Dean Kavanagh
Birth : 1989-07-10, Dublin, Ireland
History
Dean Kavanagh is an experimental filmmaker from Ireland.
Over the past 14 years, he has created 70 shorts and 6 feature films. His cinema intricately forges a new relationship between contemporary and legacy media formats, while combining materialist film methodologies with a focus on narrative structures. This work has been described as part of an important new direction in Irish cinema and has been screened at film festivals and cultural institutions internationally.
His filmmaking is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Director
Hole in the Head is an experimental feature film in which the protagonist re-stages his family's home movies in order to recall a traumatic event. Melding new with old technologies and a film-within-a-film structure, Hole in the Head proposes a hauntological discourse on autofiction, trauma and private ritual.
Homo Sapiens Project (201) was completed in 2021 as part of re-envisioning and restructuring Rashidi's filmography. This nineteen-hour experimental feature is constituted from many feature films produced between 2002 to 2014. These experimental features were made as a type of test or trial experiment. Rashidi assembled the films from footage accumulated over the years, archival footage, found footage and rushes donated by his close collaborators.
Sound Editor
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Editor
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Cinematography
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Co-Producer
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Director
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Writer
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
TRAILERS unites the most personal and experimental aspects of underground filmmaking with a scope that is as cosmically vast as a science fiction epic. Rashidi’s ongoing exploration into the nature of cinema sees a group of characters adrift in space, each locked into their own sexual rituals while a cataclysm of universal proportions unfolds. Humanity has become a mysterious burlesque show for alien eyes: the gaze of the film camera. This visionary spectacle uses multiple formats and visual textures in weaving an erotic anti-narrative suspended in its own space and time.
Producer
Haunted by the memory of a blind woman with visionary powers, a man revisits the sites of their love affair. Rather than unfolding as a traditional narrative, Le Cain’s first feature is an immersive and dreamlike exploration of memory and vision. Shot in a series of time-warped Irish locations the otherworldly atmosphere is intensified by composer Karen Power’s compelling soundscapes.
Haunted by the memory of a blind woman with visionary powers, a man revisits the sites of their love affair. Rather than unfolding as a traditional narrative, Le Cain’s first feature is an immersive and dreamlike exploration of memory and vision. Shot in a series of time-warped Irish locations the otherworldly atmosphere is intensified by composer Karen Power’s compelling soundscapes.
Director
Cut to the chase was a phrase used by Hollywood studio executives, meaning “don't bore us with the dialogue - get to the interesting scenes without unnecessary delay." Cut to the Chase is a film crafted through images captured from a customised telecine apparatus and combines archival found-footage material with newly generated footage.
Director
The latest materialist gesture in cinema's dematerialisation- uncompromising alter-ego Johnny Kline returns in the form of found and partially destroyed early 20th century pornography and found material depicting domestic scenes. Always inappropriate in his re-appropriation of found materials Kline brings the private and public realms together in the creation of a drive-in cinema and a child's discovery of a satan-worshipping cult. A marriage of Messe Noire (1928) and the Irish landscape captured from various formats including 16mm through a custom-designed telecine apparatus and finished in an anaglyph 3D process, The Curse of Johnny Kline stands alone in contemporary Irish underground cinema.
Writer
The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.
Director
The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.
The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.
Makeup Artist
An assortment of obscure private obsessions, conspiracies and perversions flicker on the verge of incoherence against the context of vast cosmic disaster in Rouzbeh Rashidi’s boldest film to date. This sensory onslaught combines a homage to the subversive humour of Luis Buñuel and Joao Cesar Monteiro with the visionary scope of a demented science fiction epic.
Nicholas
An assortment of obscure private obsessions, conspiracies and perversions flicker on the verge of incoherence against the context of vast cosmic disaster in Rouzbeh Rashidi’s boldest film to date. This sensory onslaught combines a homage to the subversive humour of Luis Buñuel and Joao Cesar Monteiro with the visionary scope of a demented science fiction epic.
Director of Photography
An assortment of obscure private obsessions, conspiracies and perversions flicker on the verge of incoherence against the context of vast cosmic disaster in Rouzbeh Rashidi’s boldest film to date. This sensory onslaught combines a homage to the subversive humour of Luis Buñuel and Joao Cesar Monteiro with the visionary scope of a demented science fiction epic.
