British wildlife film-maker Vicky Stone died on 17 November, aged 66. She was the long-time collaborator with her husband Mark Deeble on many celebrated natural history documentaries, initially shot mainly under water though more often topside in recent years.
The couple lived and worked together in Cornwall and on long-term locations mainly in East Africa, and their films were reckoned to have been screened in more than 140 countries and viewed by more than 600 million people.
Deeble & Stone films also won more than 100 international awards, including six Wildlife Oscars and an Emmy, for artistry and story-telling. Their most recent production, The Elephant Queen from 2020, was the first feature film to be purchased and released by Apple, and won a Cinema for Peace award.
“For almost 45 years, we were inseparable – together almost every hour of every day, every week, every month,” stated Deeble the day after his wife’s death. “We travelled far and soared high because we were a team.
“Vicky was determined, fair and forthright and, beneath it, deeply creative. She made things happen. Never one to seek the limelight, she let her work, our films, speak for themselves.”
Cuttlefish exposure
After gaining an MA at the Royal College of Art, Stone embarked on her career with Deeble in 1983 when they made their first film together, Yndan An Fala – Valley Beneath The Sea.
Released internationally by Survival Anglia in 1984, this award-winning documentary about Cornwall’s Fal Estuary marked the first time cuttlefish mating and egg-laying had been filmed in British waters. The work is said to have been instrumental in preventing a container port being built in the estuary.
Noted at the time for treating the underwater world in the same way as topside in terms of cinematography and sequence-building, the film was the start of a 20-year association with Survival Anglia.
The couple, not only accomplished scuba divers but also pilots, then moved to East Africa to film for the BBC Here Be Dragons (1990) about Nile crocodiles, and another award-winning film called Devilfish, based on giant octopuses. These two documentaries are said to have commanded unusually high audience viewing figures.
Subsequent titles included A Little Fish in Deep Water (about the cichlids of Lake Tanganyika, made in 1996); Tale of the Tides: The Hyaena and the Mudskipper, 1998, focused on coastal marine life in remote northern Kenya, and later The Tides of Kirawira, about a seasonally flash-flooded river in the Serengeti (2019).
Outreach programmes
Specialising in films written, directed, shot and produced by themselves, Deeble & Stone typically lived on location in the bush with small teams for around two years for each of their productions, bringing up their two sons Freddy and Jacca alongside them.
The couple maintained that their work was always driven by conservation and passion for the natural world. They built outreach and education programmes around the films by translating them into local languages, providing free broadcasting rights to the countries in which they were made and co-operating with local conservation groups.
Vicky Stone lost her life following a two-year fight against cancer. “She died peacefully at home, looking out over the cliffs and the ocean she so loved,” said Deeble.
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