Ian Mackenzie's Home Page

I am a photographer, film maker and author from Vancouver, Canada.

I will not bore you with the story of my life.

My domain name, rimba, is a Malay word meaning 'pristine forest'. Below is my e-mail address. (It is displayed graphically in order to foil all those nasty perpetrators of automated spam.)

Below are links to some sites that I have created. But first, a wee apologia. I set up my website in the early 1990's. Back in those halcyon days when spam still came in a can, I had only two friends who used e-mail, and writing a web page was something of a feat, for it required actually keying in HTML code. The internet was still exciting, and being a webmaster seemed like a big deal.

Now I am older, wiser, and much more jaded, and, like millions of other amateur webmasters, years often go by before I update or even look at various of my pages. I therefore apologize for any dead links and obviously dated information. That being said, I see no reason for not keeping these pages "in print" indefinitely. After all, one does not discard a book merely because it was written ten -- or a hundred -- years ago. Besides which, I will be adding some new pages, perhaps even on some new subjects. One of these days.

The Penan of the Borneo Rainforest

"Nomads of the Dawn - The Penan of the Borneo Rainforest" is a book that I co-authored with Wade Davis and Shane Kennedy. Most of the photographs were taken by David Hiser and myself when we lived as the guests of a nomadic band. Half of the text consists of the words of these forest wanderers, among the last people on earth to remain true to humanity's most ancient lifestyle. Nomadic men, women, and children describe their life and send a plea to the world to save their forest homeland.

Dictionary of Eastern Penan (For Windows, use a recent "Explorer", and for Macintosh, a recent "Safari")

"Dictionary and Grammar of Eastern Penan" The Eastern Penan language is spoken by approximately ten thousand people in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the Island of Borneo. This work is the first attempt to fully describe the language.

Penan Home Page

Links and resources relevant to the Penan

Ancient Landscapes of British Columbia

This is both a collection of beautiful photographs and the most comprehensive documentation of British Columbia's endangered wilderness available in book form. Photos and text by Ian Mackenzie. Foreword by Wade Davis. Lone Pine Publishing, 1995. Cdn$24.95.

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest

North Flank of Everest -- Panorama

I've thought about deleting the following pages, because they refer to a computer game popular in the 90's, but which has been largely eclipsed by newer versions. But I've decided to retain them for three reasons. (1) My above-stated philosophy of keeping everything in print forever -- it's not as if these pages are hogging shelf space in a brick-and-mortar library. (2) The fact is, SimCity 2000 is a damned good game, and offers the player far more individuality, creativity, and downright funkiness than the newer versions, which are flashy but ultimately sterile. (3) Narcissism is a wonderful thing; purple prose refuses to die; and anyone who wants to psychoanalyse a frustrated artist or discover how I was wasting my time a decade ago is guaranteed some chuckles from the following offerings.

Ian's Simly Simsational SimCity Site

WARNING! SimCity is half computer game, half art form, and all addicting. Proceed at your own risk. I take no responsibility for your perdition.

COMING SOON (maybe, maybe not)

Cry of the Forgotten Land

I shot and directed this 26 minute video which documents the plight of the forest-dwelling Moi people of West Papua (western New Guinea). It was produced in 1995, was broadcoast nationally in Canada and Australia, and won ten awards at film festivals in the U.S. and Europe.