Joan P.

About

Director, cameraman and colourist Joan Poggio hails from Cali, Colombia, the “salsa capital” of the world. Instead of dancing, he gravitated towards visual story telling by writing and drawing comic books at an early age, and later on by making short films with his friends. In 2000, he graduated from Colombian University Unitec, where he wrote a thesis about the Future of Digital Cinema, in spite of loving film and having shot on 16mm at length. After a short stint in the advertising world, Joan soon joined Explora Films in Bogotá as editor of “Southern Wings”, a documentary about the aviation history of Latin America for Discovery Channel. Over the following years he not only edited but did camerawork and directed in different projects at Explora. In 2004 he traveled to Kenya as associate producer and cameraman for the Animal Planet series “Bacilos Africa”. Having fallen in love with Kenya, Joan moved to Nairobi immediately after finalising and delivering the series in 2005. The following seven years saw Joan work on more than 100 different documentaries and short films for the United Nations, Research Centres and NGOs in Nairobi. Filming around 25 African countries in remote areas with little resources and tight deadlines helped Joan become better at sniffing a good story and shooting quickly and efficiently. Although digital had enabled his work over the years, it was not until 2012, when Joan bought into a cutting edge Red camera package, that he felt he finally had at his fingertips the kind of tools he had foreseen in his University thesis project. These new tools enabled him to work in small crews without having to compromise quality. In 2012 he went back to working on long form documentary for the international market, and also moved on to filming feature films, music videos and television commercials. Since then, most notably he has worked as cinematographer on documentaries dealing with the ivory and rhino horn crisis such as “Gambling on Extinction” and “The Last Animals”; on feature films “Ni Sisi” dealing with the topic of Kenyan post-election violence, and “Watatu” on the radicalization of Muslim youth in Mombasa. For four years he shot “Gun Runners” a film about two warriors from Northern Kenya who trade their AK-47s for running shoes and the Kenyan dream of marathon running. In 2017 he was nominated for Best Cinematography in a Feature Length Documentary for “Gun Runners” by the Canadian Academy of Cinema. His most recent cinematography work on “Silas”, a documentary about a tireless crusader Silas Siakor fighting illegal logging, has just debuted in Toronto International Film Festival. At present Joan is working on the development of several projects as a director/cinematographer. He continues to live in Nairobi with his family and is constantly traveling around Africa and the globe telling unique and exciting stories. He meets each project and its challenges with attention to detail, dedication and excitement.

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