Joe Lenders is by trade a filmmaker. But, lots of stuff happened before he started making movies.  

As a boy Joe immigrated to the USA from the Netherlands.  Joe started taking pictures at age 8  and making 8mm movies at 10 years old. Having to “be something” when he grew up was very disconcerting to Joe.  Since Cowboy and Freelance Breast Examiner were not considered to be acceptable career paths, Joe became a radio announcer. Electronics, computers, video, pictures, movies and broadcast engineering were Joe’s hobbies and source of income. Keeping those interests in mind Joe went on to work in TV and eventually settled as a filmmaker.

 Today, being a filmmaker requires a background in computers. That suits Joe just fine, he bought his first “real” computer in 1987. It was a monochrome XT class PC with 64k of ram and dual 5.25″ floppy drives.

Before the Internet was started,  hobbyists like Joe ran computer BBS systems. There was even early email VIA fidonet exchanging packets of messages by modem around the world. Joe remembers the days of 5MB hard drives (yes, five megabyte, not five-hundred) and RAM sold as individual chips. He bought one of the first one- gigabyte hard drives in Florida for $2,500. He also remembers buying 16 0ne-megabyte RAM SIMMs for his Amiga 2000 computer at $1,600. From the old TRS-80 systems to the Coleco Adam and the Timex Sinclair up through the IBM XT/AT systems and the Commodore Amiga, Joe owned and enjoyed them all. You see, Joe is a techno junkie.

Today Joe’s studios feature both Mac Pro systems and PC based systems.  Joe personally owns two laptops, seven desktops, and one windows mobile system. He either owns now or has owned in the past virtually every piece of trendy technology that ever existed. Lasers, spy cameras, motion detectors, robotic cameras, blu-ray burners, 65″ plasma TVs, tasers, ipods, bluetooth, GPS and robot vacuums are in Joe’s personal toybox. He’s not rich, far from it… he’s just a junkie. He can’t help it. Technology is Joe’s crack and he needs a techno “hit” every day.

Oh, yeah, a few other things. Joe’s married to his wife Lora since 1984 and has two kids Ralph and Anita.