RTS Television Award nominated British wildlife documentarian John Downer ("Nature" & "The Natural World") heads into the jungle for a closer look at the least known of all Africa's big cats, thanks to groundbreaking night-time photography, in this BBC television special which was awarded the 1998 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Award for Innovation.
British institution Sir David Attenborough introduces us to Philip Stander and the Ju/'hoan bushmen, who use radio collars and a microlight as well as traditional tracking techniques to monitor leopard in North Namibia, and we follow the hunts of two leopards over three years in South Luangwa National Park in eastern Zambia.
A battle-scarred 15 year old female and a younger and less experienced male leopard head up a cast which includes her young cub as they engage in all manner of never before seen or even suspected hunting behaviour of stealth and psychological warfare, softly and sensitively explained by the unmistakable dulcet tones of the most known naturalist on the planet, whose enthusiasm is spot on.
The filmmakers augment the director's own furtive cinematography, shot with infrared and low-light full-colour video cameras for a view that is ours alone, with evocative local music, to show the solitary and secretive lives of the most adaptable and certainly the most of Africa's big cats alive today and reveal the night-time secrets of the cat the walks on its own.
"For the first time the infrared camera has shown the true tension of a hunt at night."
British institution Sir David Attenborough introduces us to Philip Stander and the Ju/'hoan bushmen, who use radio collars and a microlight as well as traditional tracking techniques to monitor leopard in North Namibia, and we follow the hunts of two leopards over three years in South Luangwa National Park in eastern Zambia.
A battle-scarred 15 year old female and a younger and less experienced male leopard head up a cast which includes her young cub as they engage in all manner of never before seen or even suspected hunting behaviour of stealth and psychological warfare, softly and sensitively explained by the unmistakable dulcet tones of the most known naturalist on the planet, whose enthusiasm is spot on.
The filmmakers augment the director's own furtive cinematography, shot with infrared and low-light full-colour video cameras for a view that is ours alone, with evocative local music, to show the solitary and secretive lives of the most adaptable and certainly the most of Africa's big cats alive today and reveal the night-time secrets of the cat the walks on its own.
"For the first time the infrared camera has shown the true tension of a hunt at night."