JAMES M LEVELLE
Created in Devon and crafted in London, James is an award-winning filmmaker with an indomitable passion for adventure and the natural world.
His career in film kicked off in 2007 when international NGO, Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), sent James to document child labour in India’s cotton fields and then to war-torn West Africa to capture deadly pirate fisherman off the coast of Sierra Leone.
These dangerous documentary expeditions not only gave James invaluable filmmaking experience, they opened his eyes to the power of film and its exciting potential to make a difference.
​
He went on to direct the acclaimed ‘Eco Crime Investigators’ series for National Geographic, going undercover in China and Tibet to expose the criminal trade in tiger skins and bone, and then taking on the lethal multi-million pound illegal logging industry in Southeast Asia.
Operating undercover was a rush but, for James, the most awe-inspiring part of it all was spending time filming India’s last remaining wild tigers, and then endangered orang-utans in the Indonesian rainforest.
These intense filmmaking adventures opened his eyes to the power of film and its extraordinary potential to change people’s perspectives.
Since then, James has worked in some of the world’s most extreme environments directing and presenting some of adventure TV’s most groundbreaking and successful shows such as ‘Alaska: Gold Rush’, ‘Free Ride: South America’, 'Primal Survivor: Amazon' and 'Race For The Future'.
James has featured in The Financial Times, The Telegraph and The Times newspapers, interviews on BBC TV & Radio, he’s had the honour of presenting the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Awards at Buckingham and Kensington Palaces and hosted the Royal Foundation’s ‘Generation Earthshot Prize’ at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow.
His work for and with young people is incredibly important to him, though he’s just as massively motivated to inspire positive change in adult hearts and minds.
​
And whilst James’s eccentric affinity for exploring the world in weird and wonderful ways hasn’t waned, these days he’s focusing his energies into the people and places local to him in an effort to connect with community and create better ways of being.