National Geographic to screen ‘Jane’ featuring over 50 years of chimpanzee footage

The film will screen on the network in March.

“I dismissed the idea because most of my films are about subversive subjects on the fringes of society. Also, science was probably my worst subject in school, so I told them no.” – filmmaker Brett Morgen

National Geographic has announced the UK television premiere date for Jane, a National Geographic documentary film. As well as receiving a BAFTA nomination, the production won Best Documentary at the Producers Guild Awards and the Critics Choice Documentary Awards this January. Brett Morgen’s film also won Best Documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017.

The film received its European Premiere at Picturehouse Central London on the 13th October as part of the 61st BFI London Film Festival and was then released in cinemas across the UK in November. In March, National Geographic channel will give audiences in the UK and across the world the opportunity to watch this inspiring and critically acclaimed documentary as it airs in 172 countries.

Drawing from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives for over 50 years, award winning director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane, a woman whose chimpanzee research challenged the male-dominated scientific consensus of her time and revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. Set to a rich orchestral score from legendary composer Philip Glass, the film offers an unprecedented, intimate portrait of Jane Goodall — a trailblazer who defied the odds to become one of the world’s most admired conservationists.

Acclaimed filmmaker Brett Morgen, described as “the leading revolutionary of American documentary film” by The Wall Street Journal and whose documentaries have focused on the likes of maverick movie mogul Robert Evans, ’70s radicals the Yippies and the Rolling Stones, never expected to spend two and half years of his life telling the story of revered conservationist Jane Goodall. But in March 2015, shortly after the release of his acclaimed “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” about the life of Kurt Cobain, the late Nirvana frontman, National Geographic Documentary Films approached him about adding Jane Goodall to his list of world-class changemakers.

The movie will air Monday 12th March at 9pm 2018.

“I wasn’t interested [at first]. There have already been so many documentaries, I did not see how this film could possibly bring anything new to the screen. [Then] they [the producers] said they’d recently unearthed this large trove of 16 mm archival film documenting Jane’s early research in Gombe, and that got me intrigued,” – Dr. Jane Goodall