Australian filmmaker Rolf De Heer has been the recipient of much love here at Spout. Just a couple of weeks ago, Paul devoted an entire episode of FilmCouch to De Heer, calling the director “the most inspiring filmmaker alive.” I haven’t seen any of his films, but that podcast alone has me convinced that Rolf De Heer is some kind of cinema god.
So it’s with grand excitement that I learned, via Twitch, of the website for Rolf De Heer’s latest project, titled Dr. Plonk. It’s a black-and-white silent comedy set in 1907, about a scientist who invents a time machine in order to prove his theory that the world will end in the year 2008. The website boasts a trailer which, if in any way representative of the film as a whole, indicates that de Heer and crew have masterfully mimicked the look and feel of silent comedies of the early 20s. His protagonist seems to be semi-Chaplin-esque, but the antics remind me more of Fatty Arbuckle.
Not only is there a trailer, but the website also offers a amazing 40-page press kit (which you can download as a PDF) describing, in minute detail, Dr. Plonk’s conception and de Heer’s filmmaking process. The tome begins with a quote — “A good press kit is a pre-condition to a successful moving picture show” — attributed to Dr. Plonk himself. Page 10 outlines the process of buying a 90-year-old, hand-cranked camera, and how through trial and error, “slowly all ideas of precisely duplicating the past are consigned to the rubbish bin.” Page 11, titled “The Sound Recordist in Silent Film”, reads: (this page has been intentionally left blank). And so on.
After premiering last spring at the Adelaide Film Festival, Dr. Plonk will open in Australia later this month. It seems to have no U.S. distributor as of yet, but hopefully it will pop up at another festival or two this fall.
I’ve decided the most inspiring filmmaker since John Cassavetes is Rolf de Heer (Ten Canoes, The Tracker, Epsilon, Dingo). If there’s a filmmaker alive devoted to the belief that some films must happen and he/she is just a conduit for some bigger change, it’s de Heer. And the story behind Ten Canoes ( in theaters now) is remarkable.
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New in theaters, Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes and Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, Angelina Jolie’s passion project. Both deal with marginalized people and raise the question, “Can westerners make a movie to help us understand non-western people?”
Dances with Wolves and Apocalypto come under a bit of scrutiny as well.
Download FilmCouch #25 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday. Join the FilmCouch group
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It’s almost time for Filmmaker Independent’s 2nd annual Filmmaker Forum. The title of this year’s forum is “Make and Sell your Film Without Getting Screwed.” The graphic treatment is all two-by-fours and wood screws. It’s cute, but a bit cynical. It’s like a Lamaze class advertising, “How to deliver your baby without getting sliced open and dropped by your insurance.” The fear factor is put to work.
When it gets down to it, I’m not sure how many filmmakers out there look back at the early stages of their career and think about who screwed them over. I have, however, heard many tell stories of how naive they were about making and distributing films in the early days of their careers.
The most recent story is one I came across at Telluride. Rolf De Heer was there with Ten Canoes (now at the Chicago International Festival). For those of you who don’t know, Rolf De Heer is one of a few independents who made a film industry out of essentially nothing–in his case, he created the industry in Australia, where one didn’t exist. As a young director, De Heer’s first three films were commercial failures, not because they weren’t good, but because he just didn’t understand the Market. His first trip to Cannes was an eye opener and a turning point. He showed up with his film under his arm and quickly realized all the other films had booked screenings and parties six months in advance for the Industry folk. Nobody carrying any weight in the Industry even saw his film.
“I decided I was not going to do it [the traditional way] anymore. Each film takes a year or more and becomes the process of me living my life. If the process is miserable, then I’m throwing my life away. I am going to make the films I enjoy making… work closely with a few people rather than very many at a distance. And I prefer to be passionate about the subject matter because if the film goes nowhere it doesn’t matter.”
De Heer keeps his budgets low so investors don’t fear a huge loss. He’s built up his credibility with organizations offering production grants. He doesn’t stake his hopes, like so many other international filmmakers, on the American distribution deal. In so many words, he doesn’t get screwed because he doesn’t make decisions that place his love for filmmaking at the whim of somebody else. Is it really more complicated than that?
