He was educated at London University, where he co-directed a documentary[1] on attitudes to homosexuality in the aftermath of the UK's Sexual Offences Act 1967, and at the Royal College of Art, where he made a series of experimental shorts.
Moving on, in 1978, to incorporate a more conventional narrative style, he made Telling Tales,[6] a film that centred on two couples with opposing interests in an industrial strike.
His next film, Brothers and Sisters,[7] made in 1980, at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, centred on the murder of a prostitute and looked at male attitudes to women across the social spectrum.
He remained in Hong Kong for eight years as the first Dean of the new school, with just one year back in the Netherlands to set up – and briefly hold – the post of script commissioner or Intendant[12] for the Netherlands Film Fund, when his commissions included scripts for two successful Dutch feature films Minoes (Undercover Kitty) and De Storm.
[18] Opinions of Brothers and Sisters ranged from Virginia Dignam's enthusiasm in the UK's Morning Star newspaper ("[this] is the radical answer to exploitive shock horror films about women and proves that a man can make a truly feminist film"),[19] through Philip French's approval in The Observer ("Merging Priestley’s 'An Inspector Calls' with Bertolucci’s 'The Grim Reaper', it is a continuously interesting picture, formally adroit and persuasively acted"),[20] to the more reticent tone of Andrew Tudor in New Society weekly ("I don’t think he has entirely succeeded, but [it] is a far more interesting film than most of what is pumped through our local Odeons.