Jane - a film review

Film director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane Goodall, a woman whose chimpanzee research challenged the male-dominated scientific consensus of her time and changed our ways of thinking about primates. The film draws from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage from the National Geographic archives, mostly shot by Goodall's then husband Hugo van Lawick.

The film follows Goodall in her early career, when she set out to study chimpanzees in Gombe without any scientific training. She had been taken on byLouis Leakey who specifically wanted someone who didn't have academic preconceptions about primates. 

We see how patience and diligence helped Goodall to become accepted by the chimpanzees which allowed her to study aspects of their lives never seen before - such as their ability to make simple tools, their caring relationships with their families and their warfare when provoked. There are some wonderful clips of chimps stealing food, playing together and grooming each other.

It's a fascinating film for anyone interested in Goodall and her ground breaking research with chimpanzees. 

Jane is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Sunday 24 December.