Jemima Harrison: Evolutionary Enigma
Director Jemima Harrison and her cameraman and partner, Jon Lane, co-produce films that buzz with surprising revelations. “Our company is called Passionate Productions for a reason,” notes Harrison. “I’m intrigued by the area where science bumps into people and reality. That’s very fertile territory.”
Now she’s poised to seize the attention of TV audiences with the release of her latest work, “The Family That Walks on All Fours.” The documentary centers on the discovery of an extraordinary family in a remote part of Asia, an anthropological find that “could rewrite the evolution textbooks,” Harrison says. This is a huge worldwide story, and it raises profound questions about what it means to be human.”
To make the film — which aired in the UK and will be shown in the U.S. on the PBS show NOVA on November 14 — Harrison and Lane chose to shoot in HDV. “We switched from our usual digibeta because we were filming in such a remote rural area,” explains Harrison. “We wanted a camera that was small and easy to work with.” As on past productions, they edited entirely on the Mac. “Final Cut Pro was a natural for us because we know it, we love it — and it’s one of the first editing programs to handle HDV,” adds Harrison.
Jon Lane and Jemima Harrison.
A Stunning Discovery
In a world where relentless hyperbole has leached all meaning from the word “unique,” Harrison’s documentary tells the story of a genuinely one-of-a-kind family of Kurds living in southern Turkey. The parents have 19 children, seven of whom (now aged 18 to 34) have been quadrupedal all their lives. While two of the affected offspring occasionally prop themselves upright, the other five never do. For these seven people, normal walking is with both feet — and both hands — on the ground.
For a filmmaker like Harrison, whose thirst for knowledge far exceeds the merely sensational, the Kurdish family offered an unprecedented opportunity to consider core issues of human identity. She looked at the case through the lenses of genetics, evolution, and paleoanthropology, and her documentary presents several angles of the fierce scientific debate the family’s existence has aroused.
“We made this documentary to understand why, for the first time we know of in four million years, there are humans walking around on all fours,” says Harrison. However, she’s quick to add, “the film is many-layered — it doesn’t tell people what to think.”
From Ape to Man
Continues Harrison, “Evolutionarily, there is an incredible compulsion for humans to stand up. We consider the moment we stood as the transition point between ape and man, and our ability to walk upright as one of the things that defines us as human. So this case offers an incredible window on our origins — and a challenge to how we think about what it is to be human.”
Beyond the expected difficulties of living and filming in primitive conditions, the project demanded both perseverance and diplomacy. In fact, Harrison and Lane found themselves pursuing a red-hot evolution story in a strictly creationist Muslim nation. “The Turkish military police threatened to throw us out of the country because they thought we were portraying Turks as apes,” she says.
But the Kurds themselves, says Harrison, could not have been more generous. “The family lives a terribly blighted life,” she says, “yet they were at pains to be so hospitable. We got totally immersed in their lives. And despite the intrusion by us and the scientists, they bore it with such grace. That led us to see the humanity in people who some might not think of as human.”
HDV Workflow
Choosing to shoot in HDV eased the technical challenges on the remote Turkish location by allowing Lane to use a small, portable Sony HVR-Z1 video camera. As the high-def successor to the digital video format common to every consumer handicam, HDV records compressed HDTV video on standard DV or MiniDV media. It makes HD video acquisition much more affordable, putting it within reach of filmmakers who can’t upgrade to a full HD production environment.
Lane shot in 1080i50, capturing native HDV for editing with Final Cut Pro on a Power Mac G5. “In the right hands, HDV can be a professional format,” says Harrison. “The pictures look sensational. It’s the same kind of revolution DV was. Of course in some situations you can’t replace high-end cameras. But the new generation of HDV cameras will revolutionize aspects of broadcast production — and HDV was perfect for our needs on ‘The Family That Walks on All Fours.’”
