Johanis Lyons-Reid is a Malaysian-Australian director and cinematographer living and working on Kaurna land. Johanis has worked extensively in the television space ,directing films for ABC, SBS, Vicelandand Adelaide Film Festival and shooting for a variety of networks and streamers such as Disney+, Amazon, Stan, Channel 7 and 9. The Last Elephant on Earth was his directorial debut in narrative, a short supported by the South Australian Film Corp and Adelaide Film Festival. Black Empire (2022), a television half hour documentary, was funded by the SAFC, SBSand Screen Australia, and screened on SBS Viceland and NITV.

His cinematography has netted him numerous accolades, including an Australian Cinematographer’sSociety national award of distinction for the documentary Black Empire (2022),a national award of distinction for the Art-Dance film Kuntyiri (2023), an ACS SA/WA silver award for cinematography for the feature film Emotion Is Dead (2023), and the award for Cinematography at Adelaide’s peak advertising awards, the AADC’s for Orange Oak Horsemanship. His work has been featured in numerous festivals including St Kilda Short Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, and Sitges InternationalFantastic FilmFestival Catalonia.Currently Johanis is working on a short film funded by Mercury CX entitled Burnout, and is part of the SAFC and Adelaide Film Festival’s prestigious Film Lab feature film development program for 2024.