discoverwildlife.com BBC WILDLIFE 97COUSTEAU:^ THOMAS^ J.^ A
BERCROMBIE/NATIONAL^ GEOGRAPHIC;MRIDUCHANDRA:^ ANACATALÁMridu Chandra has
produced a number
of award-winning
documentaries
including Electoral
Dysfunction and
Out in the NightCousteau and
his crew studied
the marine life of
the Caribbean in
this bright yellow
research vessel
Why make a film about Cousteau?
Director and co-producer Liz Garbus and
I both grew up knowing of Cousteau and
admiring him. About six years ago, she was
reading a book about him to her children
and she realised that most people nowadays
wouldn’t actually know who he is – even
though all the 4K and GoPro underwater
filming and photography we see in natural-
history documentaries nowadays is built
upon his groundbreaking work.Is Cousteau’s work still interesting to
modern-day audiences?
It’s particularly timely today with many
people suffering from climate grief and eco-
anxiety, and feeling unable to act on climate
change, which is something his life speaks
to in a personal way because he turns that
feeling to action and activism. The film is
both for people with nostalgia who watched
his original films and interviews, and for
people to whom this is an introduction to
him and his work.Where did you find the footage?
A lot of his films are already out there
and available to watch online, so what we
wanted to do was go back to the original
16mm and 35mm films that he shot
(even after television shifted to video he
continued to shoot on film). It’s taken Liz
and National Geographic years of effortworking with Cousteau’s family who have
the original archival footage. It’s immense!
This footage has been sitting in a vault
since he passed away, so it was so exciting
to get access to these films. I had the
opportunity to live in Paris to work with
an archivist to digitize them. We slowly
went through and logged everything. Some
days there was not so much, some there
was repeated footage, and then there were
the days when you find the first footage of
Simone (Cousteau’s first wife)! Although I
had done a lot of reading on his life, it was
all very intellectual, and then when I saw
these films, it was all brought to life.How did you set about editing it down
into a 9 0 - minute film?
We were trying to show the arc of his life,
and our creative approach was to allow him
to narrate his own story and take us on his
journey. A lot of the film footage had no
sound, as they were shooting underwater or
on a film camera. We had around 550 hours
of material, plus an additional 100 hours of
audio. We couldn’t tell everything, we had
to leave so much out. I’d say for every five
minutes in the film, there are 10 stories that
we had to miss out and couldn’t explore.
That’s the tragedy of the film, we had
to stay top level. I hope that it will inspire
people to go deeper, and to watch his films
and to read his books.MEET THE PRODUCER
Mridu Chandra
The New York-based film-maker tell us about taking
a deep dive into Cousteau’s archival footage