By Eva Kershaw, for Frank Film
Jacob Bryant is drawn to danger.
“I think you’re born with it,” says the intrepid cinematographer, renowned for his work in some of the world’s most volatile environments.
Bryant grew up causing trouble in Le Bons Bay, Banks Peninsula, shooting possums and rolling cars in the surrounding hills.
“The first time I had a firearm pointed at me was when I was 14-years-old,” says Bryant, “so suddenly, you're in Kabul and you've got someone coming up with an AK47 and putting it through the car window... I was able to deal with it more rationally, I think.”
“I always knew that if he survived, he’d be great,” his mother, Louise McKay, tells Frank Film.
And he is great. Having filmed in Iraq, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and beyond, Bryant’s work with leading documentary makers has been nominated for multiple screen awards.
At a young age, Bryant inherited his father’s ’22 gauge rifle. “I could only carry 2 or 3 possums at a time because I was so little,” says Bryant, “but that physicality - running around these hills, climbing, walking, building things - that stuck with me my whole life.”
Sitting still was (and continues to be) almost impossible for Bryant. He struggled with academics, and his tertiary education ended after his first year of highschool.
“It was deeply unpleasant - the idea of just sitting in one place,” he says. “I was really driven to do as much as I could in my life, and school really got in the way of that.”
By the age of 18, Bryant had written off eight cars, was barred from every pub on Banks Peninsula, and had been arrested.
“I had such a reputation. For being a fuckwit actually,” he says.
But as Bryant’s mother puts it, whilst he had a knack for causing trouble, he was always polite. Bryant realised while sitting in the holding cells of the Christchurch Central Police Station at the age of eighteen that it was not his place.
“If this was my future, this was absolutely not who I was,” he recalls thinking.
Bryant moved to London in his early 20s, and bought a Super 8 camera from Portobello Market. From there, he forged a career in cinematography, working on stories for the BBC, CNN, TWI and Insight during his first three years of work.
“That that's all I ever wanted to do,” says Bryant. “To shoot pictures and be able to show the world – the world that I was experiencing – to other people.”
“He certainly has an eye for beauty,” says McKay. “He has empathy for people that he feels are being treated wrongly.”
Countless times, across three decades, Bryant has visisted the world’s trouble-spots and put himself at risk to tell the stories of others. The most notable occasion, perhaps, was in 2015.
Māori Television was pursuing a story on the Israeli blockade on Gaza. A flotilla of vessels was trying the break through the blockade, and Bryant was employed as the cameraman.
“There were definitely risks attached to that,” says Bryant. He had heard of instances where Israeli military had boarded flotilla vessels and shot several activists onboard.
“We were gonna have to do some pretty drastic things to get those pictures off [the boat].”
