A Tribute to Chris Owen (May 15, 1944 – March 9, 2018)
Chris Owen with Martin Maden (from Rabaul) behind the camera
Chris Owen, renowned documentarian, born in 1944 in Birmingham, England, died on March 9, 2018, in Canberra, Australia. He started work at the age of 29 as a filmmaker in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, just three years before Papua New Guinea became an independent nation in 1975. He remained in PNG until illness forced him to retire to Australia in 2010.
Chris Owen on location for MAN WITHOUT PIGS in Tabara Village, Oro Province, northern PNG, 1984
He had first gone to Australia in 1961 where he spent seven years as a bank clerk, station-hand, wheat farmer and psychiatric nurse. Returning to the U.K. in 1968, he studied Visual Communication at the Birmingham College of Art and Design. With a Graduate Diploma in Visual Communication in hand, he started work as a cinematographer with the Tourist Board in Papua New Guinea in 1972.
In 1976 he became resident filmmaker with the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) in Boroko. It was in that capacity that he designed and initiated an ethnographic filmmaking program to document and preserve PNG cultures on film. A major emphasis of the program was the professional training of local filmmakers. The IPNGS program was later complemented by the establishment of the Skul Bilong Wokim Piksa (School of Film Production) in Goroka, a school that became the National Film Institute in 1994. When the premises in Goroka, together with all the equipment, archived films and videos there were destroyed by fire, it was Chris who was called upon to rebuild it and restore its functions and staff. He was appointed director in 2000.
Chris Owen with an Enga man during the filming of TIGHTEN THE DRUMS, 1974
Chris’s interests and responsibilities extended far beyond institutional activities in urban centers. His enthusiasm for working with local people to document traditional ways of life and ceremonies took him to locations ranging from the Highlands to coastal and island locations. His broad grasp of the aesthetics of filmmaking enabled him to include all styles — from ethnographic to feature films — in his teaching and in the various productions with which he was involved. His friend, Paul Barker, characterized him as the “all round driving force for PNG’s small /latent film industry since the 1970s.” As his colleague, Don Niles, of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies has written:
Chris Owen during the editing of BETELNUT BISNIS
An article in Port Moresby’s Post-Courier of March 13, 2018, noted:
“Three of Bougainville’s top movie actors have paid tribute to filmmaker Chris Owen who helped launch their acting careers. […] Ms Semoso, now a member of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville Parliament, said last night:
‘I pay tribute to my mentor, friend and filmmaker Chris Owen who I met in 1980 as a high school student when I auditioned for the part of Lucy in the film Tukana. Tukana was filmed throughout Bougainville that same year which then propelled my career with the National Theatre Company of Papua New Guinea as a Actress and Dancer…. Chris continued his mentoring throughout my career as an artist and friend…
‘Mate, as you always called me, I am in tears as I received news of your passing. Albert Toro (Tukana), Josephine Talsa (Lucy) and I send our deepest condolences to your son Dylan Owen and family.’
“Owen was responsible for training many young PNG filmmakers, one of whom, a young Bougainvillean woman Llane Munau, has made award winning documentaries in recent times.”
Chris was co-producer/principal cinematographer on many other films, working with Australian documentarians Dennis O’Rourke (The Shark Callers of Kontu – 1982, Cannibal Tours – 1988) and Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson (Joe Leahy’s Neighbors – 1989), among others.
Though illness and blindness forced him to spend his last years in Canberra, his friends and colleagues kept in close touch. Starting in 2013, Pascale Bonnemère, recent Director of the Centre for Research and Documentation on Oceania (CREDO) in Marseille, France, began interviews with Chris Owen with a view to writing a biography and documentation of his life’s work. The interviews, continued in 2014 and 2017,were sadly interrupted by his death. Bonnemère and Michelle Baru, Acting Director of the National Film Institute of PNG, are continuing to work on the project.
Before his death he was honoured with PNG’s distinguished Order of Logohu (2010), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Visual Anthropology (2017), and Honorary Membership of the Australian Cinematographers’ Association (2018).
The significance of Chris Owen’s devotion to the people of PNG and of his energetic career that spanned the historical period from the end of the colonial era through the post-colonial transition and the first 42 years of independence is well-captured by Les MacLaren, one of the Australian filmmakers who worked in PNG during the past 25 years, as he shared the words of PNG filmmaker Martin Maden:
“I do not know of one other culture whose children will inherit a film heritage such as the one Chris Owen has given to the people of Papua New Guinea.”
Notes:
A full biography and filmmography of his work is available through his friend and distributor, Andrew Pike, at https://www.roninfilms.com.au/person/125/chris-owen.html.
A further reference which places his work in the larger context of PNG filmmaking is the 2003 article by the late Nancy Sullivan, “How Media Became the Message in Papua New Guinea: A Coda” in Oceania in the Age of Global Media,
Peter Britos, editor, Special Issue of Spectator 23:1 (Spring 2003) 27-32.
(Prepared by Allison Jablonko)
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