Bio

Photo Josephine Pryde

“Each and every one of us has something to tell, an evolving personal history.”

Habitually creative since early childhood, by the time Cassius Matthias attended the London College of Printing in 1984 he had made hundreds of drawings, models, sculptures and paintings. His passionate love of cinema was to develop in the most extraordinary way. Having taken part-time work in a string of odd jobs to help get him through his studies, the vocational foundation course in printing led to a full time job as an offset litho printer. But, for health reasons, this career path was soon abandoned and he then focused his mind on drawing and painting.

Watching Composition, above left, (collage in oil, watercolour, pencil, charcoal and pastel on paper, 1981-1985), and Abstract Red Blue Masking Tape (oil and masking tape on canvass, 1986)

A SELECTION OF MATTHIAS’S DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS

Works on Paper Volume One – 1981-1987

Works on Paper Volume Two – 1981-1987

Works in Oil on Canvass – 1985-1987

Matthias had a brief stint with 23 Skidoo recording a single, Language, and gigging in the UK and Europe until 1986 when, at the age of twenty-three, he left the band and enrolled at St Martin’s School of Art. But after little more than a year in the painting department, he was run over by a double-decker bus. Unable to walk with a severely damaged foot, Matthias was forced to drop out of college. It was during the months of convalescence that he made the decision to devote his life to films and filmmaking. In 1988 he painted what would be his last and biggest painting – MCMLXXXVIII – and joined the film and video course at the newly named Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design (now part of the University of the Arts).

Cassius Maximilian Matthias was born on 6 August 1963 in what was at the time one of the roughest parts of London’s East End. Son of a Trinidadian DJ father and Italian homemaker mother, his first school was Marner Primary in Bow. Graduating from Central Saint Martins in 1990 with a BA (Hons) Degree and student film (The Clear) 2-Way Drive under his belt, he was immediately offered employment on a feature film. And there was no turning back …

MATTHIAS’S 12 FAVOURITE FILMS

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Fellini Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969)
The Gospel According to St Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
Man Of Marble (Andrzej Wajda, 1977)
The Marriage Of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
La Signora di Tutti (Max Ophuls, 1934)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933)
The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)