Dennis O'Rourke is internationally recognized as one of the most exciting and perceptive filmmakers about tensions between European and traditional cultures.
His films chronicle the Pacific peoples' rearguard fight against the colonizers-economic, religious and military. O'Rourke's filmmaking is enlightened by an awareness of “cinema verité” while he also cites as his heroes fiction filmmakers, specifically Bresson and Ozu. His works have received wide recognition, with retrospective screenings at many prominent venues in the world.
Cunnamulla (2000)、The Pagode da Tia Beth (1993)、The Good Woman of Bangkok (1991)、Cannibal Tours (1988)、Half Life: A Parable For the Nuclear Age (1985)、Couldn't Be Fairer (1984)、The Sharkcallers of Kontu (1982)、Yap…How Did You Know We'd Like TV? (1980)、Ileksen (1979)、Yumi Yet (1976)
“There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it.”
When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River, is it the indigenous tribes people or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity? This film explores the differences (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when “civilized” and “primitive” people meet.…
Soon after dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American military began looking for an “appropriate” place to test its nuclear weapons. They chose the Marshall Islands—tiny atolls in the mid-Pacific-for a number of reasons. The United States had recently taken these islands from Japan, they were a long way from America and they were populated by a…
A performance of the kris dance, a Balinese ceremonial dance drama in which the never-ending struggle between the witch and the dragon—the death-dealing and the life-protecting—as it is given in the village of Pagoetan from 1937-39. The dancers go into violent trance seizures and turn their kris (dagger) against their breats without injury. Consciousness is restored with incense and holy…