Dennis O'Rourke spent most of his early childhood in a small country town. He undertook his secondary education at a Catholic boarding school. In the late 1960s, after having spent two years at university, he travelled throughout Australia, the Pacific Islands, and South East Asia. During this period, he was employed in various capacities, including as a farm hand, salesman, cowboy, roughneck on oil rigs, and maritime seaman. He also taught himself photography, with the intention of perhaps becoming a photojournalist.
After moving to Sydney in the early 1970s, O'Rourke joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), as an assistant gardener rather than a cameraman, but he later became a cinematographer for that organisation. Between 1974 and 1979, he was employed to make documentaries (and to teach film-making techniques) by the newly independent government of Papua New Guinea. His first film, Yumi Yet: Independence for Papua New Guinea, was made in 1976. It was followed by Ileksen: Politics in Papua New Guinea (1978) and Yap ... How Did You Know We'd Like TV? (1980).
In 1981, O'Rourke set up his own production company, O'Rourke and Associates (it later became CameraWork Pty Ltd) and began filming The Shark Callers of Kontu (1982), the first of many highly acclaimed and sometimes controversial documentaries for the company. Among his best known films are ...Couldn't be Fairer (1984), Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age (1985), Cannibal Tours (1988), The Good Woman of Bangkok (1991), Cunnamulla (2000), and Land Mines: A Love Story (2004).
Among Dennis O'Rourke's numerous awards are the Eastman Kodak award for Cinematography, the Australian Film Institute Byron Kennedy Award, the Director's Prize for Extraordinary Achievement at the Sundance Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Nyon Documentary Film Festival, the Jury Prize for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, the Grand Premio at the Festival de Popoli in Florence, the Film Critics' Circle of Australia Award for Best Documentary, the Australian Film Institute Best Director Award (for Cunnamulla), the Australian Centenary Medal for services to Australian society and Australian film production, and the Don Dunstan Award for his contribution to the Australian film industry.
Retrospectives of O'Rourke's work have been held at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Pacific Film Archive in San Francisco, and in other cities, including Freiburg, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Marseille, Melbourne, New Delhi, New York, Singapore, Taipei, and Uppsala.
