Drawing from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage shot in Tanzania's Gombe National Park in the 1960s, the film from award-winning director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane Goodall, a young untrained woman whose chimpanzee research challenged the male-dominated scientific consensus of her time and revolutionised our understanding of the natural world.
The film opens in 1960 in Gombe, as Goodall, a 26-year-old British woman driven only by her love for animals, embarks on her first research expedition to study chimpanzees.
Patiently gaining the animals' trust, she soon makes headlines with the discovery that chimps are highly intelligent and social creatures that use tools to gather food.
When the dashing Dutch filmmaker Hugo van Lawick is sent by National Geographic to document her work in 1964, filmmaker and subject soon fall in love — but professional commitments, polio outbreaks and violence among the chimps threaten the couple's idyllic existence.
While much has been shared in film and books about Goodall's work with chimpanzees, far less is known about the woman herself. Now, as Jane studies the chimps, we study Jane — gaining an intimate look as she falls in love and struggles to balance the demands of marriage and motherhood with her lifelong dream.
The footage, expertly shot by van Lawick, was rediscovered in National Geographic's archives — and while pristine, it was not without its challenges.
Reel upon reel of 16mm film was out of order and without notes or audio, leaving Morgen and his team the daunting tasks of organising the vast archive, identifying 160 chimpanzees and re-creating the sounds of Gombe's forest.
The result is an editing feat that brings the forgotten footage back to life, offering an unprecedented portrait of the trailblazer who defied the odds to become one of the world's most admired conservationists.
| CHANNEL |
National Geographic Channel (DStv 181) |
| PREMIERE |
25 March 2018 |
| TIMESLOT |
Sunday, 20h05 |
| REPEATS |
None |