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Rolf de Heer

Rolf de Heer

Directing

Biography

Rolf de Heer (born 4 May 1951; Heemskerk, North Holland) is a Australian film director. De Heer was born in Heemskerk in the Netherlands but migrated to Sydney when he was eight years old. He attended the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney. His company is called Vertigo Productions and is based in Adelaide. De Heer primarily makes alternative or arthouse films. According to the jacket notes of the videotape, de Heer holds the honor of co-producing and directing the only motion picture, Dingo, in which the jazz legend Miles Davis appears as an actor. Miles Davis collaborated with Michel Legrand on the score. He is the subject of the book Dutch Tilt, Aussie Auteur: The Films of Rolf de Heer (First edition – Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM, 2009. Second edition – Ebook: Starrs via Smashwords.com, 2013) by Dr D. Bruno Starrs. A comprehensive study of his films to date, Dancing to His Song: the Singular Cinema of Rolf de Heer by film critic Jane Freebury, is published in ebook and print (Currency Press & Currency House, 2015).

Known For

Bad Boy Bubby
6.9

Bad Boy Bubby is just that: a bad boy. So bad, in fact, that his mother has kept him locked in their house for his entire thirty years, convincing him that the air outside is poisonous. After a visit from his estranged father, circumstances force Bubby into the waiting world, a place which is just as unusual to him as he is to the world.

Bad Boy Bubby

1993
Ten Canoes
6.7

A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.

Ten Canoes

2006
Dingo
5.8

Young John Anderson is captivated by jazz musician Billy Cross when he performs on the remote airstrip of his Western Australian outback hometown after his plane is diverted. Years later, now a family man and making a meagre living tracking dingoes and playing trumpet in a local band, John still dreams of joining Billy on trumpet and makes a pilgrimage to Paris.

Dingo

1991
The Tracker
6.8

Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.

The Tracker

2002
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
6.7

In El Idilio, a village on the banks of a river in the Amazon rainforest, Antonio Bolívar, known to everyone as "The Old Man," lives a recluse. One day, Antonio begins reading the romance novels that the traveling dentist Rubicondo Loachamin brings him to pass the time. He shares this occupation with a beautiful local girl, a waitress and prostitute, named Josefina, with whom he ends up falling in love. But all does not go smoothly when Antonio is forced to go on a hunting trip.

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

2001
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
3.6

Tasmania, 1954: Slovenian migrant Melita abandons her husband and young daughter, Sonja. Sonja's distraught father perseveres with his new life in a new country, but he is soon crushed into an alcoholic despair, and Sonja herself abandons him at the earliest opportunity. Now, nearly 20 years later, a single and pregnant Sonja returns to Tasmania's highlands and to her father in an attempt to put the pieces of her life back together.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

1998
Alexandra's Project
5.9

Steve is a man who has it all, a successful career, wonderful children, beautiful home and a loving wife. However, returning to his home after work on his birthday, he finds his house deserted and darkened with almost all the lightbulbs missing, all easy access outside cut off and a videotape waiting for him. Playing that tape, he watches a bizarre and grueling recording in which his wife explains her grievance with him, her reasons for disappearing with the children and her revenge for how he treated her in a way he would never forget.

Alexandra's Project

2003
The King Is Dead!
5.5

A happy, unsuspecting couple, Max (Dan Wyllie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic), buy a house in what appears to be a quiet, friendly neighbourhood. Settling in well, they make friends with a nice family on one side and soon meet a more interesting family on the other side. But interesting soon becomes loud and loud soon becomes intolerable. When the intolerable becomes violent and the police are powerless, Max and Therese attempt to take matters into their own hands.

The King Is Dead!

2012
Charlie's Country
7.0

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.

Charlie's Country

2013
Serenades
5.4

Set in the 1890s in the central desert region of Australia, 'Serenades' tells the tale of Jila who is conceived when her Afghan cameleer father wins her Aboriginal mother in a card game.

Serenades

2001
Another Country
6.2

In this documentary companion to CHARLIE'S COUNTRY, Australian actor David Gulpilil tells the story of when his people's way of life was derailed by ours.

Another Country

2015
Incident at Raven's Gate
6.1

Ex-con Eddie Cleary gets a job working on his older brother's isolated farm. It's not long before bizarre things start happening--dead birds falling out of the sky, family pets attacking their owners, strange apparitions beginning to appear, and people who had been "normal" suddenly going insane.

Incident at Raven's Gate

1989
Cass
7.0

Torn by the conflict between society and her own life, as well as her failing marriage and love for another woman, Cass desperately tried to pull together the pieces of her shattered life.

Cass

1978
Spank!
3.5

Paulie returns to his hometown of Adelaide after spending three years in a monastery. Upon returning home, he finds his buddies have not grown up. Together, they decide to open a café.

Spank!

1999
My Name Is Gulpilil
6.2

Diagnosed with lung cancer, legendary Australian actor David Gulpilil boldly explains the journey that is his extraordinary, culture-clashing life.

My Name Is Gulpilil

2021
Gulpilil: One Red Blood
6.8

An hour-long documentary on the life and career of actor David Gulpilil.

Gulpilil: One Red Blood

2002
The Quiet Room
5.9

A seven-year-old girl adopts a vow of silence in protest when her quarrelsome parents grow increasingly hostile to one another.

The Quiet Room

1996
Three Forever
8.0

Three orphans and close friends, Danny, Francis and Paulie, are adopted by three families. Danny’s bullied at school. Only Bops, the father of his adoptive mother, establishes a good relationship. One day, to seek the true mother of Danny, the three escape. Only Bops can bring them home safe.

Three Forever

1998
Alien Visitor
5.4

In this sci-fi adventure a gorgeous alien woman is sent to Earth by mistake from the planet Epsilon. Landing in the Australian outback she meets a surveyor and they cross the continent together. However, she spends the trip haranguing him for the ecological recklessness and avarice of the human race.

Alien Visitor

1997
The Survival of Kindness
7.1

In a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert, BlackWoman is abandoned, left to die. But BlackWoman seems not ready. She escapes, journeying through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain and finally to city, on a quest for an unknown beginning. But the city is more uncertain even than the desert, and recaptured, BlackWoman must find another escape. Or does she?

The Survival of Kindness

2023