BY KAREN BOSSICK
Moviegoers are in for a treat on Wednesday when the Community Library screens the award-winning documentary “Jane” in its newly renovated theatre-quality Lecture Room.
The film was among the highlights of the 2018 Sun Valley Film Festival, earning all kinds of accolades from the many who attended its screening at the Sun Valley Opera House.
The documentary produced by National Geographic tells the story of Jane Goodall and her early years in Gombe Stream Game Reserve in Tanzania with the help of more than 100 hours of footage that had never before been seen.
Goodall waited tables to save money to go to Tanzania where she managed to get a job as a secretary for paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. He, in turn, arranged for her to study primates after he saw her passion for wild animals, even though she had no formal background in research. (Leakey later helped Goodall get a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.)
National Geographic sent Hugo van Lawick to photograph this young Englishwoman in the wilds. And the two eventually fell in love and married.
Goodall appears to be doing field research on chimps in the 16 mm film footage documentary, which Van Lawick shot in 1962. But, in reality, she was reenacting events from her first six months at the reserve—the six months before cameras became ever present in her life.
National Geographic broadcast a special using Van Lawick’s footage on CBS-TV in 1965. But that documentary featured a fraction of the 65-plus hours of footage Van Lawick shot.
The remainder was stored in film cans and boxes in an underground storage facility in rural Pennsylvania where it was found in 2015.
Since, Goodall—a trailblazer in primate research and conservation--has been the subject of more than 40 films showing.
The documentary directed by Brett Morgen features an orchestral score from composer Philip Glass. It won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary