South Africa / UK

Chris Austin was born in Cape Town, South Africa and left the country at the age of twenty three after a short career as a journalist, photographer and would-be filmmaker. He was a cub reporter on the Cape Argus, moved to The Star, worked for Jim Bailey’s Drum and Post, made a short fiction film and gave up on a documentary project in Soweto after a police bust confiscated the footage. Chris arrived in Paris with his partner and baby son, and survived for two and a half years as a freelance photographer, before moving to London. His first film for British television was Rhythm of Resistance, for LWT’s new arts program, shot in South Africa in 1978 with a cover story of “ethnomusicology.” Over the following few years he returned secretly to shoot four documentaries, using his South African passport, working with his collaborator Peter Chappell, a gifted cameraman and editor, and helped by courageous journalist Nomavenda Mathiane and others. South Africa Belongs to Us attracted the most attention, and was credited with triggering the sanctions campaign in Germany. Zimbabwe welcomed him to make The House of Hunger, based on Dambudzo’s Marechera’s novel. Not A Bad Girl was my first film back in a liberated South Africa. He divides his time between Cape Town and London. Biography Source

Filmography

What It Takes to Keep a Young Girl Alive (2005)
Not a Bad Girl (1993)
Salif Keita: Destiny of a Noble Outcast (1991)
A Brother with Perfect Timing (1987)
The House of Hunger (1982)
Awake for Mourning (1981)
South Africa Belongs to Us (1980)
I Talk About Me, I Am Africa (1980)
The Afrikaner and the Gospel (1979)
Rhythm of Resistance (1978)