Botswana

Beverly & Dereck Joubert Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

On friday night (4th April) Beverly and Dereck Joubert received a Lifetime Achievement award from the South African Films & Television Awards (SAFTAS) for their contribution and development of the countries film industry.   Previous recipients of this award include Anant Singh who recently produced ‘Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom’.

For three decades the Jouberts have produced films in Southern Africa, many of which have helped save vast tracts of wilderness and have raised awareness on the plight of Big Cats and other iconic species that are under threat.  One of their first films, ‘Eternal Enemies’, has been watched by over a billion people from around the world, and is one of their most popular and renowned films.  The Jouberts 2011 film, “The Last Lions,” was filmed in Botswana and has since become a powerful ambassador for wild lions. In less than a year it reached over 350 million people and it continues to reach more, while collecting an array of international awards in the process.

Legadema, the leopard that features in ‘Eye of the Leopard’ (2006), has become a global ambassador for leopards, while drawing attention to the fur industry, which is destimating their numbers.  As National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, the Jouberts have also founded the Big Cats Initiative with National Geographic to further protect all of the big cats in Africa and globally, through on-the-ground projects, research, education and ongoing awareness campaigns.

 

Yet it is not just big cats that they are concerned about.  Through Great Plains Foundation they are also working to protect all wildlife including elephants and rhinos that are so vulnerable right now.

View full article HERE

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Married life in a tent. How do they do it?

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Could you spend 16 hours a day trapped in a vehicle with your husband? Road trips have left many a relationship in tatters, but for Beverly and Dereck Joubert — the wildlife photographers profiled this week on 60 Minutes — spending long days together in a truck and nights in a tent is just part of the fun.

“We designed our lives so that we could be together,” says Dereck. “We never wanted the life where I would go off to the office and come back late at night, cranky, have a scotch, and spend an hour or two with Beverly, who had a completely different life.”

So, these high school sweethearts moved to Botswana and began making their dramatic wildlife films together. Beverly and Dereck work in isolation, going months without seeing other humans; and they told Lara Logan that four days is the longest they’ve spent apart in years. And they’re still married!

Watch the video here

Snake Bite! A 60 Minutes shoot in Botswana

This week, 60 Minutes went to Africa to meet world-famous wildlife photographers Beverly and Dereck Joubert. We figured the couple lived an adventurous life in the wilds of Botswana, but we didn’t expect what we found on the first day of the shoot.

When Lara Logan stepped off the plane and reached out to shake Dereck’s hand, it was red, swollen, and “slushy” from a snake bite.

“It’s like having your hand in hot coals,” he told Logan.

“If it’s a black mamba, then you’ve got 10 minutes. So, we’ve made the 10 minutes,” he added nonchalantly.

Over decades living in the African bush, the Jouberts have made it through scorpion bites, several bouts of malaria, two plane crashes, daily encounters with deadly lions — and of course, snake bites.

“Anything could go wrong at any moment,” Dereck says. “It’s probably best for us not to plan for old age.”

Watch the video here

Wall Street Journal review of “The Last Lions”

It is to a mother lioness, and the team of Dereck and Beverly Joubert, who wrote, produced and photographed her life and triumphs in all their cruelty and wonder, that we owe a genuinely astonishing film. Astonishing for its drama, its suspense—and not least its capacity to elicit a sense of joy in viewers, a reaction not commonly induced by wildlife films involving threatened species.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of darkness, violence and cruel loss in “The Last Lions” which follows the lioness known as Ma di Tau—Mother of Lions—as she strives to find a safe place for herself and her three cubs in Botswana’s wetlands, a place thick with enemies. Alone, her mate having been killed, she escapes a rival pride led by an enemy lioness by conquering the lions’ hatred of water. Ma di Tau dares to swim, and lands with her cubs on an isolated island. Here, the lone adult lion, she has to contend with the threat of a large herd of aggressive wild buffalos equipped with killer horns, their devastating weapons. Desperation drives her to launch a surprise attack on the entire terrifying herd. This calculation is rewarded with stunning success—one of the film’s memorable sights. And they’re numerous.

She’ll face other dangers: The rival pride led by the enemy lioness, a cub-killer called Silver Eye, appears, having taken Ma di Tau’s cue and braved the river. In this struggle, too, largely about strategy, Ma di Tau prevails, mainly by her displays of bold authority.

 

This chronicle of survival and triumph—Ma di Tau’s engagements with enemies are executed with military precision—unfolds in glorious color to the accompaniment of a narrative by Jeremy Irons so absurdly lush and so right you’ll want to hear it again. As you’ll want to see this mother reunited again with the cub she thought lost to her, and to watch her plot her strategies and win again against all the odds.