Diana Nyad had been a world-class endurance athlete for years when, after swimming around Manhattan in a little under eight hours in 1975, she became a celebrity and a talk-show staple. At the age of 30, Nyad retired after breaking the open-ocean record by going from the Bahamas to Florida, one stroke at a time, in 27 hours. She transitioned into sportscasting, wrote books, hosted radio shows, did the occasional motivational speaker gig, and enjoyed the rewards of a life well lived.
Still, one thing consistently nagged at Nyad. In 1978, the face of...
Still, one thing consistently nagged at Nyad. In 1978, the face of...
- 11/2/2023
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Getting Kris Tompkins to participate in the documentary, “Wild Life,” was not an easy task for co-director Jimmy Chin. “She is of the generation where they’re not looking to be famous. They were always about getting the work done and I don’t think, initially, she felt like there was any need to publicize her life or what she had done,” he tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts panel on TV Documentaries (watch the exclusive video interview above).
Through reassuring Tompkins about how much he commits himself to a project, she was eventually able to come around. “I think Kris took some time to think about it and I think she understood that we had this platform and that this story was one of the hopeful stories about the environment and about how to create change in this world in a meaningful way.”
See over 300 video...
Through reassuring Tompkins about how much he commits himself to a project, she was eventually able to come around. “I think Kris took some time to think about it and I think she understood that we had this platform and that this story was one of the hopeful stories about the environment and about how to create change in this world in a meaningful way.”
See over 300 video...
- 6/2/2023
- by Charles Bright
- Gold Derby
With “Wild Life,” the filmmaking team of Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi prove yet again — after “Meru,” Oscar-winning “Free Solo,” and “The Rescue” — that they are nonpareils at delivering consistently stunning visuals and provocative non-fiction content. Unlike most documentary filmmakers these days, they had a juicy NatGeo budget to film in the wildest areas of Chile and Argentina and the opportunity to screen their movie theatrically via Picturehouse before winding up on Disney+ May 26.
The directing duo choose their subjects carefully. In this case, at the center of this dramatic decades-spanning story is Kristine McDivitt Tompkins who, having risen to CEO of Patagonia after 23 years at the company, abruptly left to marry billionaire eco-philanthropist Doug Tompkins and join his mission to save millions of acres of wildlands in Chile and Argentina. In 2015, after he died in a kayak accident, she took on his mission and in 2018 donated 10 million acres as national parkland.
The directing duo choose their subjects carefully. In this case, at the center of this dramatic decades-spanning story is Kristine McDivitt Tompkins who, having risen to CEO of Patagonia after 23 years at the company, abruptly left to marry billionaire eco-philanthropist Doug Tompkins and join his mission to save millions of acres of wildlands in Chile and Argentina. In 2015, after he died in a kayak accident, she took on his mission and in 2018 donated 10 million acres as national parkland.
- 5/27/2023
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
The filmmaking couple Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have earned a reputation for making documentaries about people who accomplish the unthinkable – the no-ropes climber Alex Honnold in the Oscar-winning Free Solo, or the divers of The Rescue who, against all odds, saved a group of Thai kids stranded in a flooded cave.
As it happens, the heroes of their best-known films have been men, but in their latest documentary, Wild Life, the focus shifts in large part to a woman, the conservationist and former Patagonia CEO Kris Tompkins.
L-r Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Kris Tompkins, Jimmy Chin
“It was really nice to make a film where there’s a woman at the center,” Vasarhelyi remarked at Cph:dox in Copenhagen, where the film screened last month. Wild Life, from National Geographic and Picturehouse, just expanded to theaters in Southern California, including Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay area...
As it happens, the heroes of their best-known films have been men, but in their latest documentary, Wild Life, the focus shifts in large part to a woman, the conservationist and former Patagonia CEO Kris Tompkins.
L-r Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Kris Tompkins, Jimmy Chin
“It was really nice to make a film where there’s a woman at the center,” Vasarhelyi remarked at Cph:dox in Copenhagen, where the film screened last month. Wild Life, from National Geographic and Picturehouse, just expanded to theaters in Southern California, including Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay area...
- 4/22/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
With their new film Wild Life, two top filmmakers focused on the outdoor world — Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the directors of well-regarded climbing docs Meru and the Oscar-winning Free Solo — decided to make a film about icons of that very culture. And it felt a little messy at first, as they explain.
“I was really hesitant to make this film,” says Vasarhelyi, noting that her husband and co-director Chin — himself a world-class climber — deeply respected the film’s core subjects, former Patagonia CEO and conservationist Kris Tompkins and climbers and entrepreneurs Doug Tompkins, Yvon Chouinard and Rick Ridgeway. Moreover, as then-former and current company owners, the subjects were “used to making the decisions,” Vasarhelyi says, while the couple’s stringent filmmaking process would require them to cede control over the telling of their story.
