Derek Bousé 

Derek Bousé is a scholar and an academic. His in-depth book, Wildlife Films (2000), charts and evaluates the wildlife filmmaking industry over the last hundred years. Brought up around Los Angeles, Derek's interest in film history and theory grew while he studied English at the University of Montana and, on the completion of his degree, he moved to New York to study film.

It was in New York that Derek's passion for wildlife films grew, a great lover of the outdoors, he relied on television programmes to experience nature while in the city. Moving down to Philadelphia to attend the Annenburg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, he explored the natural history genre further in his M.A. and Ph.D. theses. Entitled 'The History and Tradition of Wildlife Films in America' and 'The Wilderness Documentary: Film, Video, and the Visual Rhetoric of American Environmentalism' respectively, the two pieces provided the base for his book-length study, Wildlife Films, in 2000.

While researching, Derek discovered that wildlife cinematography was a field that had been repeatedly ignored by film scholars and media historians and set out to draw attention to what he perceived to be an undervalued art form. In the course of writing his book he corresponded with, and interviewed, numerous high profile wildlife filmmakers.

Now considered by some to be an authority on wildlife films, Derek lives in Europe and continues to pursue his interests in media and the environment.

Oral History