Adventures in Africa

Adventures in Africa was a series of Warner Brothers produced documentary film shorts inspired by the success of Martin and Osa Johnson and concurrent features in production like Africa Speaks! and Trader Horn.

Premise

Wynant D. Hubbard (1900-1961), the author of several books on the continent and its wildlife, spent several months in 1929-1930 in Rhodesia with his family (wife and two children) and cameraman W. Earle Frank assisting. Funding was partly from the American Geographic Society. The chronicle of his adventures, with recorded sound adding to the authenticity, was edited down from an estimated 103, 000 feet of footage and proved to be a popular summertime theatrical series in 1931.

The studio later re-edited the footage into a feature Untamed Africa, released April 8, 1933 by Warners under the older Vitagraph logo. Hubbard made a return visit, per a Film Daily April 24, 1931 report,[1] and it is possible this additional footage was included in the feature, but not the original shorts.

Use as educational materials

Like a number of other Warner short film series, these black and white films enjoyed a second life as educational material for public schools until judged passé by the 1950s as more African travelogues were available in color. Like other cinematic adventures into the “Dark Continent” and Tarzan films of the 1920s and ’30s, the narration regarding “native” life may occasionally be questioned by modern viewers. Positively, there is much interaction between the Hubbards and their associates with the tribesmen shown. (Hubbard previously published a book in 1926, titled Wild Animals: A White Man’s Conquest of Jungle Beasts, but there’s little ridicule of other races and the few hunting scenes are for village meat, not trophies.)

In July 2011, the Warner Archive Collection released the feature film on DVD as part of a double bill with Kongo (1932 film). The University of California, Los Angeles archive has a cluster of the original short films.

Episodes

The original titles of the shorts were as follows, dates listed include some Film Daily previews:

  1. Into the Unknown / 15 minutes / May 17, 1931 (premier date; several films copyrighted on April 13) / features a fight between a lion and a hyena
  2. An African Boma / 10 minutes / June 21 / focuses on village life
  3. The Lion Hunt / 15 minutes / July 5
  4. Spears of Death / 14 minutes / July 5
  5. Trails of the Hunted / 18 minutes / July 19 / includes wildebeest, baboons, and a number of pets adopted by the Hubbard children
  6. The Buffalo Stampede / 17 minutes / August 9
  7. The Witch Doctor's Magic / 10 minutes / September 6 / Hubbard and his assistants aid a tribe “scaring to death” lechwe for food without any weapons involved
  8. Flaming Jungles / 13 minutes / September / a brush fire almost destroys their lodgings
  9. Dangerous Trails / 15 minutes / September 27 / scenes of hippopotamus and crocodiles
  10. Maneaters / 17 minutes / September 27 / a lion attacking cattle is hunted down
  11. Beasts of the Wilderness / 12 minutes / October 25 / antelope herds featured
  12. Unconquered Africa / 16 minutes / November 8 / mostly a recap

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/10/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.