Martin Hawkes was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Growing up in 1970s and 1980s in Cabbagetown afforded him the luxury of being exposed to and surrounded by art and artists of many disciplines.
His mother worked at a contemporary art gallery and his father was a journalist so he was no stranger to the visual and the written as forms of expression. The medium that finally found Martin was cinematography. He studied Audio Visual Arts at Seneca College in Toronto from 1990-1992.
In 1993 Martin relocated to Stavanger, Norway and it was here that his career as a cinematographer took off. In 2000 he started his production company, Saft film. Saft has gone through a few different constellations of people but the main core of freelancers has remained the same.
As Director of Photography Martin has several award winning documentaries to his name. These include Global Metal (2008), Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (2009) and Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010). In 2011 he finished work on the extensive 11x one hour television series “Metal Evolution” for VH1 Classic in the USA which has been sold to television stations around the globe. “Hip Hop Evolution” Season 1 won both a Peabody and an International Emmy award in 2017.
Martin continues to develop independent film projects and hopes to one day cross over into the drama world of cinema as Director of Photography. Knowing that the experiences gained working on documentaries will bring a unique vision and life experience to all future endeavours – SAFT Film being one of them.