Filmmaking

Adelie Productions, through its principal Director, Lloyd Spencer Davis, has been involved with making natural history and wildlife documentaries for more than three decades.

Films directed by Lloyd through Adelie Productions include:

The Guardian of Kinabalu

This film not only showcases the extreme beauty and diversity of the natural world of Mount Kinabalu – the most biologically diverse place on Earth – but is also the story of Alim Biun, a man with a direct line to the spiritual world and a desire to protect Mount Kinabalu in order to keep the spirits happy. Co-produced and co-directed with Wiebke Finkler.

Special Jury Prize, the Kuala Lumpur Environmental Film Festival

Meet The Real Penguins

A major romp through the world of penguins (in fact, marketed in USA under the title The World of Penguins), this film directed by Lloyd and for which he was also senior scriptwriter has proved a big hit, winning 12 international awards to date. These include:

Abu Prize for Best Documentary at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, Hong Kong

Prix Special du Jury at the Festival de L'Oiseau, Abbeville, France

Special Prize of the Jury, 1st International Science Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary

Wind Dancer: the story of Shona Dunlop MacTavish

Adelie Productions joined Wiebke Finkler's Green Concrete Films in a co-production about the extraordinary story of Shona Dunlop MacTavish, the woman who brought modern dance to New Zealand and, in the process, dealt with three of the greatest social upheavals of the 20th Century: Naziism, Communism and Apartheid.

Selected for the New Zealand International Film Festival

Selected for the WildSouth International Film Festival

Under Galapagos

The idea behind this film, directed, produced and co-written by Lloyd, is to examine how Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution may have been affected had he had an aqualung and been able to explore underwater around the Galapagos Islands. Made in association with NHNZ and PBS, the film entailed spending nearly three weeks on a yacht around the Galapagos Islands. Combining stunning underwater sequences with a beautiful score, it shows how differences in animals above the waterline and similarities in those below, while at first glance contradictory, both provide evidence for evolution by natural selection.

Eating Like A Gannet

Made in association with NHNZ and Ecology Division DSIR, this film documents the change in the world’s only mainland colony of gannets at Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand, and relates the increasing numbers of gannets over 40 years to changes in their food supply brought about by overfishing. In essence, overfishing has removed many of the top fish predators from the ecosystem, allowing numbers of the smaller fish on which they and the gannets prey to increase unabated, thereby providing a bonanza for the gannets.

The film is distinguished by its beautiful lighting and intimate look into the lives of gannets. Written and directed by Lloyd.