Jock Brandis

Jock Brandis is an author, film technician, inventor, and alleged air pirate.

Biography

Jock Brandis was born in the Netherlands but moved to Canada as a child. In his early twenties, he joined CUSO, the Canadian version of the Peace Corps, and was placed in "Trenchtown" otherwise known as West Kingston, Jamaica where he taught in the local elementary school. While there he became acquainted with many of the fathers of reggae such as Desmond Dekker and helped organize functions for them at the school.

Afterwards Brandis returned to Canada and got involved with Oxfam in their efforts to aide the cause of Biafran Independence (Biafra was a breakaway republic that formed shortly after Nigeria was no longer a colony of Great Britain). He joined a team of people who would fly food from São Tomé (a Portuguese island off the West Coast of Africa) across a military blockade into Biafra. Once there they would return with starving Biafran children whom they would nurse back to health in São Tomé and display before the world's press in efforts to build support for their cause. The blockade eventually fell and Biafra became incorporated into greater Nigeria. On one of his last days in Biafra, Jock was given a ride by a war correspondent named Kurt Vonnegut. They made an agreement that whoever would first write a book about their ordeal in Biafra could call on the other to write the forward. The book came to be known as "The Ship's Cat", and Vonnegut's publicist wrote an introduction on the book's Amazon.com page. Nigeria's government would later try him "in absentia" for the crime of "air piracy."

Brandis returned to Toronto and became involved in the local film industry as a gaffer. On a job with Dino De Laurentiis he came to Wilmington, North Carolina and has lived there ever since. While in Wilmington, Brandis worked on a variety of film projects (see below).

In 2001, he traveled to Mali to fix a small village's water treatment system. While there he came across a woman who informed him that it would be of great service to her village if he could find an affordable peanut sheller for them. Upon returning to the United States he contacted peanut authority Dr. Tim Williams of UGA who told Brandis of a Bulgarian Peanut Shelling design. Jock adapted the design with help from a friend Wes Perry. Jock went through several iterations of a redesign and one year later he completed the machine which is now called the Universal Nut Sheller. In 2003 Brandis teamed up with a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers from Wilmington, NC to form the Full Belly Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to designing and distributing unique appropriate technologies in developing countries. In December 2005, Jock Brandis was invited to MIT to demonstrate the inventions as part of a program known as the International Development Initiative, a partnership between MIT's Edgerton Center and their Public Service Center. One of their programs is a two semester class called the D-Lab(Development, Design and Dissemination). As a result of Jock's visit 5 teams of D-Lab students disseminated the Universal Nut Sheller to Ghana, Zambia, and the Philippines in late January, 2006. There they will be compiling reports on the machine's performance as well as its effect on local economies. In June 2006 he partnered with the MyShelter Foundation to bring the peanut sheller to farmers in the Philippines. They will also develop other simple "appropriate technologies" for use with other agricultural products like rice.

Jock is the father of Darwin and Maaike, and the former husband to the late Suzanna Taylor Brandis, the mother of his children.He presently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with his girlfriend, the noted author and personality [http://www.gwenyfar.com Gwenyfar] .

Books

*"The Ship's Cat" (2000)

Filmography

Gaffer

*"Jacob's Sound" (2003)
*"Twisted Desire" (1996) (TV)
*"Judgment" (1990) (TV)
*"Tune in Tomorrow" (a.k.a. "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter") (1990) (rigging gaffer)
*"Everybody Wins" (1990)
*"Night Walk" (1989) (TV)
*"Little Monsters" (1989)
*"Fright Night Part 2" (1988)
*"Blue Velvet" (1986)
*"Louisiana" (a.k.a. "Louisiane") (1984) (TV) (France)
*"The Dead Zone" (1983)
*"Videodrome" (a.k.a. "Zonekiller") (Canada: English title) (1983)
*"Black Mirror" (a.k.a. "Haute surveillance") (1981) (key gaffer) (France)
*"Scanners" (a.k.a. "Telepathy 2000") (1981)
*"Funeral Home" (a.k.a. "2 Cries in the Night", "Cries in the Night") (1980)
*"Head On" (a.k.a. "Fatal Attraction") (1980)
*"Clown White" (1980) (TV)
*"The Brood" (a.k.a. "La Clinique de la terreur" - Canada: French title) (1979)
*"Blood & Guts" (1978)
*""-uncredited cockroach wrangler (1977)
*"125 Rooms of Comfort" (1974)

Lighting

*"Serial Mom" (1994) (Musco mobile light)
*"Passenger 57" (1992) (chief lighting technician)

pecial effects

*"Starship Invasions" (a.k.a. "Alien Encounter", "Project Genocide"; UK: video title: "War of the Aliens") (1977)
*"" (1977)

Acting

*"" (1977)
*"Scanners" (a.k.a. "Telepathy 2000") (1981) .... Scanner in Attic
*"Maximum Overdrive" (1985)

Cinematography

*"Diary of a Sinner" (1974)

ee also

*Full Belly Project
*Malian peanut sheller
*Peanut
*Appropriate Technology
*Biafra
*Peace Corps

External links

* [http://www.jockbrandis.org The Official Jock Brandis website]
*
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1565127948431227195&q=full+belly+project Video of Malaian Peanut Sheller in Uganda]
* [http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pnuts.html Peanuts-a documentary film about Brandis' creation of the first Malian Peanut Sheller]
* [http://filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=4622 A Review of Peanuts]
* [http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/1009178.html Article about the Jock and the Full Belly Project]
* [http://www.fullbellyproject.org Full Belly Project]
* [http://web.mit.edu/idi/ MIT's International Development Initiative]
* [http://web.mit.edu/d-lab/ MIT's D-Lab]