Unsere Afrikareise (1966)

A trip to Africa is edited into a brief documentary without continuity between sound and image or story and time.

Director:

Peter Kubelka

Storyline

Kubelka was asked to do a documentation group of Europe's hunters in Africa, working on it for hours and do the editing very extreme so film live leaving only 12 1/2 minutes, Kubelka also did a revolution in sound synchronization in which he called the "sync events," and also done editing to create an illusion of continuity for a moment, one of the most important experiment film of all time.

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Plot Keywords:

hunter | africa | female nudity | male nudity | giraffe | 

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Genres:

Short

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Shown in France in 1973 as part of a program entitled "Cinéma Underground".

User Reviews

A landmark avant-garde film...

Perhaps Kubelka's best known work, Unsere Afrikareise (1966)is a collection of images from an African safari cut together through the bizarre, inter-frame dictated editing for which Kubelka is known. The film can be best described as an experimental documentary, or put in Hollywood terms, National Geographic meets Brakhage.

Scenes of both a zebra and giraffe being held down and slaughtered, intercut with bourgeois European travelers chatting on a ferry, mark some of the most vivid moments.

As mentioned, the film is cut to a very specific rhythm. Though the images and content are quite engaging in and of themselves, it is the pacing and cutting that link the piece to Kubelka's ouvre. Probably shot on Super 8mm or 16mm, the film is hard to get a hold of today. I saw a pirated copy ripped probably from a VHS. The sound and image quality are obviously aged, but together with Kubelka's compositions and editing, the aesthetic is quite spectacular.

A must see for people interested in the avant-garde.

Details

Country:

Austria

Language:

German

Release Date:

7 April 1973 (France)

Also Known As:

Our Trip to Africa

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

13 min

Color:

Color