SOMAFILMS


Arun Kumar Directors Guild (GB):78990394 Arun Kumar is from an old Indian family. He was born and brought up in London. A significant feature of his media product is the fusion of his multi-cultural influences and experience which is a theme running through all his work. Arun was born in Chiswick and educated at Hampton School. He studied Economics at the University of Essex graduating with honours in 1988. After 18 months of travelling in Asia and filming his experiences he returned to London and studied film and video at Goldsmiths College, University of London and at Thames Valley University in Ealing. He then began his career in film and television. He initially worked researching documentaries for a number of independent television companies including the award winning Laurel Productions, LWT, 20/20 TV and Juniper. He was a senior researcher on a variety of documentary and discussion programmes. He spent 6 months working as a news producer for BBC News and Current affairs on BBC1 Breakfast News. In 1993 Arun directed his first documentary The Bielski Brothers which was independently financed and sold for broadcast in Austria, France, Australia and Israel. He was able to pursue his interest in making issue based documentaries and his next film, the critically acclaimed and controversial Executions was Europe's biggest selling video in 1995. This success led to him being commissioned by Channel 4 to direct Bengali Backlash in 1996. With this commission he set up his own production company SomaFilms.		His next commission was The Search for Kurtz which he made for Channel 4 and the History Channel in 1998. This documentary told the story of the real life inspiration for Marlon Brando's character in Apocalypse Now. Arun has directed commercial work for Motorola, Sony and Kvearner as well as a music promo for Positiva/EMI. In 1997 he won an Arts Council grant to make a pilot for a comedy drama series Fly on the Wall which began his career in drama. In 1999 he began to write a feature film screenplay which developed over the subsequent 3 years into the screenplay for Venus. His recent critically acclaimed short film Looters was short listed for a BBC talent award. Looters was shown in the 'London Film Festival' and 'Raindance 2002', the UK's largest independent film festival, where it was short listed for the UK short film award. Arun is currently preparing to shoot his next short Eating Out on 35mm film. In addition to making films Arun has pursued his interest in his Indian heritage over the last 15 years. He has taught Yoga to private clients and run corporate classes. He is a recognised Reiki master and accepts a limited number of clients. He is a trained English teacher and has taught English as a foreign language to adults. He currently lectures in film and video at Blake College, London.