Ultimately, though, the filmmakers overcame their misgivings (and the subjects of the film agreed to take part,...
“I was really hesitant to make this film,” says Vasarhelyi, noting that her husband and co-director Chin — himself a world-class climber — deeply respected the film’s core subjects, former Patagonia CEO and conservationist Kris Tompkins and climbers and entrepreneurs Doug Tompkins, Yvon Chouinard and Rick Ridgeway. Moreover, as then-former and current company owners, the subjects were “used to making the decisions,” Vasarhelyi says, while the couple’s stringent filmmaking process would require them to cede control over the telling of their story.
Ultimately, though, the filmmakers overcame their misgivings (and the subjects of the film agreed to take part,...
- 4/21/2023
- by Katie Kilkenny
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
There was nothing dysfunctional about the debut of Ari Aster’s mind-bending Beau Is Afraid at the specialty box office.
The movie scored a location average of $80,099 from four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the best average of 2023 to date for a specialty film. It was also the second-best specialty average of the pandemic era behind November 2021’s Licorice Pizza ($86,289, four locations) and the second-best ever for A24 behind December 2019’s Uncut Gems ($107,400, five locations), not adjusted for inflation.
Beau Is Afraid is another win for A24, home of 2023 Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. Beau’s total weekend gross of $320,400 was no doubt goosed by select showings in Imax auditoriums — tickets for the premium format can run $25 or more in L.A. and New York — in addition to regular screenings.
The film’s performance is a much-needed boost for indie distributors who are hoping to return...
The movie scored a location average of $80,099 from four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the best average of 2023 to date for a specialty film. It was also the second-best specialty average of the pandemic era behind November 2021’s Licorice Pizza ($86,289, four locations) and the second-best ever for A24 behind December 2019’s Uncut Gems ($107,400, five locations), not adjusted for inflation.
Beau Is Afraid is another win for A24, home of 2023 Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. Beau’s total weekend gross of $320,400 was no doubt goosed by select showings in Imax auditoriums — tickets for the premium format can run $25 or more in L.A. and New York — in addition to regular screenings.
The film’s performance is a much-needed boost for indie distributors who are hoping to return...
- 4/16/2023
- by Pamela McClintock
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
At Tuesday’s New York City premiere of Nat Geo’s documentary “Wild Life,” Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, shed light on his 2022 decision to donate the entire apparel brand, worth $3 billion, to a trust dedicated to fighting the climate crisis.
“I’m kind of pessimistic about the fate of this planet,” Chouinard said. “We’ve been giving one percent of our sales for a long time. We’ve given away $200 or $300 million over the years, but I’m always thinking, ‘What more can I do?”
Directed by Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, “Wild Life” chronicles the decades-long efforts by conservationist Kris Tompkins and her late husband and the North Face founder, Doug Tompkins, to create national parks throughout Chile and Argentina. The couple helped Chouinard, who appears in the doc, create and run Patagonia.
Chouinard, who joined Vasarhelyi, Chin and Tompkins onstage after the MoMA screening,...
“I’m kind of pessimistic about the fate of this planet,” Chouinard said. “We’ve been giving one percent of our sales for a long time. We’ve given away $200 or $300 million over the years, but I’m always thinking, ‘What more can I do?”
Directed by Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, “Wild Life” chronicles the decades-long efforts by conservationist Kris Tompkins and her late husband and the North Face founder, Doug Tompkins, to create national parks throughout Chile and Argentina. The couple helped Chouinard, who appears in the doc, create and run Patagonia.
Chouinard, who joined Vasarhelyi, Chin and Tompkins onstage after the MoMA screening,...
- 4/12/2023
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
World class climber Jimmy Chin met his future wife, filmmaker Chai Vasarhelyi, over a mountain – of footage.
He had been working for a number of years on the documentary that would become Meru, the story of an attempt by Chin and his fellow alpinists and friends Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk to become the first to summit the perilous Shark’s Fin peak in the Himalayas. Perhaps because he was so close to the subject matter, the film wasn’t quite cohering.
“I had submitted it to a few film festivals and got turned down,” Chin explained during an Artists & Auteurs conversation at Cph:dox in Copenhagen. He told moderator Thom Powers, TIFF’s documentary programmer and host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast, that while struggling over the film he crossed paths with Vasarhelyi at a conference.
Directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin appear at Cph:dox in Copenhagen on Tuesday, March...
He had been working for a number of years on the documentary that would become Meru, the story of an attempt by Chin and his fellow alpinists and friends Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk to become the first to summit the perilous Shark’s Fin peak in the Himalayas. Perhaps because he was so close to the subject matter, the film wasn’t quite cohering.
“I had submitted it to a few film festivals and got turned down,” Chin explained during an Artists & Auteurs conversation at Cph:dox in Copenhagen. He told moderator Thom Powers, TIFF’s documentary programmer and host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast, that while struggling over the film he crossed paths with Vasarhelyi at a conference.
Directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin appear at Cph:dox in Copenhagen on Tuesday, March...
- 3/24/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin expressed differing opinions on sharing one’s own work.
Oscar-winning Free Solo wife- and- husband directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin debated the niceties of promoting one’s own work in a talk about their filmmaking careers - spotlighting the professional climbers who have been the subject of two of their films.
They were talking at an event in the Cph:Conference Artists & Auteurs series at Cph:Dox on March 21.
“There’s always been those athletes that were really good at self-promotion – leveraged what they did to make their career or start a business,” said Chin,...
Oscar-winning Free Solo wife- and- husband directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin debated the niceties of promoting one’s own work in a talk about their filmmaking careers - spotlighting the professional climbers who have been the subject of two of their films.
They were talking at an event in the Cph:Conference Artists & Auteurs series at Cph:Dox on March 21.
“There’s always been those athletes that were really good at self-promotion – leveraged what they did to make their career or start a business,” said Chin,...
- 3/22/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin expressed differing opinions on sharing one’s own work.
Oscar-winning Free Solo wife- and- husband directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin debated the niceties of promoting one’s own work in a talk about their filmmaking careers - spotlighting the professional climbers who have been the subject of two of their films.
They were talking at an event in the Cph:Conference Artists & Auteurs series at Cph:Dox on March 21.
“There’s always been those athletes that were really good at self-promotion – leveraged what they did to make their career or start a business,” said Chin,...
Oscar-winning Free Solo wife- and- husband directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin debated the niceties of promoting one’s own work in a talk about their filmmaking careers - spotlighting the professional climbers who have been the subject of two of their films.
They were talking at an event in the Cph:Conference Artists & Auteurs series at Cph:Dox on March 21.
“There’s always been those athletes that were really good at self-promotion – leveraged what they did to make their career or start a business,” said Chin,...
- 3/22/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
With Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love earning a well-deserved Oscar nomination and Laura McGann’s The Deepest Breath getting a buzzy Sundance bow, the documentary subgenre of romances forged against photogenic and death-defying backdrops (sometimes featuring real-life tragedy) continues to thrive.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won an Academy Award for Free Solo, one of the best films of this type, are back on tangentially similar terrain with Wild Life, an SXSW premiere that will get a brief theatrical run before hitting NatGeo. Less an adrenaline-filled suspense piece than Free Solo, Wild Life is a sad and inspiring love story, as well as a portrait of great wealth put to humanity’s common good, even if it glosses over a number of ethical head-scratchers. It’s still beautiful to look at, but I most enjoyed Wild Life as a complicated procedural about land use (don’t expect...
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won an Academy Award for Free Solo, one of the best films of this type, are back on tangentially similar terrain with Wild Life, an SXSW premiere that will get a brief theatrical run before hitting NatGeo. Less an adrenaline-filled suspense piece than Free Solo, Wild Life is a sad and inspiring love story, as well as a portrait of great wealth put to humanity’s common good, even if it glosses over a number of ethical head-scratchers. It’s still beautiful to look at, but I most enjoyed Wild Life as a complicated procedural about land use (don’t expect...
- 3/15/2023
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"I desire to preserve this place - I think that is as strong a bond as any two people can have." NatGeo has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film called Wild Life, the latest from acclaimed filmmakers Jimmy Chin & Chai Vasarhelyi. This first premiered at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival last year, and is also playing at SXSW this month before it opens in theaters this spring. Wild Life is a sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris & Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve one of the last truly wild places on earth. After falling in love, Kris and the outdoorsman and entrepreneur Doug Tompkins left behind the world of the massively successful outdoor brands they'd helped pioneer like Patagonia & The North Face, and turned their attention to a visionary effort to create National Parks in Chile and Argentina. The film spans decades of entrepreneurial and conservation work and serves...
- 3/9/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Eight years ago, Edward Snowden became the centerpiece of the Oscar race for Best Documentary as the subject of director Laura Poitras’ eventual winner “Citizenfour.” This time, that centerpiece slot goes to Nan Goldin, the photographer and activist hero of Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”
The movie launched to rave reviews at Venice over the weekend and sneaked into a morning Tba slot on the last day of the Telluride Film Festival, where many audience members emerged in tears. That response is likely to continue as the movie travels to the Toronto International Film Festival and later New York, where it will be — appropriately enough — the festival’s centerpiece selection.
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is in good hands. Participant Media produced the project and will release it October 7 with Neon, which previously distributed her Julian Assange documentary “Risk.” Neon CEO Tom Quinn also spearheaded the successful “Citizenfour” campaign at Radius-twc.
