Chris Maris was brought up by artist parents near Holmfirth, Yorkshire (the birthplace of film)**, England. He did his foundation in art & design at the Huddersfield School of Art in 1980 and went on to North Staffordshire Polytechnic to take a Bachelor of Arts degree the following year.


Here he specialised in audio visual design, which meant he spent his second terms student grant on a Bolex super-8 camera and stayed at home for the rest of the course making his own films, only venturing into the department to use the sound mixing equipment and transfer his exposed reversal film to tape, via a mirror.


Whilst this did not endear him to the college staff he was, however, the first student from that course to ever get a place at the prestigious MA film school at the Royal College of Art. Here he studied all aspects of practical film making, specialising in cinematography and editing.


After graduating, Chris worked on shorts, music videos, corporate films and documentaries as a DP and edited BBC Arena and Omnibus shows under Michael Crozier. Whilst this was great fun, it took a documentary job in Columbia in 1988 to convince him that being a full time DP was better than sitting in a black room in Shepherds Bush, however he finds the experience he learned whilst editing there invaluable.


In 1990 he shot his first feature film called Blackout, described by Variety Magazine as having one redeeming quality; the 'Pro-lensed cinematography'.


A standard period of filming shorts, music videos and average TV drama followed, along with three years of part-time guest lecturing at the Guildhall University in London, until a postage stamp sized newspaper advertisement for further film education at VGIK in Moscow resulted in him spending a year there studying Russian film technique and B&W cinematography.


Here he met Anders Banke, a young director, with whom he has gone on to forge a solid working relationship resulting recently in the critically acclaimed vampire movie ‘Frostbite’, the most successful Swedish movie since Bergmans heyday in 1972.


After Moscow Chris spent eight years based in Bristol where he worked as a freelance DP for, amongst many other companies, Aardman animations, specifically with their live action, animation compositing, special effects and chroma-key work, culminating in the award winning series of US ad’s for Serta Mattresses.


He now lives in a farm house in the south of Sweden where, in his spare time, he is building a 450 meter square special fx film studio. Current film projects include a Russian remake of Breaking News, set in Moscow, a ghost film set in Sweden and his own television series “The Lunartics”.