My Director's Bio for Shnit

I wrote this Director's bio for the Shnit Short Film Festival which they had to cut down because it was too long, but I enjoyed it so much I decided to post it here.

Director's Bio 
Michael-John Phillip, known to many as MJ, has been directing short films since 2011 and has written and directed 4 short films so far. He grew up in the suburbs of Cape Town where he grew a large fascination with adventure and film-making. For many years he wanted to become an actor until he failed to land the part of Joseph in his high school rendition of Joseph and the Technicolour Dream Coat. Although it's not like he wanted the role anyway.

A few years went by and then he met someone* who introduced him to the possibilities of directing and writing films. After directing his first film, rather hipsterly-named ‘Abeyance’, he fell in love with the role of a director – being able to sculpt images and ideas into film. Since then he has sought every opportunity to write and direct films. He names Terrence Malick, Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood, Akira Kurosawa and Spike Lee as specific influences in his film-making. Currently he has too many unfinished scripts and needs to knuckle down and finish them. When he isn’t directing films he works as a writer and online marketer for a travel website.

For more info about the festival you can go to http://za.shnit.org/en/723.html.

*The 'someone' is my good friend Howard James Fyvie for those who want to know.