About WildFilmHistory

Welcome to WildFilmHistory, a unique multi-media guide to the history and heritage of wildlife filmmaking.

Although one of the world's most popular cinema and television genres, many of the ground-breaking films and landmark productions have long been archived by broadcasters and forgotten by individuals. WildFilmHistory is making this ‘lost and forgotten’ material available once again.

As well as bringing together the most important wildlife films, the project is collecting ‘behind the scenes’ photographs, and recording oral histories with industry pioneers. This historically valuable material has been donated by the most famous names in Natural History broadcasting, as well as from a whole host of specialist and private collections. The resulting collection is freely available at www.wildfilmhistory.org as an interactive multi-media resource, and is being stored at high resolution in the WildFilmHistory media vault for the benefit of future generations.

WildFilmHistory is the latest Wildscreen initiative - the natural home for such a collection, as the organisation’s founding fathers, Sir Peter Scott and Christopher Parsons OBE, were instrumental in developing many of the earliest wildlife television programmes. In addition, through running its international wildlife film festival, Wildscreen has over twenty five years' experience working with the greats of the wildlife filmmaking industry.

“This is a terrific resource for everyone who enjoys watching wildlife films or is interested in the history of popular television. The collection includes many of the people and programmes that inspired me to get in on the action!”

- Nick Baker, Wildlife television presenter

Content

Over the past one hundred years, there have been many astounding developments in wildlife filmmaking – the result of the determination, ingenuity and passion of individuals with an enthusiasm for the natural world. Whether developing new technology to film the world’s plants and animals, or finding new ways to tell their stories, these people have been instrumental in shaping the entire industry.

WildFilmHistory captures these achievements by bringing together the films, the people and their stories in one place, for the first time -

Films

The classic wildlife films and television programmes, dating from 1896 to the present day, giving priority to landmark films and those most at risk of loss or deterioration. These include Rough Sea at Dover, believed by many to be the very fist natural history film ever made.

Oral histories

Videoed interviews with wildlife filmmaking pioneers telling their own personal stories. Each of the oral histories is a unique record created especially for WildFilmHistory.

With over a hundred hours of footage, the oral histories are essential viewing for any natural history film enthusiast.

Image database

Hundreds of images, including ‘on location’ and 'behind the scenes' shots of our favourite wildlife TV productions and stars.

Wildscreen is very grateful to all WildFilmHistory contributors for the kind donations of films, images and stories that have made this project possible.

WildFilmHistory is an ongoing project, if you know of relevant material, please do contact us.