How does one become the director of a film like “March of the Penguins”?
Obviously, totally by chance. It all began with a classified ad which basically said something like “looking for fearless biologist, ready to spend fourteen months at the end of the world” Of course, I had studied biology, in particular animal behavior, and I wanted to become a scientist. But I was as attracted to nature and adventure as I was to roughing it in extreme conditions, so this kind of premise was very appealing to me. At the time, the assignment was to film images of emperor penguins The only problem was that I had never held a camera in my life. So I started with a ten-day training period to learn how to film with a 35mm camera. Then I left for my first stay at the Dumont d’Urville French Antarctic station with two assignments: to band the birds, and to film a very precise list of shots. At the time, I was 24. Weren’t you put off by the fact that you were starting in such extreme conditions? No, not at all. I was born in Eastern France, in the Jura mountains, and started s
