Arthur Howes(1950-2004)
- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Arthur Howes, who has died aged 54 in 2004, was a documentary
film-maker and an expert on the Sudan; his work threw a piercing light
on the civil war which has ravaged that country. He was born in
Gibraltar on July 15 1950.He spent his twenties as a bored supply
teacher in south London, before answering an advertisement for teachers
in the Sudan. After setting up an English department in Dilling, he
jumped on a lorry and found himself in the Nuba Mountains, where he was
overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of Nuba culture, particularly the
extraordinary ceremonial boxing matches. Inspired by what he had seen,
Howes decided to give up teaching and make films. He returned home to
England and enrolled at the National Film and Television School, where
his graduation film, Kafi's Story (1989), was set in the Sudan. Made in
collaboration with Amy Hardie, it is an elegant, humorous and vibrant
piece about a young man from the mountains who travels to the capital,
Khartoum, to buy a dress for his bride-to-be. The society Howes found
in the Nuba Mountains was almost idyllic, but towards the end of the
film it was revealed that the civil war - between the Arab-dominated
north and the mainly Christian and black south - was coming closer.
Tight censorship was clamped over the region, and for 10 years Howes,
who had won several awards for the film, was unable to obtain a visa to
return. He finally entered the country on the premise of filming
government celebrations, and his subsequent film, Nuba Conversations
(2000), opened with a surreal display of Sudanese government military
power. His next film, Benjamin and his Brother (2002), began in a
refugee camp in Kenya, where "The Lost Boys" - children who had fled
the conflict in the Sudan - had lived for 10 years.