Dirk DE BRUYN

(1950- )
Nationality: Australian

Dirk de Bruyn is a Dutch-Born Australian filmmaker born in 1950. His work is focused on the representation of trauma in the moving image.

"There have been various strands to my investigations into the moving image.
My early work RUNNING (1976, 30 mins), ZOOMFILM (1976, 28 mins) and FEYERS (1979, 27 mins) began a concern with the ideas of closed-eye vision, trance and catatonia and were confronting / assaulting to the viewer. These films were about structure as content. They were concerned with the nature and impact of film itself: with image flicker, the after image, the physiology of viewing. This enquiry led to shorter compacted works like VISION (1985, 4 mins) and 223 (1985, 6 mins). With these films the complexity of the layered image, the "hand drawn/direct on film/image texture" nature of production and the notion of no budget film making became more of a focus.
There has been a further re-ordering with work like TRAUM A DREAM (2002, 7 mins), ROTE MOVIE (1994, 12 mins) and DISSOCIATION (2016, 7 mins) to include a suggestion of story, the personal, a sampling of the "self". The story that is being told is one of trauma and forgetting, of stress and the stressed/shocked body. The nature of film is used as a metaphor, a trace of these influences on the body.
The strand of the personalised and diaristic present in the longer works like EXPERIMENTS (1981, 2 screen, 55 mins), HOMECOMINGS (1987, 100 mins) and CONVERSATIONS WITH MY MOTHER (1990, 100 mins), finds its way back into these shorter pieces.
The sampling of time and the movement of light and shade has been another area of study. This is evident in time-lapse films like BOERDERY (1985, 11 mins) and TELESCOPE (2013, 77 mins) and much of my unpublished Super 8 work."
- Dirk de Bruyn, April 2003 (edited 2022)

11 MOVIES IN DISTRIBUTION

WHITE BAT
2021 / 16mm & HDV / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 12' 27 / 52 €
distribution: Digital file on server
RE-VUE
2017-2018 / 16mm & 35mm & HD / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 5' 58 / 42 €
distribution: Digital file on server
TELESCOPE
2012 / 16mm & HD & HI 8 & Mini DV & Super 8mm / color / sound / single screen / 77' 15 / 250 €
distribution: Digital file on server
ANALOG STRESS
2005 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 14' 00 / 47 €
distribution: 16mm
TRAUM A DREAM
2002 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 6' 52 / 42 €
distribution: Digital file on server
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY MOTHER
1990 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 102' 27 / 300 €
distribution: Digital file on server
HOMECOMINGS
1987 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 98' 00 / 300 €
distribution: Digital file on USB stick
LIGHT PLAY
1984 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 8' 00 / 40 €
distribution: 16mm or Digital file on server
VISION
1984 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 3' 00 / 25 €
distribution: 16mm or Digital file on server
WALK
1980 / 16mm / color / silent / single screen / 24' 00 / 81 €
distribution: 16mm
FEYERS
1979 / 16mm / color / sound / single screen / 27' 00 / 90 €
distribution: 16mm or Digital file on server