Safari adventure: Forgotten cinematic journeys in Africa

Film History: An International Journal

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 392-411

  Staples, Amy J ^a  

^a SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950326253     PISSN: 08922160     EISSN: 15533905     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2979/FIL.2006.18.4.392     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. See Wild Safari 3D press materials (www.nwave.com/wildsafari/about).
2. Bartle Bull, Safari: A Chronicle of Adventure (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 17.
3. See, for example, Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997);
4. Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
5. Jeffrey Ruoff, "Forty Days Across America: Kiyooka Eiichi's 1927 Travelogues", Film History 4: 3 (1990), 237-256;
6. Jeffrey Ruoff, "Around the World in Eighty Minutes: The Travel Lecture Film", CineAction, 47 (1998), 2-11;
7. Jeffrey Ruoff, ed., special issue on "Travelogues and Travel Films", Visual Anthropology, 15:1 (2002), 1-141;
8. Jeffrey Ruoff, ed. Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel (Durham: Duke University Press. 2006);
9. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde", Wide Angle, 8: 3-4 (1986), 63 70;
10. Tom Gunning, "Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the 'View' Aesthetic", in Daan Hertogs and Nico de Klerk, eds., Uncharted Territory: Essays on Early Nonfiction Film (Amsterdam: Stichting Nederlands Filmmuseum, 1997), 9-24;
11. Alison Griffiths, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002);
12. Patricia Zimmerman, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995);
13. Patricia Zimmerman, "Geographies of Desire: Cartographies of Gender, Race, Nation and Empire in Amateur Film", Film History 8:1 (1996), 85-98.
14. Ruoff, Virtual Voyages, 2.
15. See Genoa Caldwell, The Man Who Photographed the World: Burton Holmes: Travelogues 1886-1938 (New York: Abrams Publishers, 1977);
16. Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribners, 1990);
17. Charles Musser, "The Travel Genre in 1903-1904: Moving Towards Fictional Narrative", in Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker, eds., Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: British Film institute, 1990), 123-132;
18. Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900 (Friuli, Italy: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1997);
19. Charles Musser with Carol Nelson, High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991);
20. Jennifer Peterson, "'Truth is Stranger than Fiction': Travelogues from the 1910s in the Nederlands Filmmuseum", in Hertogs and de Klerk, eds., Uncharted Territory, 75-90;
21. Jennifer Peterson, World Pictures: Travelogue Films and the Lure of the Exotic (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1999);
22. Jennifer Peterson, Education and the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Silent Nonfiction Film (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, Forthcoming).
23. For a fascinating essay on IMAX technology and its intrinsic relationship to motion and virtuality in the travel film genre, see Alison Griffiths, "Time Travel IMAX Style: Tales from the Giant Screen", in Ruoff, ed., Virtual Voyages, 238-258.
24. See Georges-Marie Haardt and Louis Audouin-Dubreuil, La Croisière Noire: Expédition Citroën Centre-Afrique (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1927);
25. Peter J. Bloom, "Trans-Saharan Automotive Cinema: Citroën-, Renault-, and Peugeot-Sponsored Documentary Interwar Crossing Films", in Ruoff, ed., Virtual Voyages, 139-156.
26. For how the mythology of exploration in Africa was promulgated in the popular press, see Beau Riffenburgh, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism and Geographic Discovery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 49-68.
27. Paul B. Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (London: John Murray, 1861);
28. H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines (London: Cassell & Company, 1885).
29. Kenneth M. Cameron, Into Africa: The Story of the East African Safari (London: Constable and Company, 1990), 56.
30. Cameron, Into Africa, 55.
31. Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7. In his examination of industry reviews, Mitman makes the critical observation that the popularity of Kearton's film differed along class lines. As Mitman illustrates, the film had little appeal among working class audiences who anticipated scenes of Roosevelt slaughtering big game animals. However, he notes that the film was well received among middle-class and upper-class audiences who seemed to appreciate its unique scenes of animals and native dances.
32. Hunting Big Game in Africa was produced by showman Colonel Selig. See Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 405.
33. For Lasooing Wild Animals in Africa, see Kenneth M. Cameron, Africa on Film: Beyond Black and White (New York: Continuum, 1994), 45, 219.
34. For Rainey, see Griffiths, Wondrous Difference, 270-276;
35. Mitman, Reel Nature, 16-20;
36. Cameron, Africa on Film, 45.
37. Akeley, whose camera featured an array of technical innovations making it easier for filmmakers like the Johnsons to follow animals in motion, wrote an autobiography, in Brightest Africa (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1920).
38. See also Penelope Bodry-Sanders, African Obsession: The Life and Legacy of Carl Akeley (Jacksonville: Batax Museum, 1998);
39. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989). Akeley's film Meandering in Africa (1921 22) is preserved at the Special Collections Division, American Museum of Natural History. Africa Speaks can be seen at the Library of Congress and the UCLA Film & Television Archives.
