JANE
NAT GEO, 9pm
Jane Goodall was a 26-year-old British secretary, with no training or degree, plucked from obscurity to study chimpanzees in the wild.
It was 1960 when Jane, who was passionate about animals, was given a mission to get close to the chimps at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, to live among them and to be accepted.
“I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could, like Dr Dolittle,” says Jane, now 83.
She went on to become a world-renowned British conservationist whose chimpanzee research revolutionised our understanding of the natural world.
She narrates this Baftanominated film, which draws from over 100 hours of unseen footage of Jane, shot by cameraman Hugo van Lawick during the 60s.
The film, believed lost until 2014, is simply astonishing as it charts Jane’s relationship not only with the chimps, but also with the cameraman – who later became her husband.