Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress. Prolific in film since the late 1970s, she is known for her pioneering portrayals of action heroines in film. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.
Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name.
The Virunga Mountains are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, in the area where Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Uganda meet. The mountain range is a branch of the Albertine Rift Mountains, which border the western branch of the East African Rift. They are located between Lake Edward and Lake Kivu. The name "Virunga" is an English version of the Kinyarwanda word ibirunga, which means "volcanoes".
Volcanoes National Park is a national park in northwestern Rwanda. It covers 160 km2 (62 sq mi) of rainforest and encompasses five of the eight volcanoes in the Virunga Mountains, namely Karisimbi, Bisoke, Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabyinyo. It borders Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. It is home to the mountain gorilla and the golden monkey, and was the base for the primatologist Dian Fossey.
Stuart Baird is an English film editor, producer, and director who is mainly associated with action films. He has edited over thirty major motion pictures.
The Karisoke Research Center is a research institute in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park. It was founded by Dian Fossey on 24 September 1967 to study endangered mountain gorillas. Fossey located the camp in Rwanda's Virunga volcanic mountain range, between Mount Karisimbi and Mount Bisoke, and named it by combining the names of the two mountains.
The Indianapolis Prize is a biennial prize awarded by the Indianapolis Zoo to individuals for "extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts" affecting one or more animal species.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is a charity for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas. The Digit Fund was created by Dr. Dian Fossey in 1978 for the sole purpose of financing her anti-poaching patrols and preventing further poaching of the mountain gorillas. Fossey studied at her Karisoke Research Center in the Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda. The non-profit fund was named in memory of Fossey's favourite gorilla, Digit, who was decapitated by poachers for the offer of US$20 by a Hutu merchant who specialized in selling gorilla heads as trophies and gorilla hands as ashtrays to tourists.
The Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels, is a name given to three women — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas — chosen by anthropologist Louis Leakey to study primates in their natural environments. They studied chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, respectively.
Rosamond Carr was an American humanitarian, author and farmer.
Joan Root was a Kenyan conservationist, ecological activist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker. With her film-maker husband, Alan Root she made a series of acclaimed wildlife films. The couple divorced in 1981 and Alan Root settled in Nairobi afterward.
Amy Vedder is an ecologist and primatologist involved in conservation work with mountain gorillas.
Ian Michael Redmond OBE FZS FLS is a tropical field biologist and conservationist. Renowned for his work with mountain gorillas and elephants, Redmond has been involved in more than 50 documentaries on the subject for, among others, the BBC, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Redmond was also involved in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, spending some time with Sigourney Weaver so she could better understand her character.
Robert Ian Martin Campbell was an English wildlife photographer and filmmaker known for his footage and photographs of Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas published in the January 1970 issue of National Geographic. Many of his photographs are available at the University of Florida Digital Collections site, "Wildlife Conservation". He was raised in Nairobi, Kenya by his English parents who had fled from the aftermath of the First World War.
Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa is a 1987 biography of the conservationist Dian Fossey, who studied and lived among the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. It is written by the Canadian author Farley Mowat, himself a conservationist and author of the book Never Cry Wolf.
Robert Henry Nixon is an American film director, writer and conservationist. His films, often focused on the battles of tribal peoples and field biologists, include Amazon Diary, America The Beautiful, The End of the Game, Fossey's War, Gorillas in the Mist, Endangered Species, The Last Rivermen, American Heroes, Mission Blue, Great White Highway, The Lord God Bird, Peter Beard's Africa: Last Word From Paradise, The Flight Of Double Eagle II, So Long Lady and The Falconer.
Gorillas Revisited is a 2006 BBC documentary starring American actress Sigourney Weaver. The role is a call-back to her portrayal of Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (1988).
Gorillas in the Mist is a memoir by American primatologist and conservationist Dian Fossey, published in 1983. The book begins with Fossey's early career as she began working with naturalist Louis Leakey and spans thirteen years of Fossey's research into the behavior and biology of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. During this time Fossey lived among four families of gorillas in the Virunga Mountains, developing what's been described as an "unprecedented relationship" with the creatures.
