Word: heer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...aired close to the film's Australian release in June). For up to seven hours a day, director and crew would wade through thick swamp, with crocodile spotters on platforms above. "It really was the leeches getting you from the waist down; mosquitoes from above the waist," says De Heer, "and they'd be yelling out, There's a big one coming!" Sound designer Currie was confined to the relative safety of a boat, but even here his capabilities were pushed to the limit. "It was a physical and mental feat to make Ten Canoes," he says. "A logistic, artistic...
...Helping translate that dream beyond Ramingining time - and the reason for the Rome clock at Vertigo Productions - is Italian producer Domenico Procacci. First brought together on De Heer's breakthrough Bad Boy Bubby (1993), "he and Domenico got on like a house on fire," recalls Currie. A darkly comic fable about an idiot savant's reintroduction to the world, which we see and hear through his ears and eyes, Bad Boy took out the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and set in motion one of the film world's most unusual partnerships. Without Procacci's investment...
...Currie tells how, after The Tracker was shot, Procacci stayed on in Adelaide for Christmas, when he asked De Heer if he had any more scripts to shoot: "And Rolf said, 'No, but I can get you one in a week.' So he sent it to him, Domenico read it on the plane back to Italy, finished it by Singapore, and rang him up and said, 'We'll finance this, yes, no problem.' " That film was Alexandra's Project (2003), and it's hard to think of a more confronting Australian film. About a disgruntled wife who gets revenge...
...Alexandra's Project is at times painful to watch - but then again, subjects like this don't often get a look-in. The same could be said for Dance Me to My Song (1998), in which De Heer explores the emotional and sexual life of a woman with cerebral palsy. De Heer says his Italian connection "has made it easier to make the sorts of films I like to make." Which brings us back to the other wall clock: Adelaide. At first it might seem strange that Australia's riskiest filmmaker should choose to reside in this relatively sleepy hollow...
...After migrating to Sydney from his native Holland when he was eight, "that was a tough time in primary school and high school," recalls friend Currie, "so Rolf focused on becoming the best English speaker he could." That single-mindedness was parlayed to filmmaking when De Heer was accepted into the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. After graduating, he found the going tough. An early children's feature was followed by a sci-fi thriller, and then, after an aborted film in Indonesia, De Heer began living in Canberra. It was there he received a phone call...