Director
This found footage project takes the form of four experimental films surrounding the mystery of the titular character. Rather than overtly appearing in each film, Johnny Kline is more a summation of the evils within the film as a whole: he is a monstrosity of cinema. By composing fragmented narratives and drawing on an array of found materials the films of Johnny Kline form a visceral and furious passage through the underbelly of found-footage cinema, where Kline is both a master of ceremonies and a spectre behind and betwixt each frame.
Director
A man investigates a memory of places and people. The evidence drifts deeper and deeper into an unforgivable jungle; he might not be the true owner of his memories, his thoughts may not be of his own, it may not even be his body. (IMDb)
Director
‘My first movie’.
Idea
Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.
Sound Designer
Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.
Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.
Director
Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.
Writer
A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.
Director
A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.
A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.
Cinematography
A contract killer reluctantly accepts a last minute assignment in the run-up to Christmas. The routine job takes an unexpected turn, and he finds himself morally and emotionally challenged.
Sound
There is no escape… From one side of the globe to the other, there is no escaping the faces, the visions, the ever-watchful camera. There is no escaping the mask, there is no escaping the resonating echoes of images and sounds that cross each other over time. There is no escaping the cinema. There is no escaping the terrors of the mind. “A mysterious loner, perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections. The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.”
Director of Photography
There is no escape… From one side of the globe to the other, there is no escaping the faces, the visions, the ever-watchful camera. There is no escaping the mask, there is no escaping the resonating echoes of images and sounds that cross each other over time. There is no escaping the cinema. There is no escaping the terrors of the mind. “A mysterious loner, perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections. The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.”
There is no escape… From one side of the globe to the other, there is no escaping the faces, the visions, the ever-watchful camera. There is no escaping the mask, there is no escaping the resonating echoes of images and sounds that cross each other over time. There is no escaping the cinema. There is no escaping the terrors of the mind. “A mysterious loner, perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections. The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.”
Editor
A journey into the dark visions of a small coastal town. Memories of the inhabitants or memories created by the place itself.
Cinematography
A journey into the dark visions of a small coastal town. Memories of the inhabitants or memories created by the place itself.
Director
A journey into the dark visions of a small coastal town. Memories of the inhabitants or memories created by the place itself.
Director
A séance of old and new light.
Director
The second film in a two-part study of daily routines.
Director
The troubling hallucinations of a deranged mind.
Director
A silent film adrift in the lost rooms of an old house. A final letter to an old friend.
Director
A compendium of home movies sewn into a fragmented nocturnal narrative on travel
Director
A found-footage film that seeks to sever all narrative ties.
Director
The first film in a two-part study of daily routines.
Director
Originally conceived as a road movie, Sound from the Valley Floor is at once a film diary and a perverse comedy permeated with a dream logic.
Director
The remains of a day. Originally conceived as part of the portmanteau feature film In Passing (2011), which was completed by an international alliance of Remodernist filmmakers.
Cinematography
In Passing is a collaboration between seven different filmmakers from around the world in response to Jesse Richards' 2008 Remodernist Film Manifesto.
Director
In Passing is a collaboration between seven different filmmakers from around the world in response to Jesse Richards' 2008 Remodernist Film Manifesto.
Cinematography
Ireland, 1923. A young man returns home after fighting for the British Army during World War One. He struggles to settle back in, his memories of the trenches still haunting him.
Director
A man cruises the streets of his old neighbourhood at nightfall.
Director
The last day of the week is the first day of the week.
Director
A young man recalls a fishing trip from his childhood but he is uncertain if it is his own memory.
Director
Onlookers at the canal.
A relationship between a man and a woman discloses during the course of the film.
A tale of people unfolds under the night sky. These doomed couples and lost individuals begin journeys and attempt to find resolution in their lives. Love is observed from a distance, sadness is in the air. With little sympathy for the loss and destruction caused to the characters, the stories progress and become neatly woven into a minimalistic portrayal of modern life.
Director
A relationship unravels during a storm. Poor Edward is considered as part of the official canon of Remodernist Film.
Writer
A darts player slides into depression after an heart attack spooks him so much he loses his skill.
