Basil Gelpke

Basil Gelpke was born 1962 in Basel, Switzerland. After his studies in Social Anthropology, Economics and in the production of scientific films, Basil soon became fascinated by all kinds of moving images. He started his career in advertising but soon changed profession becoming one of the youngest journalists to ever work for Swiss television. Among his first assignments was a highly acclaimed interview with Lisa Minelli.

In 1987, at a time when CNN had just started to broadcast, Basil became interested in round-the-clock television news coverage and joined Europe’s first TV news channel, the European Business Channel where he was soon promoted to become EBC’s Paris correspondent. During his time at EBC, Basil also reported from South-East Asia. He was one of the first journalists to venture into Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

In 1990, he moved to Cologne to become the producer of Tacheles, a weekly political talk-show on German television. There he worked closely with host Johannes Gross, a legendary personality in German journalism.

Whilst in Cologne he also compiled his first one-hour documentary “The Artificial Paradise” on behalf of Germany’s WDR channel. This film, about the history of LSD and its Swiss inventor, Albert Hofmann, later got nominated for Germany’s prestigious Grimme awards.

In 1992 as an advisor and senior editor he became involved in setting up Germany’s first truly 24-hour news channel, n-tv, in Berlin. In 1993 Gelpke returned to Zurich, Switzerland where he was one of the journalists to start NZZ Television, the TV department of Switzerland’s oldest and most respected newspaper. On behalf of the Neue Zuercher Zeitung he compiled dozens of TV documentaries in the years to follow: mostly on topics of Science, Economics, Medicine and Technology.

Basil also has a track record in producing reality TV programs. Through his company Lava Productions Ltd he was the Executive Producer of the legendary “Survivor” TV series in Switzerland (“Expedition Robinson”) and Germany (“Inselduell”). The three series he was responsible for attracted record-breaking ratings between 1999 and 2001.

Basil became interested in the state of the world’s dwindling oil reserves after reading a paper from a Sydney-based hedge fund back in 2002. He’s been laughed at about his obsession with the peaking of oil production many times but lately more and more people seem to understand and share his concerns.

Lava Productions