Bruce Parry
- Category : TV Presenter
- Type : PSP
- Profile : 5/1 - Heretical / Investigator
- Definition : Split - Small (57)
- Incarnation Cross : LAX The Plane 1
Biography
Bruce Parry (born 17 March 1969, in Hythe, Hampshire, England) is a former Royal Marine instructor who is now a TV presenter and adventurer, known particularly for the documentary programme series Tribe (known as Going Tribal in the United States), co-produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel.
Background
Parry attended Wells Cathedral School as a boarder between 1978 and 1987. After finishing at Wells, Parry was commissioned as a Royal Marine at the age of 18. Bruce Parry left the service as a lieutenant after six years. He went on to become an expedition leader for Trekforce, before obtaining a job as a location manager for pop music videos. Parry eventually founded his own company, Endeavour Productions.
Television career
Parry first appeared on television in 2002 in an episode of BBC1's Extreme Lives series entitled "Cannibals and Crampons". Bruce planned, filmed, directed and presented the documentary with his friend Mark Anstice. The film was a first hand account of their successful journey to climb the little known mountain of Gunung Mandala in Indonesian New Guinea. The film was made by Ginger Television (becoming SMG). Next Parry was chosen to lead the Children's BBC CBBC expedition Serious Jungle, taking four boys and four girls aged 11 to 15 to Borneo to work with orangutans.
Also in 2002 Parry appeared as the straight-faced instructor opposite the inept survivalist Nick Frost in three episodes of Danger! 50,000 volts! The following year he made a return to the BBC1's Extreme Lives series making a programme with Debra Veal about a 700 km canoe race down the Yukon River in Canada entitled "Yukon Quest". The same year he returned to CBBC to lead Serious Desert taking a similar group of children, this time to Namibia's Skeleton Coast to work with the endangered Black Rhino. The following year Parry started filming the prime time BBC2 series Tribe in which he lived with various tribal groups exactly as they do in order to better understand their culture.
The first series of Tribe saw Parry living with indigenous peoples in Gabon, India, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Mongolia and Venezuela. Next Parry was chosen to lead a group of expeditioners across Greenland in the guise of Captain Robert Falcon Scott for a period remake of Scott's fateful last trip to the South Pole. Series two of Tribe was filmed wholly in Ethiopia as a journey between three different tribal groups. Series three of tribe was filmed in Brazil, Polynesia, Siberia, Bhutan, Tanzania and Malaysia. Most recently Parry journeyed for seven and a half months through Peru and Brazil for his latest series entitled "Amazon" where he looked at such issues as cocaine, oil, logging, slavery, dams, soya, cattle ranching and disease epidemics amongst Indigenous Peoples. Awards for the work he has been involved in include BAFTA's, RTS Best Presenter and many Film Festival Awards.
Campaigns for Survival
See also: Survival International
Currently, his series, Amazon is being re-shown on British TV. To link in with this series and his last one, Tribe, he has put together a double album of twenty exclusive new songs from KT Tunstall, Johnny Borrell, A-ha, Black-Eyed Peas, Hot Chip and more. The album is called Bruce Parry presents: Amazon/Tribe - Songs for Survival. The first track on the album 'Ferreting' by supergroup 'Apparatjik' (who are releasing their own album later on, the band is made up of members of Coldplay, MEW, and A-ha) is used as the theme music for Amazon. The record label is Kensaltown Records and all profits go to Survival International.
Bruce Parry has also contributed for the book, We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, in support of Survival.
In a video for Survival about the recording of the album, Songs for Survival, Parry speaks on the importance of raising awareness for indigenous rights. He believes that if people understood the impact that our culture of greed and consumption has on the 'wonderful people' at the other end, they would act differently.
Spirituality
Parry was raised as a Christian but his experiences among the tribes have led him to believe in a sceptical form of pandeism:
“ When I came back from expeditions, I had some experiences that made me readdress all that. I'd pretty much known all along that Christianity wasn't for me. Ever since then, I've been on my own quest to find another truth. I can't read novels, but I do read books about cosmology, about astrophysics, about genetics. I'm interested in altered states of mind, and creation myths. It's all part of the same thing - I want to know why we think what we think. Now, I'd describe myself as pan-deist, reluctantly verging on atheist. ”
Parry has since been described, with his apparent approval, as a "Christian turned sceptical pan-deist turned reluctant atheist" who "sees himself on a spiritual journey."