Dean Kavanagh

Directing

Dean Kavanagh

Born 1989-07-10 · Dublin, Ireland

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.

Acting credits

Forbidden Symmetries poster
NR

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.

Forbidden Symmetries

2014

Nineveh poster
NR

Stertched images along stretched time.

Nineveh

2016

TRAILERS poster
6.0

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.

TRAILERS

2016

Polar Nights poster
NR

The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.

Polar Nights

2015

Bipedality poster
5.0

A relationship between a man and a woman discloses during the course of the film.

Bipedality

2010

Out of Here poster
NR

Ciaran is a passionate yet restless college dropout who has returned home to recession-struck Dublin after a year of travelling. Broke and living with his parents, struggling to re-connect with the ex-girlfriend that he left behind and the friends and social scene that have moved on without him, Ciaran questions whether he should stay or go - and comes to realize the difference between being stuck and being present

Out of Here

2013

Cloud of Skin poster
NR

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.

Cloud of Skin

2015

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Shingle Beach

2008

Homo Sapiens Project (201) (2002-2021) poster
NR

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.

Homo Sapiens Project (201) (2002-2021)

2021

Only Human poster
5.2

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.

Only Human

2009

Ten Years In The Sun poster
NR

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.

Ten Years In The Sun

2015

History of Water poster
NR

A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.

History of Water

2013

HSP: There Is No Escape from the Terrors Of the Mind poster
NR

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.”

HSP: There Is No Escape from the Terrors Of the Mind

2013

Behind the camera

In Passing poster
5.7

In Passing is a collaboration between seven different filmmakers from around the world in response to Jesse Richards' 2008 Remodernist Film Manifesto.

In Passing

2011

Animal Kingdom poster
6.0

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.

Animal Kingdom

2017

Animal Kingdom poster
6.0

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.

Animal Kingdom

2017

Forbidden Symmetries poster
NR

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.

Forbidden Symmetries

2014

Polar Nights poster
NR

The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.

Polar Nights

2015

Polar Nights poster
NR

The discovery of an ancient artefact. The night extends beyond the grip of reality. The inhabitants of a small community perish.

Polar Nights

2015

Hole in the Head poster
NR

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.

Hole in the Head

2022

Hole in the Head poster
NR

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.

Hole in the Head

2022

Last Sunday poster
NR

The last day of the week is the first day of the week.

Last Sunday

2011

Cloud of Skin poster
NR

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.

Cloud of Skin

2015

The Distance poster
NR

A young man recalls a fishing trip from his childhood but he is uncertain if it is his own memory.

The Distance

2010

A Harbour Town poster
NR

A journey into the dark visions of a small coastal town. Memories of the inhabitants or memories created by the place itself.

A Harbour Town

2013

Backmatter (1) poster
5.0

The first film in a two-part study of daily routines.

Backmatter (1)

2012

Backmatter (2) poster
NR

The second film in a two-part study of daily routines.

Backmatter (2)

2013

Maritime poster
NR

A silent film adrift in the lost rooms of an old house. A final letter to an old friend.

Maritime

2012

Good Evening poster
NR

The troubling hallucinations of a deranged mind.

Good Evening

2012

Nocturnum poster
NR

A compendium of home movies sewn into a fragmented nocturnal narrative on travel

Nocturnum

2012

Abandon poster
NR

A found-footage film that seeks to sever all narrative ties.

Abandon

2012

First Transmission poster
NR

‘My first movie’.

First Transmission

2014

No artwork available
6.0

A darts player slides into depression after an heart attack spooks him so much he loses his skill.

Good Arrows

2009

Poor Edward poster
NR

A relationship unravels during a storm. Poor Edward is considered as part of the official canon of Remodernist Film.

Poor Edward

2009

Detritus poster
NR

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.

Detritus

2011

History of Water poster
NR

A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.

History of Water

2013

History of Water poster
NR

A young man films his family to better understand them and as a result is destroyed by them.

History of Water

2013