Adventures in Africa No. 5: A dusty, weirdly specific safari slog

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you are a total nerd for early expedition footage or have a weirdly specific interest in how people used to wrangle wildlife before cameras became tiny. If you want a fast-paced documentary, skip this. You will find yourself checking your watch before the first gnu even shows up.

Wynant D. Hubbard is our guide here, and he is very serious about this whole safari thing. The movie feels less like a polished production and more like a collection of notes from a very long, very hot week in the savanna. It lacks the cozy charm of something like Alice's Picnic, and it definitely feels a lot heavier than the average silent short.

The Civet Cat Problem

There is this one moment with a civet cat that lasts way longer than it should. The animal looks absolutely miserable, and frankly, I don't blame it. Watching Hubbard try to contain it feels like watching someone try to fold a fitted sheet in a windstorm.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Adventures in Africa No. 5: Trails of the Hunted (1931) through its definitive frames.

The pacing is… well, it's not pacing. It’s just stuff happening until it stops. You can tell they were just trying to get anything on film before the sun went down. The editing is jumpy, and sometimes the camera just points at grass for a solid five seconds too long. It’s weirdly hypnotic, in a way.

• That one stork looks like it is judging the entire production.
• The silence is loud. Like, really loud.
• Hubbard really wants you to know how hard it is to catch a gnu. I get it, man, they're fast.

I couldn't help but think about how different this is from the manufactured drama of modern nature docs. There are no soaring soundtracks or CGI reconstructions here. Just a guy, some nets, and a lot of dust. It feels raw, sure, but it also feels like it needed a nap. 🦒

Sometimes you just have to admire the sheer audacity of someone in the 1920s deciding they needed to film a civet cat for the sake of science. Or whatever this is. It is not the most exciting thing I have watched this month, but it is certainly a thing that exists.