I am a 28 year old director based in Cape Town and I’ve spent my time honing my talents as a visual storyteller. Starting out by watching and reading and observing anything I could since I was able to see and hear in the early eighties.
After high school, I went to City Varsity-Film and Television School to study animation, I worked as a traditional and 3D animator for a couple of years, but finding that what I really wanted was the opportunity to be the storyteller I went back to studying. I graduated from AFDA (The South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance) honours at the end of 2005 having majored in Directing and Screenwriting.
Since then I’ve been directing television commercials, and have been placed in the top ten of the Vuka PSA Awards for the past two years, music videos for local bands, a year and a season later of the animated TV series “URBO the Adventures of Pax Afrika”.
At the beginning of last year I started a company with a few other film makers, it is called Big Eyed Deer, and it’s primary focus was the development of Fiction and Documentary Films. Those films are still currently in development and searching for funding.
This year started with all of us in the company pursuing freelance work in the film industry here and abroad. I am currently directing commercials, music videos and documentary projects, And working as a Fashion, Lifestyle, Travel and Documentary photographer. BigEyedDeer is still functional but I am also now associated with the company The Public Pool, which is a production company based in Cape Town which offers a solid production base for any size of project I am interested in pursuing.
One of my main projects that I have been working on this year is for VPRO-Dutch Television, a show called Metropolis which I have been doing regular weekly reports and more in depth visual documentary pieces on many different themes in African culture based mainly in Gugulethu in Cape Town.
I also regularly do short documentaries for the American based cable network, Current TV.
A larger ongoing project that I am busy with is working with The Global Fund for Community Foundations Africa, where I get to travel all over Africa filming documentaries of the good work that various community foundations are doing to uplift and empower Africans.
I am always working on screenplays for documentaries and Fictional Narrative films, I make films and take photographs every day, sometimes I’m paid for those films and photographs and sometimes I’m not, but either way I am compelled to make images with sound that move.