Africa Speaks! (1930)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Walter Futter

Writer:

Walter Futter (writer)

Release Date:

15 August 1930 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Adventure | History

Tagline:

See the real Africa - HEAR the real Africa! (original ad)

Plot:

Explorer Paul Hoefler leads a safari into central Africa and what was then called the Belgian Congo, in the regions inhabited by the Wassara and the famous Ubangi tribes.

Plot Keywords:

Africa | Pygmy | Locust | Safari | Lion

Cast

Paul L. Hoefler	...	Himself (as Paul Hoefler)
Lowell Thomas	...	Himself (narrator)

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Passed

Filming Locations:

Democratic Republic Of Congo

Company:

Walter Futter Productions

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Africa Squawks (1939)

Hoefler records an Africa of the past.

In order to bring this important early sound era documentary into proper cultural and natural historic focus, one must bethink of the prodigious changes that have altered the face of Africa as well as its humanity and fauna during the more than 70 years since the film's production. One can only imagine the reaction of a 1930 audience which viewed the extraordinary events presented and filmed by Colorado-based explorer Paul Hoefler, including the death and mealtaking by a family of lions of one of Hoefler's expeditionary native assistants, total decimation of the expedition's surrounding flora by a massive winged horde of locusts, and remarkable animals and people of many varieties. Narrator Lowell Thomas' somewhat casual comments of events that could not have been greeted in such cavalier fashion at the time they occurred can be offputting, and his attempts at whimsy consistently fall as flat as the veldt being traversed, but withal the narration provides a raft of historically fascinating data. Hoefler's book of the same title, published shortly after the release of the film, differs insofar as the expedition actually travelled from east to west, rather than the reverse, but for purposes of visual impact actual events were edited in order to produce dramatic action.