Chale Nafus
AFS Director of Programming & Founder's Circle
View Chale's Blog
Chale Nafus was reputedly conceived in the top balcony of the Majestic Theater in Dallas, TX, two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His first profound movie memories were THE RED SHOES and some Abbott and Costello horror movie, both of which explain something about his life. His father was particularly fond of British comedies, so young Chale was often called upon in junior high to "speak British." At the same time he was learning lots of interesting things, including Texas-Spanish, from his best friends, all of whom were gang members. The only sport he enjoyed playing was soccer, but the school deemed it "Communist" and removed it from the playground. Totally unprepared by the public school system for SMU, he dropped out before it was cool and took a job at Texas Instruments, where he made a hella lot of money for a 19 year old. But, after two years of his own version of walking on the wild side, he decided to go back to school, this time to UT Arlington where he got his B.A. in English. By that time Fellini and Bergman were happening.
When Chale went to UT Austin for his M.A., he studied film and English. Nearly every summer was spent in Mexico, which he came to know much better than the U.S. After a rather odd semester teaching at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville, he moved aimlessly about and settled in Puerto Rico where he taught for a year. From 1970 to 1973 he lived and taught in New York City, while studying super-8 filmmaking and becoming a psychedelic macrobiotic Buddhist militant activist, contradictions be damned. When Austin Community College opened in 1973, Chale applied. When told he would be hired, he immediately went to Hippie Hollow and cast the I-Ching, which indicated he should take the job. He did, thinking he would leave after a few years. Twenty-five years later, he retired from ACC, after teaching film studies for many of those years, establishing the RTF department, and serving as Chair of Humanities for seven years. During that time he created over 80 video programs on Latino culture in central Texas as well as a hip-hop series in 1984-1985. In 1985 he became a founding board member of the Austin Film Society.
Chale now happily serves as Director of Programming for AFS, a position he plans to hold until he is murdered by some angry film patron in the lobby of the Alamo Drafthouse. He continues to write (yes, the book on the making of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE is finished and waiting for a publisher) and is presently involved in a video/book project on the vibrant hip-hop street-dancing culture of Texas.