40. See also Paul Hoefler, Africa Speaks: A Story of Adventure (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1931). The Johnson films are part of the collection of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, as well as UCLA, the Library of Congress, George Eastman House, and the American Museum of Natural History. Some of their titles are distributed by Milestone Film & Video and by Video Yesteryear (which also distributes Africa Speaks).
41. Many surviving African safari films can be found in the collections of the Explorer's Club, NY; Human Studies Film Archives - see Pam Wintle and John P. Homiak, Guide to the Collections of The Human Studies Film Archives: 100th Anniversary of Motion Pictures: Commemorative Ethnographic Edition (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995);
42. American Museum of Natural History see Nina Root, Catalogue of the American Museum of Natural History Film Archives (New York: Garland Press, 1987); UCLA Film and Television Archives; Library of Congress; and George Eastman House.
43. Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 50-51.
44. For example, the National Geographic Explorer series; The Travel Channel's World's Best Ancient Cultures, World's Wildest Tribes; The Last Warriors; Tribal Journeys series.
45. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)
46. cited in James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 93-94.
47. With the exception of Dark Rapture (at the British Film Institute), the safari films discussed here are in the collections of the HSFA. See Wintle and Homiak, Guide to the Collections of The Human Studies Film Archives and www.nmnh.si.edu/naa
48. "How to Bag An Elephant - Sneak Up And Nick His Heel", The Baltimore Sun, 30 June 1928.
49. See Peter Forbath, The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), 3-18.
50. See Johannes Fabian, Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 23-51.
51. For example, the 'Great North Road' which connects Southern Africa with East Africa and the Nile Region.
52. Ira Jacknis, "Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film", Cultural Anthropology 3:2 (1988), 170.
53. On the detour as a narrative device in the travelogue film, see Ruoff, "Forty Days Across America", 243-249,
54. Despite the representation of the Latuko as an isolated and remote people, they have in fact been visited by western explorers and travelers since the mid-nineteenth century. For example, the village of Tirangole, near Toril (Southern Sudan), was visited by explorer Samuel Baker and his wife Florence Baker in the 1860's. For Samuel Baker's watercolor illustrations of the "Latooka", see Sir Samuel White Baker, The Albert N'yanza, Great Basin of the Nile and Explorations of the Nile Sources (London: Macmillan and Co, 1866)
55. Zimmerman, "Geographies of Desire", 86.
56. Dark Rapture was first released in Europe under the title Images Africaines, (or Magie africaine as it was alternately known). This was slated to represent Belgium in the first independent international film festival in Cannes in the Fall of 1939. See Okomba Wetshisambi, Histoire du Cinema au Zaire pendant L'epoque Coloniale (Kinshasa, Zaire: Universite de Kinshasa, 1986), 3,
57. Francis Ramirez and Christian Rolot, Historie du Cinema Colonial au Zaire au Rwanda et au Burundi (Tevuren, Belgique: Musee Royal de L'Afrique Centrale and Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Africa, 1986), 22. The festival was cancelled due to Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the start of World War II.
58. Ruoff, "Around the World in Eighty Minutes", 2-11.
59. On the use of automobiles and trucks on the Johnson's film safaris, see Imperato and Imperato, They Married Adventure, 121-140.
60. With her name recognition and apparent financial backing, Leila received top billing on the side of the truck as the "Second Leila Roosevelt Expedition". Leila Roosevelt, daughter of world traveler Andre Roosevelt, carried on the family legacy of travel, exploration and filmmaking. When she was not permitted to accompany her husband Armand Denis on the Frank Buck expedition to Southeast Asia (resulting in the film Wild Cargo, 1934) because it was considered too dangerous, she decided to take her own trip around the world with friend and automobile mechanic Edna Olmstead. As a Roosevelt (her grandfather was first cousin of Theodore Roosevelt), her family ties and notoriety certainly helped in this enterprise. Upon their return, Roosevelt and Olmstead were personally congratulated by Eleanor Roosevelt. (See Renée Roosevelt-Denis, To Live in Paradise [Fort Bragg, CA: Lost Coast Press, 1996], photo insert between 174-175). Renee Roosevelt-Denis, Leila's daughter, has related that by the time they made it to Singapore to meet up with the Buck expedition, they were much more famous than "Bring 'em Back Alive" Buck.
61. See "Belgian Congo: Denis-Roosevelt Expedition Films Tribes in Africa's Darkest Corner", Life, 20 June 1938, 41-53.
62. Bosley Crowther, Review of "Dark Rapture", The New York Times, 10 October 1938, 14.
63. I borrow Dean MacCannell's term to foreground the nature of indigenous performance in contemporary tourist "contact zones" in Africa. MacCannell notes, "What remains of the primitive world are ex-primitives, recently acculturated peoples lost in the industrial world, and another kind of ex-primitive, still going under the label 'primitive,' a kind of performative 'primitive'." See Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Shocken Books, 1990), 14.
64. On the relationship between the rhetoric of seeing and 'discovery,' see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), 201-216, for her "monarch-of-all-l-survey" trope in nineteenth-century exploration literature on Africa.