Jane
Brett Morgen (COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK) reconstitutes 50-year-old National Geographic footage into a poetic look at primatologist Jane Goodall, set to a magnificent score by Philip Glass.
In the 1960s, National Geographic sent a cameraman to film Jane Goodall’s pioneering work with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Goodall was a striking figure, hand-picked in her twenties by ground-breaking palaeontologist Louis Leakey for her love of animals, her appetite for adventure, and her patience. Photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick fell in love with Goodall and trained his camera on her as much as on the chimpanzees. He shot over 140 hours of 16mm footage that was stored in an archive for decades – until now.
Filmmaker Brett Morgen makes the most of this extraordinary visual record of Goodall's early career. This isn't a traditional nature film or biography; it's a romantic epic.