Director - Art of Adventure
Jonathan Derksen spent his formative years in Malaysia, Japan, Canada, and Bolivia. After earning a B.A. and B. Ed., and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (with Honors) at the University of British Columbia. He spent several years leading expeditions to the Andes, Altiplano and Amazon basin and teaching in American-style schools in La Paz, Bolivia, and the Indian Himalayas. He later moved with his wife, son and daughter to Kelowna, BC, where he taught journalism and filmmaking at the Central Okanagan Academy for some years and became the Head of School after that. He is fluent in English and Spanish and makes himself understood in Japanese.
Documentary work with National Geographic and Discovery Channel has taken him from the Andean highlands to the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. In 2007-2009 he scouted, led and was the “fixer” for a documentary film for Discovery Channel, “Tattoo Hunter, India”. In 2016, he filmed “Rescue in the Bolivian Andes” featuring the conservation efforts at La Senda Wildlife Refuge in the Yungas region near Coroico, Bolivia. In 2019, he directed and produced “Return to Old Crow” about the extraordinary Vuntut Gwich’in people of the Yukon Arctic.
Jonathan is also an accomplished writer and solid photographer. Publications include a travel memoir about living in India (Monsoon Baby), a hiking guide to the Garhwal Himalaya, collaborations on two coffee table books about Bolivia’s Altiplano (editor) and Madidi National Park (writer), and, most recently, a book of poetry.
He is passionate about adventure storytelling, conserving Andean watersheds and wildlife, and the preservation of indigenous cultures. He is currently working on a documentary about the fight to protect Bolivia’s astounding Madidi National Park, considered to be the most biologically diverse ecosystem on earth, being destroyed by illegal mining, funded by Asian self-interests.
Jonathan is the vision and leads the execution of promotional material for Sergio Photo Tours with his personal on-the-ground experiences that fuel the fire.
