In 1957, when field research relied heavily upon statistical analysis, a 23-year-old London woman, notably shy a degree, traipsed into an African rainforest armed only with binoculars, a notebook, and a pair of Converses. Jane Goodall’s subsequent observations of chimpanzees in Tanzania would not only shape scientific discourse but create space for compassion in the study of global biodiversity.

“Those were the best days of my life,” Goodall says, talking to the Georgia Straight in early October while visiting Vancouver for a special VIFF screening of Jane, the Emmy Award–winning documentary highlighting her work in the Gombe Stream National Park.

“It was just me, out there, being with the chimps, learning new things. They were like part of my family.”

Upon publication of her research, the academic community scoffed at the unbridled approach to data collection, but it was her unbound mind and open heart that would lead to some of the most profound discoveries in primatology of the modern era.

Goodall’s work has since been canonized in books, essays, articles, and documentaries the world over, but she says none of these has been as authentic or nostalgic as Brett Morgen’s 2017 documentary, Jane.

“What’s different about this film is it is my voice giving life to what I felt at the time,” she says, noting Morgen’s choice to use only Goodall’s audiobooks and interviews to narrate the film. “It wasn’t some commentator who knew nothing about me or the chimps, just talking away. It was me. I think that was one of the things that made it seem so real.”

The film chronicles Goodall’s patient efforts to connect with the chimpanzees and is composed almost entirely of archival 16mm film shot by renowned wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick, Goodall’s first husband. In the early 1960s, National Geographic sent the photojournalist to Africa after the western world began to catch wind of the young trailblazer’s work.

The footage van Lawick gathered while living in Tanzania, and during the couple’s 10 years of marriage, shows his natural aptitude for filmmaking, and also conveys a warmth anyone would find in digging out that dusty box marked “home videos”. Instead of children ripping into presents under a Christmas tree, however, it’s clips of chimps curiously observing Goodall as she draws, or van Lawick playfully mimicking primate grooming rituals, or the couple’s cherub-cheeked son, lovingly nicknamed Grub, imitating wild animal calls. The film is, in its essence, just a window onto the life of a growing family—Goodall, her mother, her chimps, her lover, and her child.

The 84-year-old anthropologist-primatologist says her life now is very different from that shown in the revitalized clips. These days, she spends her time hopping between the Jane Goodall Institute locations around the world, and empowering youths through the Roots & Shoots program.

“Looking back over my life, it’s almost as though I was put here for a purpose,” she says, reflecting on the film. “There were points along the journey where all I had to do was to make the right decision, and I think looking back on each of these points, I did make the right decisions.”

Goodall says every so often, however, she’ll find herself back in Tanzania. When she does, she sets aside one day to wander alone into the forest to revisit the place where she began her journey.