Armand Denis

Armand Denis
Armand Denis with second wife Michaela
Born	(1896-12-02)2 December 1896 Brussels, Belgium
Died	15 April 1971(1971-04-15) (aged 74) Nairobi, Kenya
Nationality	Belgium
Occupation	Documentary filmmaker, TV wildlife presenter

Armand Georges Denis (2 December 1896 – 15 April 1971) was a Belgian-born documentary filmmaker. After several decades of pioneering work in filming and presenting the ethnology and wildlife of remote parts of Africa and Asia, he became best known in Britain as the director and co-presenter of natural history programmes on television in the 1950s and 1960s, with his second wife Michaela.

He was born in Brussels, Belgium (though the family moved to Antwerp soon after his birth), the son of a judge, and developed an interest in travel and the natural world as a child. He fought in the First World War before escaping to England, where he read chemistry at Oxford University. He worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough on lubricating oils, and then in Belgium on coke oven technology, before moving to the USA. There, in 1926, he invented a system of automatic volume control for radio, and the royalties he received allowed him to indulge his love of travel and movie-making.

After moving to Hollywood he worked as a cameraman, and began film-making with André Roosevelt, a first cousin once-removed of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1928, Denis and Roosevelt traveled to Bali to make Goona Goona (also known as The Kriss), a compilation of authentic expedition footage with a dramatic plotline involving a romance between a Balinese prince and a servant girl. The movie was first released in 1930 and in a version called Love Powder, edited to conform to American censorship restrictions, in 1932. It started a craze for all things Balinese, and "Goona-goona", originally a Javanese term for love magic, became a slang expression for "sexually exciting". The film’s success brought Denis to the attention of the cinema industry, and in 1934 he directed Wild Cargo, starring adventurer and animal collector Frank Buck.

Denis married André Roosevelt’s daughter Leila (1906-1976); they went on to have four children (Rene, David, Armand & Heidi Ann). In 1934-35, sponsored by the Belgian government, the couple travelled to the (then) Belgian Congo with the cinematographer Leroy G. Phelps, to record sound film material suitable for use in African movies. They recorded a wide variety of footage, including the first film of the music and dances of the Mangbetu and Tutsi (Watusi) peoples. The soundtracks were released as commercial recordings, and the movie material, from the Congo and the Sahara, was edited for release as Wheels Across Africa in 1936, and as Dark Rapture in 1938.