luck)
What can
I say about de Bruyn's films. They assault you. They zap you,
sting you, hit you from all sides with colours, shapes and movement.
So much to look at but never enough time to reflect (until it
is all over). Frames like de Bruyn's other recent effort
Cha-Hit (1986) is an overwhelming film constantly in motion,
blitzing its audience with abstract visuals. The film is a mixture
of flickery, Letraset, light, scratching and hand-drawn colours.
So rapid is the movement that it makes you wonder at times if
you are looking at an image or its afterimage. Could a film like
Frames be damaging to your retina or neurological functions?
If you sat in front of this type of film long enough, would it
send you on a trip? Could it awaken a patient out of a coma? After
a confronting seven minutes I felt exhausted and slightly frazzled,
such is the power of the film. A Dirk de Bruyn retrospective would
certainly kill me.
Glen
Hannah, Filmviews Number 130 p 28 1986.
Family Excursions 1 (1988, 30 mins, Super 8, Silent)
"For
me, diary filmmaking consists of walking around with a camera
taking a single frame here and there. The continuous long shot
draws a sketch and outline of your environment. The construction
of a visual and emotional dance. There is a cascade of decisions
of what is filmed and what is not filmed. In the back of your
head is something emerging that tells you, partly through experience
and partly through will, how the whole thing is going to look
played back. Even further back and in your stomach, there is a
glow that tells you that you are creating, imposing your will
on the passage of time."
program
notes, p 27 Experimenta 1988
Knots
(1990, 8 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
The roving
eye in the crowd. Flickering sunlight. Fast forward. B4 it was
seeing faint movement on the distant horizon. Now the skill is
to see the rush from the passing car. We are on the run. Visual
experiences that cement out daily lives, with an increasing uneasy
disjointedness. Images like afterthoughts. Flows. Standing waves.
Kill kill the eye. Fade the past. Fun the film like water through
the eye. Rush ruse use muse. The language of the flash now. Curtains
twisting and folding. Images tying around each other: distant
memory.
Text
by filmmaker from Cantrills Filmnotes Issue 61/62 May 1990.
Conversations with my Mother (1990, 100 mins, 16mm, Optical
Sound)
An intense
and sometimes disturbing series of encounters between the filmmaker
and his mother as they relive the traumatic years of his childhood
and adolescence. Following the migration of the family to Australia
from Holland in the difficult postwar years they had to grapple
with problems of housing, social injustice and adjustment made
more difficult by the father's mental illness. For the filmmaker
'the sentiment had to be uncompromisingly true' although he became
aware that 'all film is fiction'.
National
Film and Video Lending Service Catalogue, ACMI.
Understanding
Science (1992, 18 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Understanding
Science is about breakdown of meaning, breakdown of relationship,
trying to exist in that space between meaninglessness and understanding,
at its cusp, its node, its no-man's land.. It is a melting pot
of more than just fragments of images, there are clusters of things,
ideas, sounds, words, that swim in and out of your attention.
I wanted this film to be a dense multidimensional collage of automatic
writing, sound poetry and abstracting strings of images.
Program
notes: Scratch Film Festival. UWA. Perth 1997
Rote Movie
(1994, 12 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
On the voice
over de Bruyn places himself behind the wheel of a car, an appropriate
metaphor for his expatriate driven reflections on his feelings
of exile, distance and loneliness. Necessarily unintelligent memories
highlight habitual subjectivity of "walking through a landscape
alone", "gypsy", "victim". Images of
roadsigns, cars, billboards, the passing landscape; elegantly
simple rotoscope (by rote?) drawings, recopied and texturally
manipulated filmic images; the inevitability of the repetition
of leader. A tired, yearning, moving film.
Steven
Ball Mesh 3 Autumn 1994 p 23.
A
X Canada (1995, 80 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Dirk de Bruyn's
timelapse studies seem to display comparatively less subjectivity.
They are predominantly landscape based but it would be a mistake
to leave it there or to dismiss them due to a familiarity with
often uncritically over-used timelapse techniques. These films
are not so much studies of landscape but rather, more interestingly,
they are studies of time and the progression of shadow and light.
The films frame is often static, the camera motionless. The landscape
recedes as the dynamics of accelerated movement of shadow and
light become the primary subject demanding an unusual perception
of other time and space. This gives the sense of there being a
more "filmic", non human, unanthropomorhised perception
that would be suggested by, for instance, a hand held roving camera.
Steven
Ball Melbourne Super 8 Film Group Newsletter Issue 105
August 1995.
Doubt
(1995, 5 mins, Super 8/video, Sound)
The film
traces a father's attempt to show his son the correct path through
life.
Program
notes: p16 St. Kilda Film Festival 1996.
Schist
(1998, 8 mins, 16mm, Silent)
Silent walk
through Vancouver Island in the middle of winter.
U.Q. @ Sea (2001, 16 mins, Digital Video, Sound)
Video documentation
of performance group Unanimous Quorum with camera as participant.
Traum
a Dream (2002, 7 mins, Digital Video, Sound)
A representation
of traumatised space, depicting a person who is consumed by a
body of pain, consumed by fire. Slowly something is remembered.
Festival
Catalogue: Transmediale.03. February 2003.
Gallery (2003, 5 mins, Digital Video, Sound)
Using a Richard
Frenken photographic exhibition as a starting off point, Gallery
samples the hectic rush of itself and its surroundings.
Gridgrid
(2004,
10 mins, Digital Video, Sound)
Sound: Dan
Armstrong.
A man alone.
Cabin fever. Invoking a feeling of isolation and fragmentation.
Analog
Stress #1, #2, #3 (2004, 12 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
Made from
reworked and reanimated found industrial and discarded personal
footage. The main focus is the soundtrack which has been reconstructed
from scratches, pen marks, Letraset strips and the music and phrases
of found films.
Published
versions: #1, #2, #3 are all slightly different to each other.
2nd Hand
Cinema (2005, 7 mins, 16mm, Optical Sound)
A celebration
of the offal of cinema, old films, old soundtracks, drawing directly
on the film, using stamps and food-dyes to create discarded imagery.
To chew film up and spit it out as painting direct.
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