Peter Getzels

Peter Getzels is an Emmy Award-winning director, producer and cinematographer. He is co-creator and producer/director of the long-running PBS series on science and philosophy, Closer To Truth, now in its 20th season. Getzels has directed and produced over 150 hours of television as well as numerous award-winning films produced in over 40 countries. Getzels came to filmmaking as an anthropologist, explorer, and mountaineer. Getzels conducted fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes, spent a winter in the Himalayan villages of Ladakh, hunted and sledded with the Inuit in Greenland and kayaked from north to south along the coast of Vietnam. His films have taken him to war zones, hill tribes in Southeast Asia, ships in the South Pacific and up some of the world's highest peaks. In addition to running a boutique production company, Getzels Gordon Productions, Getzels has worked as staff producer in the BBC Science Department, as well as staff director and series producer at National Geographic where he directed and produced a four-part series on ancient Egypt. Getzels has a BA in Anthropology & Comparative Religion (Bowdoin College), a M.Sc. in Anthropology (London School of Economics) and a MFA (National Film and TV School, England). He was a member of the film committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute as well as a founding member of the South American Explorers Club. He's been an undergraduate Teaching Fellow in Comparative Religions, and taught documentary filmmaking at the Ecole Nationale Superieure La Femis in Paris. Getzels has shown his films widely and lectured in the US and England.