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.

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Arthur Howes

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