Max Stahl: Blue Peter host and film-maker who captured East Timor struggle dies

Max Stahl, who went from Blue Peter presenter to award-winning film-maker and East Timor national hero after his footage brought global attention to a massacre there, has died aged 66.

He was known as Christopher Wenner when he co-hosted the BBC children's programme from 1978-80.

As Max Stahl, he filmed the 1991 massacre of 271 protesters against Indonesian rule in East Timor.

Former East Timor President José Ramos-Horta called him a "treasured son".

"We honour him as one of the true heroes of our struggle," Ramos-Horta wrote on Facebook shortly before the film-maker's death.

Indonesia had ruled the former Portuguese colony since invading in 1975, and Stahl had travelled there in 1991, following the relaxation of restrictions for tourists after 1989.

He heard about a planned protest march to a cemetery after a memorial service for an independence supporter.

Stahl told the BBC in 2016: "I was just getting my camera ready when there was a wall of sound, at least 10 seconds of uninterrupted gunfire. The soldiers who arrived fired point blank into a crowd of a couple of thousand young people."

He added: "I could easily see that it was only a matter of time before they came to me, and at that point I thought, well, I should move away from here."

He buried the film in the graveyard, and it was later smuggled out and broadcast around the world.

Ramos-Horta wrote: "There are only a few key points in the history of Timor-Leste where the course of our nation turned toward freedom. This was one of those points.

"It was the first time our message broke through to the world. Human rights networks went into action. Senators, Congressmen and Parliamentarians came to our side. And this happened when one man was willing to risk his life to document up close what was happening and smuggled the message out of our country."

Stahl later revealed how survivors of the Santa Cruz massacre had been brutally killed in the hospital; as well as documenting repression as East Timor declared independence in 1999.

Multi-talented

Stahl died from cancer in hospital in Brisbane, Australia, on Wednesday.

His full name was Max Christopher Wenner, and when he moved behind the camera he adopted his mother's maiden name Stahl. His journalism career also saw him work as a war correspondent in Beirut.

Stahl worked in front of and behind the camera for over 20 years with television channels in England, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and the United States of America.

His career began in theatre as an actor and director, before joining Blue Peter.

Moving on, he began work as an investigative journalist and film-maker creating documentaries and news stories in Latin America, former communist countries, Caucasus, the Baltic and the Balkans.

In, 2000 he was honoured with awards at the New York Film Festival and from the UK Royal Television Society, and received the world's leading prize for independent camera journalism, the Rory Peck Award.

Throughout his career, Stahl also wrote screenplays and developed screenplays for films.

'Passionately principled'

Jonathan Head, BBC News South East Asia correspondent, knew Stahl well and described him as "gentle, courteous, passionately principled and completely committed to supporting the people of East Timor".

"The archive project he ran documenting the country's traumatic history was a valuable contribution to helping people remember, and come to terms with it," he said.

"Chris's video footage was the first ever video evidence of Indonesian atrocities. It was first broadcast on Channel 4 News and then turned into a documentary for Yorkshire TV.

"Coming at a time when human rights were getting more attention in the post-Cold War, unipolar world, it put huge pressure on Indonesia to loosen its grip and greatly encouraged campaigners for East Timor's right to self-determination."