Dian Fossey
Her book is a description of her scientific research and an insightful memoir of how Dian Fossey came to study gorillas in Rwanda. Portions of her life story were later adapted as the film Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey, starring Sigourney Weaver as Fossey. The written work covers her scientific career in much greater detail, and omits material on her personal life, including her affair with photographer Bob Campbell (which formed a major subplot of the movie, in which Campbell was played by Bryan Brown). The movie also portrayed Fossey as a woman completely obsessed by "her" gorillas, who would stop at nothing to protect them. It includes a fictitious scene in which she orchestrated the mock hanging of a poacher and another where she burned poachers' huts. The movie invented characters, including the animal trader Van Vecten, and changed the names of Fossey's students.
Mowat's Virunga, whose British and U.S. editions are called Woman in the Mist, was the first book-length biography of Dian Fossey, and it serves as a useful counterweight to the dramatizations of the movie and the focus on gorillas in her own work.
A new book published in 2005 by National Geographic in the United States and Palazzo Editions in the United Kingdom as No One Loved Gorillas More, written by Camilla de la Bedoyere, features for the first time Fossey's story told through the letters she wrote to her family and friends. The book was published to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of her death, and includes many of Bob Campbell's previously unpublished photographs.
She is also prominently featured in a book by the Vanity Fair journalist Alex Shoumatoff called African Madness.
More recently, the Kentucky Opera Visions Program, in Louisville, has written an opera about Dian Fossey. The opera, entitled Nyiramachabelli, premiered on May 23, 2006.
A book called the Dark Romance of Dian Fossey was published in 1989 and compares the story of Dian Fossey with versions as seen by others. However, much of the book is uncited and it repeats the salacious and racist stories created by her detractors.[citation needed] For instance, the book claims that Fossey became a racist because, as stated in the book, she was gang-raped by Rwandan soldiers an event that Fossey and her friends repeatedly and vehemently denied.
In 2006, Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was published, written by the investigative journalist Georgianne Nienaber.
Although Fossey’s death is officially unsolved, recently released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as testimony from the International War Crimes Tribunal proceedings, offer new suspects, motives, and opportunities. Every fact about Fossey’s life is meticulously annotated.[citation needed] However, the setting of her conversations with the murdered gorillas is obviously fictional, yet steeped in Rwandan tradition.[citation needed]
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Quotes
- "When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.”"
- The last words printed carefully in Dian's journal on the final page.
- "No, I won't let them turn this mountain into a goddamn zoo."
- Dian Fossey in the movie Gorillas in the Mist. In 1990, more than 10,000 tourists visited the Virungas while the gorilla population remained about 350. In 2005, eight gorillas died of measles which were transmitted by tourists.[citation needed]
- "And of course, nobody thinks about the goose that laid the golden egg."
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Bibliography
- Dian Fossey: Gorillas in the Mist, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983
- ——: "An amiable giant: Fuertes's gorilla", Living Bird Quarterly 1(summer): 21-22, 1982
- ——: "Mountain gorilla research, 1974", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 14: 243-258, 1982
- ——: "The imperiled mountain gorilla", National Geographic 159: 501-523, 1981
- ——: "Mountain gorilla research, 1971-1972", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 1971 Projects, 12: 237-255, 1980
- ——: "Development of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) through the first thirty-six months", in The Great Apes 139-186 (D.A. Hamburg & E.R. McCown eds., Benjamin-Cummings), 1979
- ——: "Mountain gorilla research, 1969-1970", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 1969 Projects, 11: 173-176, 1978
- ——: "His name was Digit", Int. Primate Protection League (IPPL) 5(2): 1-7, 1978
- ——: The behaviour of the mountain gorilla, Ph.D. diss. Cambridge University, 1976
- ——: "Observations on the home range of one group of mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", Anim. Behav. 22: 568-581, 1974
- ——: "Vocalizations of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", Anim. Behav. 20: 36-53, 1972
- ——: "Living with mountain gorillas", in The Marvels of Animal Behavior 208-229 (T.B. Allen ed., National Geographic Society), 1972
- ——: "More years with mountain gorillas", Nat. Geogr. 140: 574-585, 1971
- ——: "Making friends with mountain gorillas", Nat. Geogr. 137: 48-67, 1970
- D. Fossey & A.H. Harcourt: "Feeding ecology of free-ranging mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", in Primate Ecology: Studies of Feeding and Ranging Behaviour in Lemurs, Monkeys and Apes 415-447 (T.H. Clutton-Brock ed., Academic Press), 1977
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Notes
- ^ Current Biography, Jill Kadetsky, 1991, p. 121 [1]
- ^ About Dian Fossey - Info about the Life of Dian Fossey - DFGFI
- ^ Mowat, Farley. Woman in the Mists. 1987.
- ^ Fossey, Dian : Gorillas in the Mist. 1983
- ^ a b c d e f Mowat, Farley. Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa. Warner Books, 1987.
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External links
- Murder in the Mist solved? Animal Welfare Institute Quarterly
- Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
- http://ippl.org
- The Legacy of Dian Fossey
- Dian Fossey Murder Files
- Dian Fossey eco money with quote
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