Dennis O'Rourke

Dennis O'Rourke (14 August 1945 – 15 June 2013) was an Australian documentary filmmaker.[1][2]

For the New Zealand politician, see Denis O'Rourke.

Dennis O'Rourke
Dennis O'Rourke, 1988
Born(1945-08-14)14 August 1945
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Died15 June 2013(2013-06-15) (aged 67)
Queensland, Australia

Biography

For most of his childhood, Dennis O'Rourke lived in a small country town, where his parents ran a failing business, until he was sent to a Catholic boarding school for his secondary education.

In the late 1960s, after two years of fruitless university studies, he went travelling in outback Australia, the Pacific Islands and South East Asia. During this period he worked as a farm hand, salesman, cowboy, a roughneck on oil rigs, and as a maritime seaman. He also taught himself photography and dreamt of becoming a photojournalist. Wanting to make documentary films, he moved to Sydney, where the Australian Broadcasting Corporation employed him as an assistant gardener. He later became a cinematographer for that organisation.

From 1974 until 1979 he lived in Papua New Guinea, which was in the process of decolonisation. He worked for the newly independent government, teaching documentary filmmaking skills to Papua New Guineans. His first film, Yumi Yet - Independence for Papua New Guinea, was completed in 1976, and it was widely acclaimed.

O'Rourke's film Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age was screened at a Leicester Square cinema in London in 1986.

Controversy sometimes surrounded O'Rourke's interactions with, and depiction of, the individuals who were subjects of his documentaries, such as The Good Woman of Bangkok (released in 1991), which concerned a sex worker in Thailand and Cunnamulla (2000), which was made up mostly of monologues by residents of the Queensland town of the same name, discussing everyday life.

In 2007, O'Rourke was awarded damages by the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court for defamation. The action followed the reporting of comments accusing O'Rourke of unscrupulous conduct during the filming of Cunnamulla. The awards were made against an Aboriginal rights activist and Nationwide News Pty Ltd (a subsidiary of News Corporation), as the parent company of the Sydney Daily Telegraph and The Australian.[3][4]

O'Rourke died of cancer on June 15, 2013. Immediately before his death, he had been producing and directing an uncompleted and unreleased feature-length documentary titled I Love a Sunburnt Country... – on the subject of Australian identity, as seen through the "poetic imagination" of "ordinary people".[5][6][7] He was the father of five children.

Awards & legacy

In 2005, Dennis O'Rourke received the Don Dunstan Award for his contribution to the Australian film industry. His many other awards include the Eastman Kodak award for Cinematography, the Australian Film Institute Byron Kennedy Award, the Director's Prize for Extraordinary Achievement at the Sundance Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Visions du réel film festival in Nyon, Switzerland, the Jury Prize for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, the Grand Premio at the Festival de Popoli in Florence, the Film Critics' Circle of Australia Award for Best Documentary, the Australian Film Institute Best Director Award (for Cunnamulla) and the Australian Centenary Medal "for services to Australian society and Australian film production".[5]

Retrospectives of O'Rourke's work have been held at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Pacific Film Archive in San Francisco; and in other cities, including Freiburg, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Marseille, Melbourne, New Delhi, New York, Singapore, Taipei, and Uppsala.

Filmography

References
  1. Dennis O'Rourke at IMDb
  2. CameraWork Films of Dennis O'Rourke. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  3. ABC News (August 9, 2007) Cunnamulla' producer wins defamation case. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  4. Inside Film Archived 2011-08-14 at the Wayback Machine (August 13, 2007) Dennis O'Rourke wins defamation action
  5. CameraWork web site: About Dennis O'Rourke
  6. ABC Arts (17 June 2013) Vale Dennis O’Rourke. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  7. The Sydney Morning Herald (June 18, 2013) Fiery maker of passionate films dies. Retrieved 10 February 2015.

Further reading
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