GETZELS GORDON PRODUCTIONS (G2)

is a full service production company from conception to delivery. With a long-track record of award-winning documentaries made for British, American, European and Chinese television, G2 create, produce and consult on media for foundations and think-tanks. 

Peter Getzels and Harriet Gordon are driven by complex ideas and irresistible stories, particularly in subjects related to anthropology, science, religion and adventure. Based in Oxford, England for sixteen years and currently in Washington DC, G2 have taken on an ambitious slate of subjects, from free-range children at A.S. Neill’s infamous Summerhill School to sex and trans-possession cults in Siberia and Venezuela; from hidden Buddhist kingdoms in the Himalayas to girls who dare to train as boxers in Afghanistan. 

The ongoing CLOSER TO TRUTH series with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for PBS, is a global journey in search of the vital ideas about the cosmos, consciousness and meaning. CTT includes some of the world’s most renowned scientists, philosophers and theologians, as well as eight Nobel Prize winners. 

In China, Peter Getzels directed his first documentary for Discovery Asia in 2007, about the explorer and mariner Zheng He. In 2010 he embarked on producing/directing his first five part series for CCTV (China Central Television) about China Expo with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Peter and Robert went on to make two more five-part series called CHINA'S CHALLENGES with Shanghai Media Group. The first series won the prestigious China News Award, which is China's top documentary prize. The second series won an Emmy in Los Angeles, where PBS SoCal is the presenting channel. Peter is currently in production on a third series of CHINA'S CHALLENGES, as well as a one-off documentary about poverty for China Global Network Television (the English-speaking branch of CCTV). 

These are the films and television series that have won recognition around the world. 

Now in its 19th season on PBS stations across the country and on a new digital platform, CLOSER TO TRUTH brings together some of the worlds' greatest thinkers and researchers into the cosmos, philosophy, consciousness and meaning. 

CHINA'S CHALLENGES explores how China is tackling critical issues, including disparities in wealth and education, social clashes, severe pollution, competing priorities, and tensions between China’s rich traditional culture and its rapidly modernizing society. With unprecedented access, CHINA'S CHALLENGES is co-produced by PBS SoCaL and The Kuhn Foundation in association with Shanghai Media Group (ICS). 

Recalling a life of love, tyranny and triumph, Zuzana Ruzickova, 90, tells how she became a world-famous harpsichordist and interpreter of Bach under forty years of Communism in Czechoslovakia, after surviving three concentration camps during her teenage years.  

THE PENGUIN COUNTERS joins a rag-tag team of field biologists who track the impact of climate change on penguin populations in the Antarctic.  Jeniam Foundation, Kickstarter, The Pew Charitable Trusts

HARVEST OF EMPIRE is an unflinching look at how power-brokers from the US and Latin America fueled massive migrations from South to North. Based on the book by journalist Juan Gonzalez.   

THE SEARCH FOR KENNEDY'S PT109, INTO THE LOST WORLD, DESCENDING THE DRAGON, POACHER PATROL. National Geographic Explorer 

In a hidden Himalayan kingdom, BEHIND THE ICE WALL takes a 100-mile journey with children who hope to attend school in Leh, down the frozen Zanskar River in temperatures of -40 degrees. Discovery, ZDF, Canal+

SUMMERHILL AT 70 is an immersive look at the free-range children who take charge of their lives at the highly influential experimental school, founded in 1921 by A.S. Neill. C4 UK

In THE CONDOR AND THE BULL, a wild condor is pitted against a bull as power struggles play out on Peruvian Independence Day. National Film and TV School of England

MR MIKE IS ON THE MOUNTAIN captures perilous altitudes on the 8,000 meter peak of Mt Makalu and basecamp at 16,000 feet, where Sherpas threaten to burn down the basecamp of a British climbing expedtion. C4 UK

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF TAYTACHA is about the largest religious pilgrimage and festival in the Andes where thousands pay respects to their pre-Incaic deity, who was said to have fled the church for the sacred peaks of Qoyllur Rit'i. National Endowment for the Humanities Youthgrant, Distributed by D.E.R.

THE BITE THAT CURES shows how leeches, maggots and bees are being used in conventional medicine to heal conditions that are otherwise untreatable. BBC, TLC