Dean Bertram

Last updated

Dean Bertram
Born
Occupation(s)Writer, filmmaker, film festival director

Dean Bertram is a freelance writer, filmmaker, and film festival director based in Sydney, Australia. He is the co-founder of A Night of Horror International Film Festival.

Contents

Academic background

In 2006, Bertram graduated with a PhD in American cultural history from the University of Sydney. [1] His dissertation, Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief, traces and examines the development of UFO belief within the context of American culture and society.

Freelance writing

Bertram has written for a range of publications including The Australian , The Australian Financial Review , People Magazine , IPA Review, 3D World and Fortean Times . Several of his articles are archived online, including a piece on his time studying the Unarius UFO cult, [2] an overview of conspiracy orientated cinema, [3] and an exposé of the fascist ideology that lurks behind The Da Vinci Code . [4] He was a regular contributor and columnist for The Spectator Australia from 2010 to 2014.

Filmmaking

In an interview for the horror news website HorrorScope , Bertram traces his love of the horror genre to having watched John Carpenter's seminal horror film Halloween , at the age of ten. [5] This is the time that Bertram shot his first Super 8 film.

His two most recent short films are Annie Get Your Whale Boy (2004) [6] and Foresta Rossa (2006). [7]

In February 2008, he completed principal photography on his first feature film Sick Day . [8] Bertram who wrote the film, co-directed it with his brother Grant. As of June 2008, Sick Day is still in post-production. [9]

A Night of Horror International Film Festival

Bertram founded A Night of Horror International Film Festival, along with Lisa Mitchell and Grant Bertram in 2006. [10] Bertram and Mitchell remain the festival's directors. [11]

Related Research Articles

UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lionel Fanthorpe</span> British writer

Robert Lionel Fanthorpe, FCollP, FRSA, FCMI is a retired British priest and entertainer. Fanthorpe also worked as a dental technician, journalist, teacher, television presenter, author and lecturer. Born in Dereham in Norfolk, he lives in Cardiff in South Wales, where he served as Director of Media Studies and tutor/lecturer in Religious Studies at the Cardiff Academy Sixth form college.

James David Sharman is an Australian director and writer for film and stage with more than 70 productions to his credit. He is renowned in Australia for his work as a theatre director from the 1960s to the present, and is best known internationally as the director of the 1973 theatrical hit The Rocky Horror Show, its film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and the film's follow-up, Shock Treatment (1981).

Rocky Wood was a New Zealand-born Australian writer and researcher best known for his books about horror author Stephen King. He was the first author from outside North America or Europe to hold the position of president of the Horror Writers Association. Wood was born in Wellington, New Zealand and lived in Melbourne, Australia with his family. He had been a freelance writer for over 35 years. His writing career began at university, where he wrote a national newspaper column in New Zealand on extra-terrestrial life and UFO-related phenomena and published other articles about the phenomenon worldwide, in the course of which research he met such figures as Erich von Däniken and J. Allen Hynek; and had articles on the security industry published in the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and South Africa. In October 2010, Wood was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He died of complications on 1 December 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clapham Wood</span> Woodland area in Clapham, West Sussex, England

Clapham Wood is a woodland area in Clapham, West Sussex, England, which Fortean authors and paranormal enthusiasts believe to be a locus of UFO sightings, Satanic cult activity, deaths, and lost or sick pets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Campion (film director)</span>

Paul Campion is an English/New Zealand film director, and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Conyers</span> Australian author

David Conyers is an Australian author. Conyers writes predominantly science fiction and Lovecraftian horror.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shane Jiraiya Cummings</span>

Shane Jiraiya Cummings is an Australian horror and fantasy author and editor. He lives in Sydney. Cummings is best known as a short story writer. He has had more than 100 short stories published in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe, and Asia. As of 2015, he has written 12 books and edited 10 genre fiction magazines and anthologies, including the bestselling Rage Against the Night.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Haines (fiction writer)</span> New Zealand-born writer

Paul Haines was a New Zealand-born horror and speculative fiction writer. He lived in Melbourne with his wife and daughter.

