Adventure Filmmakers’ Seminar 2006

Richard Else

Photo: Kristine Thoreson

Richard Else is regarded as one of Europe’s most experienced remote location filmmakers and for many years has combined program making with an academic career. He has been the inaugural head of media at both Sheffield Hallam and Teesside Universities and is currently professorial fellow and head of the Media Academy at St Chad’s College, University of Durham in the UK.

At present he is series producer of BBC Scotland’s monthly primetime television series "The Adventure Show" that, in its first series, was short-listed for a Royal Television Society award. He is best known for "Wild Climbs" (BBC 2, 1999), which portrayed extreme climbing in an entirely new way and has since won a total of 11 awards around the world. It built upon the success of a number of earlier BBC series: "The Face: Six Great Climbing Adventures," "Wilderness Walks" and "The Edge" (chronicling a 100 years of Scottish climbing). These films also won prizes at film festivals in Canada, America, mainland Europe, and Japan.

Richard’s other recent credits include "The Adventure is Not Yet Over," an award-winning portrait of Sir Chris Bonington at 70; "The Longest Journey" (Paul Pritchard’s ascent of Mt. Kenya following his catastrophic accident); a four part adventure race through eastern Greenland; and an exclusive portrait of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa for the BBC’s flagship world affairs series "Correspondent."

Richard Else has filmed in many of the world’s least hospitable places, including Baffin Island in winter, the Himalaya, the Canadian Rockies and Yukon, and the European Alps. He is co-author of four books on climbing and wilderness travel; and a keen outdoors person who lives in the shadow of Scotland’s Cairngorm mountains.