Rolf De Heer Collection, TheWith all the recent buzz around Not Quite Hollywood and the Ozploitation genre it's easy to forget about the more artistically minded directors like Rolf De Heer. Rolf De Heer is one of Australia's unique cinematic voices who has made some truly original films with striking imagery that have seen him win several Australian and international awards. De Heer is one of the few directors who deserve the amount of praise lumped on them. No overblown hype here, Rolf De Heer is a true visionary who is not afraid to challenge convention or his audiences. Umbrella's 6 disc set the Rolf De Heer collection contains his first six films from 1984 - 1996. These six films vary in genre from the family film, drama, sci-fi and well in the case of Bad Boy Bubby completely off the wall (if you haven't seen this one definitely check it out). The films contained in this collection are: Tail Of A Tiger, Incident At Raven's Gate, Dingo, Bad Boy Bubby, Epsilon and The Quiet Room. Being quite a varied selection this set will have something to appeal to everyone who is a fan of great cinema. I won't regurgitate plot details because these films really need to be experienced not dissected. The highlights of the set for me were undoubtedlyIncident At Raven's Gate, Bad Boy Bubby and The Quiet Room. Great to see a release of Incident At Raven's Gate because it's definitely a forgotten gem. While the other films in the set weren't what I'd usually would watch I found them rewarding both visually and thematically regardless. Jazz fans should definitely give Dingo a spin even if its only for Miles Davis. Most of the discs in the set are bare bones releases with the exception of Bad Boy Bubby which is a bit of a shame but for the earlier films I doubt anything actually exists that would be worth of inclusion. Epsilon contains the original version of the film which runs an extra 10 minutes compared US cut. The packing of this set is a total let down considering it's $60 price tag (I see a few places like fishpond have dropped the price drastically so be sure to hunt around). Sure you can't judge a book by it's cover but these films deserve something more interesting than the bland artwork of this set. This set just looks like your typical budget double feature repackaging and hardly does the man's work any justice. Personally I'd buy these films separately seeing as most of them are now budget priced titles at the majority of stores. Umbrella are really slipping in this department lately with the dull poorly photoshoped covers. At least this one was run through the spellchecker I guess. My gripes at the packing aside this is a great introduction to De Heer's body of work and contains some definitive moments of Australian cinema.
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