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Award-winning film maker Arun Kumar was born and brought up in London. 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 continued 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, Kvearner and St Johns Ambulance.
In 1997 he won an Arts Council award 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 Venus.
His critically acclaimed short film Looters (2002) won the jury special award in Termoli,Italy, Memorable award in Thessaloniki, Greece and was short listed for a BBC talent award. Arun’s second short film Eating Out (2004) won the bronze medal at the 2004 Westfest in Texas and awards for directing and screenplay in the 0110 Film Festival in India.
Arun directed his first feature film The Truck of Dreams (www.truckofdreams.com) for Sahara Motion Pictures in August 2005. This won the World Cinema Award at the 2006 Washington Independent Film Festival.
He is currently developing the feature films Venus, Lollipop, Far Out Far In and the feature drama The Man Who Sold the World.
In addition to making films Arun has pursued his interest in his Indian heritage over the last 18 years. He has taught Yoga to individuals and run corporate classes. He is a recognised Reiki master and accepts a limited number of clients. He has taught English as a foreign language to adults and lectured in film and video at Blake College, London.
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