Alastair Fothergill

Alastair Fothergill born 10 April 1960 in London the United Kingdom is a producer of nature documentaries for television and cinema He is the executive producer of the multiaward winning series The Blue Planet 2001 and Planet Earth 2006 and the codirector of the associated feature films Deep Blue and Earth Fothergill attended Harrow He studied zoology at St Cuthberts Society in the University of Durham and made his first film On the Okavango while still a student Fothergill joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1983 working on The Really Wild Show Wildlife on One and David Attenboroughs The Trials of Life He was appointed head of the Unit in 1992 and during his tenure he produced Attenboroughs awardwinning series Life in the Freezer In June 1998 he stood down as head of the Unit to concentrate on his work on The Blue Planet He has also presented several television programmes including The Abyss and is the author of three books He was awarded the Clean Energy Award by BMW during the Cinema for Peace award ceremony on 11 February 2008 In 2008 he signed a multipicture deal with newly formed Disneynature and now spends six months each year on sabbatical from the BBC developing feature documentaries as an independent producer The first two titles under the Disneynature deal will be Big Cats and Chimpanzee which he is codirecting with Keith Scholey and Mark Linfield respectively He is also producing a new sevenpart natural history series for the BBC called Frozen Planet due for completion in 2011 The series will feature the struggles of charismatic animals during a time of rapid climate change in the polar regions David Attenborough will again narrate Fothergill currently lives in Bristol with his wife Melinda and his two sons Hamish and William