Dean Semler

Dean William Semler was born in Renmark, and grew up in South Australia. He later said that the film which made the most impression on him as a child was David Lean's 1946 film of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. He was given small Coronet still camera when he was 14, and took photographs of the landscape. At the time, there were no film schools in southern Australia, so he had no formal training in photography.

Semler's first work in the production industry was as a camera operator at a local television station. Later, he began making documentary and educational films for Film Australia. He was the cinematographer for A Steam Train Passes (1974), Moving On (1974), Let the Balloon Go (1976), and A Good Thing Going (1978). In 1971, he worked with ethnographic filmmaker Ian Dunlop at Film Australia to film a special Yolngu ceremony organised by Wandjuk Marika to honour his father, Mawalan Marika, who had been a co-creator and signatory of the Yirrkala bark petitions in 1963, and died in 1967. The ceremony took place after the disappointing result of the Gove Land Rights Case. The resulting film, called In Memory of Mawalan, was released in 1983. In 1976, he again worked with Dunlop to film the Yolngu Djungguwan ceremony in Arnhem Land. This is an initiation ceremony of the Rirratjingu and Marrakula clans taking several weeks, designed to teach young boys about discipline as well as respect for Yolngu law and traditions. The resulting film, entitled Djungguwan at Gurka’wuy, has been preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive.

Semler was cinematographer on Stepping Out, in 1980. The film was a documentary feature directed and produced by Chris Noonan, about a group of intellectually disabled people who give a performance at the Sydney Opera House. Semler was the cinematographer on the film Hoodwink (1981) with a screenplay by Ken Quinnell, and in the same year, for Mad Max 2 (1981), which led to international attention for his work. He followed up on Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Semler was also a cinematographer for the acclaimed Australian miniseries Bodyline (1984). In the late 1980s, Semler was the cinematographer for several popular films, such as Cocktail (1988), and Young Guns (1988).

In 1989, Semler was hired as cinematographer for Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Semler lensed the comedy City Slickers (1991) and the action film Last Action Hero (1993) in the early 1990s. In 1995, Semler again worked with Costner on his film Waterworld. In 1992 Semler was the cinematographer for The Power of One.

In the 2000s, Semler was the cinematographer for a range of movies that included comedies (Nutty Professor II: The Klumps from 2000, and Bruce Almighty from 2003) and action films (XXX from 2002 and The Alamo from 2004). In the mid-2000s, Semler was the cinematographer for the football comedy The Longest Yard (2005) and Just My Luck (2006). In 2006, Semler worked with Mel Gibson again for the film Apocalypto.

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