A Night of Horror International Film Festival is a horror genre film festival that is based in Sydney, Australia.

The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident was a series of radar and visual contacts with unidentified flying objects over airbases in eastern England on the night of 13–14 August 1956, involving personnel from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF). The incident has since gained some prominence in the literature of ufology and the popular media.

<i>Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!</i> 2008 documentary film directed by Mark Hartley

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! is a 2008 Australian documentary film about the Australian New Wave of 1970s and 1980s low-budget cinema. The film was written and directed by Mark Hartley, who interviewed over eighty Australian, American and British actors, directors, screenwriters and producers, including Quentin Tarantino, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, George Lazenby, George Miller, Barry Humphries, Stacy Keach, John Seale and Roger Ward.

<i>Lake Mungo</i> (film) 2008 Australian horror film

Lake Mungo is a 2008 Australian mockumentary psychological horror film written and directed by Joel Anderson and starring Talia Zucker and Martin Sharpe. It employs mockumentary-style storytelling with found footage and docufiction elements, using actor "interviewees" to present the narrative of a family trying to come to terms with the drowning death of their daughter, and the potentially supernatural events they experience after it.

Bliss is an opera in three acts by Brett Dean to a libretto by Amanda Holden. The libretto is based on Peter Carey's novel Bliss, which had earlier been made into the 1985 film Bliss. The opera premiered at the Sydney Opera House on 12 March 2010 and has subsequently been performed in the United Kingdom and Germany. A performance of the work lasts for about two hours and forty minutes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pilkington (writer)</span>

Mark Pilkington is a writer, publisher, curator and musician with particular interest in the fringes of knowledge, culture and belief.

David William Clarke is an investigative journalist, reader and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, England. He has a lifelong interest in folklore, Fortean phenomena and extraordinary personal experiences. He is frequently consulted by the national and international media on contemporary legend and UFOs and acted as curator for The National Archives UFO project from 2008 to 2013.

Everett De Roche (1946–2014) was an American-Australian screenwriter who worked extensively in the Australian film and TV industry. He was best known for his work in the thriller and horror genre, with such credits as Long Weekend, Patrick, and Roadgames.

Jason Colavito is an American author and independent scholar specializing in the study of fringe theories particularly around ancient history and extraterrestrials. Colavito has written a number of books, including The Cult of Alien Gods (2005), The Mound Builder Myth (2020), and Legends of the Pyramids (2021).

<i>The Last Impresario</i> 2013 Australian film

The Last Impresario is a 2013 documentary film about prolific British theatre impresario and film producer Michael White. The film was directed by Gracie Otto, and made its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2013, where it was positively received by critics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jed Kurzel</span> Australian singer-songwriter (born 1976)

Jed Danyel Kurzel is an Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist and film composer. He is a founding member of The Mess Hall, a blues rock duo. His older brother Justin Kurzel is a film director and screenwriter.

References

  1. Research Degrees in the Department of History Archived 21 July 2012 at archive.today University of Sydney.
  2. Bertram, Dean. "The Unarius Society." Archived 7 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine Fortean Times. May 2002.
  3. "Dean Bertram: Cracking the conspiracy code." Archived 9 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine The Australian. 18 May 2006.
  4. "Dean Bertram: Jesus hoax born of a fascist's fantasies." Archived 25 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine The Australian. 2 March 2006.
  5. "Interview: Dr. Dean Bertram". OzHorrorscope. 21 September 2007. Archived from the original on 15 February 2012.
  6. Annie Get Your Whale Boy at IMDb OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  7. Foresta Rossa at IMDb OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  8. Time Out Sydney, 23–29 April 2008, pg. 48
  9. Smoke and Mirrors magazine, June–August, 2008, pg. 30
  10. Encore Magazine, June 2008, pg. 46
  11. Drum Media, 1 April, no. 899, pg. 71