Biography
According to Barbara Scharres, writing in the Reader in 1981, Chicago Super 8 filmmaker Norm Bruns worked at a blazing pace with startling boldness. He purchased his Super 8 camera in 1980 and created 11 films in 10 months. Those early films, according to Scharres are "strikingly in the tradition of Jean Cocteau and of American avant-garde filmmakers like Maya Daren and Curtis Harrington in their concern with personal ritual and the replication of dreamlike states." Most of his films are in swirling black-and-white, and show an amazing confidence in his skill and vision. As he developed as a filmmaker, his sets and costumes and complicated superimpositions and laboratory techniques expanded his palette and allowed for a deepening of his focus on bodies, city life, dreams and rituals. Unfortunately Norm passed away in 1990 and his films have not been seen since.