Armand Denis was an Anglo-Belgian filmmaker known known for his
documentaries for both the silver screen and television, primarily
about Africa. The son of a judge, he was born on December 2, 1896 in
Brussels. He moved to England after his World War One military service,
where he studied chemistry at Oxford. After working for a chemist in
England and Belgium, he moved to America in 1926. His invention of an
automatic volume control for radio brought him enough income to travel
and shoot movies of exotic locales.
He worked as a cameraman in Hollywood in the late silent era before
hooking up with Theodore Roosevelt's
French-born cousin Andre Roosevelt to
travel to Bali in 1928, which they documented on film. Roosevelt wanted
to develop the tourist industry in Bali in the 1920s in order to
preserve the native culture by turning the island into a national park.
As part of his aspirations, he wrote the screenplay for the 1932 movie
"Goona-Goona, An Authentic Melodrama" (a.k.a.
Kriss (1931)) that he co-produced and
co-directed with Denis.
The two had begun filming Bali on their '28 trip and eventually
combined their documentary footage with a fictional romantic story
about the love between a native prince and a servant girl. The first
version of the film, called "Love Powder", was released in 1930. Two
years later, a re-edited version that conformed to censorship
strictures was released and was a hit, creating a Bali craze in The
States. Denis subsequently married Roosevelt's daughter Leila and they
had four children.
Denis capitalized on the success of the picture and directed the 1934
African jungle adventure film
Wild Cargo (1934), which starred great
white hunter Frank Buck. Subsequently, he and Leila traveled to the
Belgian Congo in 1934-35 and shot sound footage that could be used in
movies set in Africa. Their footage included the first recordings of
the dances and music of the Tutsi and Mangbetu tribes. In addition to
releasing the music commercially, the created a movie of their trip,
called "Wheels Across Africa" (1936).
The couple worked making documentary shorts in the 1930s and '40s, but
Denis divorced his wife to marry English dress designer Michaela
Holdsworth, whom he met in 1948. Along with Michaela, with whom he
lived in Nairobi, Kenya, Denis continued to make documentaries in
Africa. Their TV program "Filming Wild Animals" was broadcast on the
British Broadcasting Co. in 1954, and thereafter, they regularly
contributed African documentaries to the BBC and ITV.
Armand Denis died from Parkinson's disease on April 15, 1971. He was 74
years old.
