It didn’t take long, though, to realize that it would be difficult to top the story that director Brett Morgen tells of Goodall’s life in the documentary — and certainly no cinematographer would get images better than what the wildlife filmmaker Hugh von Lawick captured at the time.
The story starts in 1960, when Goodall worked as a secretary for Louis Leakey, the famed archaeologist and paleoanthropologist. Leakey had received a grant for a six-month study of chimps in the wild, and he needed a researcher to conduct the observations. Rather than choose someone from a university, filled with preconceived notions of animal behavior, he picked Goodall because she had “an open mind, a love for animals, and monumental patience.