Alan Root

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Alan Root (12 May 1937 – 26 August 2017) was a British-born filmmaker who specialized in nature documentaries and is best known for his work on the Survival series. He was married to Kenyan-born conservationist Joan Root until 1981; together they produced National Geographic articles from 1963 to 1971 about animals, the Galapagos Islands, and African wildlife.

His notable films include The Year of the Wildebeest (1974), which follows the great wildebeest migration across the Serengeti; Safari by Balloon (1975), featuring the first hot-air balloon flights over Mount Kilimanjaro; Mysterious Castles of Clay (1978), which explores termite mounds and their organized societies and earned an Academy Award nomination; Two in the Bush (1980), later retitled Lights, Action, Africa! in the United States; and A Season in the Sun (1983), about wildlife facing drought and heat. The film Mysterious Castles of Clay highlighted intricate insect behavior and construction, and The Year of the Wildebeest showcased the epic migration.

The Roots used a hot-air balloon to shoot sequences for the wildebeest film, and Safari by Balloon marked the first balloon flight over Kilimanjaro. Two in the Bush features a memorable moment in which a spitting cobra directed venom toward Joan’s face while Alan filmed from a short distance.

Alan Root helped shape a widely recognized, high-quality style of nature filmmaking known as blue-chip films. After he and Joan ended their partnership, he continued working with Survival as a cinematographer, produced his own projects, guided early African work by camera teams like Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, and served as an adviser to the series.

In March 2017, Root was diagnosed with glioblastoma. He died on 26 August 2017, aged 80, in Nanyuki, Kenya, after a holiday to Alaska with his wife Fran Michelmore and their two sons.