The movie launched to rave reviews at Venice over the weekend and sneaked into a morning Tba slot on the last day of the Telluride Film Festival, where many audience members emerged in tears. That response is likely to continue as the movie travels to the Toronto International Film Festival and later New York, where it will be — appropriately enough — the festival’s centerpiece selection.
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is in good hands. Participant Media produced the project and will release it October 7 with Neon, which previously distributed her Julian Assange documentary “Risk.” Neon CEO Tom Quinn also spearheaded the successful “Citizenfour” campaign at Radius-twc.
- 9/5/2022
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the duo behind 2018’s acclaimed documentary film “Free Solo,” will direct four new documentary projects for National Geographic.
Nat Geo announced on Tuesday that Vasarhelyi and Chin will direct two feature documentaries, a 10-part series, and a one-hour pilot. They will also produce all four projects via their production company, Little Monster Films.
The “Thai Cave Rescue” feature documentary is based on the against-all-odds story of the dramatic 2018 rescue of a boys’ soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand and will include never-before-seen footage from the rescue. National Geographic described the “Tompkins” feature documentary as an intimate portrait of conservationist and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc., Kristine Tompkins, and the organization that she and Doug Tompkins founded together.
“National Geographic shares our deep commitment to bringing honest and inspiring stories to audiences around the world,” Vasarhelyi and Chin said in a statement.
Nat Geo announced on Tuesday that Vasarhelyi and Chin will direct two feature documentaries, a 10-part series, and a one-hour pilot. They will also produce all four projects via their production company, Little Monster Films.
The “Thai Cave Rescue” feature documentary is based on the against-all-odds story of the dramatic 2018 rescue of a boys’ soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand and will include never-before-seen footage from the rescue. National Geographic described the “Tompkins” feature documentary as an intimate portrait of conservationist and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc., Kristine Tompkins, and the organization that she and Doug Tompkins founded together.
“National Geographic shares our deep commitment to bringing honest and inspiring stories to audiences around the world,” Vasarhelyi and Chin said in a statement.
- 2/10/2021
- by Tyler Hersko
- Indiewire
E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the directors behind award-winning documentary Free Solo, have set up four projects at Nat Geo.
This comes after the pair signed a first-look deal with the Disney-owned cable network in September 2019.
The slate, which includes two feature documentaries, a ten-part series order and a one-hour pilot, will be produced by their production company Little Monster Films.
The pair have boarded feature doc Thai Cave Rescue (w/t), which was previously announced by Nat Geo in March 2019. They will replace Kevin Macdonald, who was previously set to direct.
Thai Cave Rescue is produced in association with John Battsek for Passion Pictures and Ventureland and Storyteller Productions’ P.J. van Sandwijk. E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin will direct and produce.
It will tell the story of the Wild Boars youth soccer team who got trapped and their dramatic 2018 rescue.
Elsewhere, the pair are producing and directing Tompkins,...
This comes after the pair signed a first-look deal with the Disney-owned cable network in September 2019.
The slate, which includes two feature documentaries, a ten-part series order and a one-hour pilot, will be produced by their production company Little Monster Films.
The pair have boarded feature doc Thai Cave Rescue (w/t), which was previously announced by Nat Geo in March 2019. They will replace Kevin Macdonald, who was previously set to direct.
Thai Cave Rescue is produced in association with John Battsek for Passion Pictures and Ventureland and Storyteller Productions’ P.J. van Sandwijk. E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin will direct and produce.
It will tell the story of the Wild Boars youth soccer team who got trapped and their dramatic 2018 rescue.
Elsewhere, the pair are producing and directing Tompkins,...
- 2/9/2021
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
“Free Solo” directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have taken over for “One Day in September” filmmaker Kevin Macdonald as the directors of National Geographic’s documentary feature about the 2018 rescue of a boys soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand, the cable channel said Tuesday during its day at the virtual Television Critics Association press tour.
With the “Thai Cave Rescue” documentary feature — which an individual with knowledge tells TheWrap Macdonald exited over “timing” issues, as it was originally set up at Nat Geo in March 2019 — “Vasarhelyi and Chin will bring their signature filmmaking and nuanced character portraits to the against-all-odds story of the dramatic 2018 rescue of a boys soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand,” per Nat Geo. “With exclusive access and never-before-seen footage from the rescue, the film tells the story of the cave divers who challenged the limits of...
With the “Thai Cave Rescue” documentary feature — which an individual with knowledge tells TheWrap Macdonald exited over “timing” issues, as it was originally set up at Nat Geo in March 2019 — “Vasarhelyi and Chin will bring their signature filmmaking and nuanced character portraits to the against-all-odds story of the dramatic 2018 rescue of a boys soccer team trapped deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand,” per Nat Geo. “With exclusive access and never-before-seen footage from the rescue, the film tells the story of the cave divers who challenged the limits of...
- 2/9/2021
- by Jennifer Maas
- The Wrap
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