User:Kire Godal

Kire Godal ( Born August 2, 1962 in Aspen, Colorado, USA) is an award winning ethnographic and conservation documentary filmmaker. Since 1999, Kire’s exploratory work in Africa has documented many rare and secret ceremonies of diverse traditional groups. To make her films, Kire lives intimately with a tribe recording for months at a time. Her gentle approach leads to exclusive access - and never before seen footage. Her films have shown the world over on "The National Geographic Channel". Her collection of rare footage was curated into museum video instalments for the "African Twilight - Vanishing Rituals and Ceremonies Travelling Exhibition", that features two decade's of never before seen African ceremonies captured by Angela Fisher, Carol Beckwith's photographs, and Kire Godal's films, premiered at the Bower's Museum in Santa Ana California, July 2018.

Kire Godal is known for her film "Skypaths" (completed in 2019) about Swedish Ornithologist Bengt Berg and his granddaughter Natasha Illum Berg who retraces her famous filmmaker and explorer grandfather a century after him to Africa, India and Nepal to follow the common crane migration to Africa, Shoebill Storks at home in their swamps, Rhinos in the jungles of India, and Bearded Vultures in the Himalayas. Skypaths won "Best Environmental Film" at the Hollywood Women's Film Festival 2019. IMDb; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7379110/?ref_=rvi_tt

Kire Godal's documentary "Lion Warriors" for National Geographic's Big Cat week, traces the intersecting lives of Maasai warriors and endangered lions, during a historical moment in African history as lion hunting is banned for the first time by Maasai elders. "Lion Warriors" was nominated for Best in People & Nature at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival 2011 and also nominated at the International Wildlife Film Festival 2011.

Kire Godal's historical and important film, made in Maa language, "There Will Always be Lions?" was created for a new Maasai Warrior generation to explain why lions are more valuable to them alive, rather than dead. The film helped slow down and eventually stop traditional lion hunting in East Africa's Maasai-land. It won two Merit Awards for Cultural Message and another for Conservation Ethics at the 2012 International Wildlife Film Festival, as well as nominated for a ROSCAR award in the Campaign Category at WIld Talk Film Festival South Africa in 2013.

Kire films, writes and edits her own work, and lives in Nairobi, Kenya. She was a Host/Corespondent on the FOX Network TV Series "World Gone Wild".