65/76 mins., b&w, silent
Source : IWF/TIB
This film was distributed for a period by the IWF but since the IWF collection was incorporated into the German National Library (TIB), it has not been available for distribution, due to copyright restrictions. It can, however, be viewed at the TIB itself.
As it was not possible to view the film, the descriptions offered here are derived from secondary sources.
Background – This film is made up primarily of material shot during an expedition led by Hans Schomburgk to northern Togo in 1913-14, but also incorporates some material shot on a previous expedition that he had made to Liberia. The material was shot by professional cameramen: James S. ‘Jimmy’ Hodgson in the case of the Togo footage, Georg Bürli in case of the Liberian footage. Schomburgk had a very low opinion of Bürli, but Hodgson had previously worked for Pathé and Gaumont and would go on to develop a distinguished career as a newsreel cameraman.
Another prominent member of the expedition was the German actress Meg Gehrts, whom Schomburgk had invited along to play the lead role in a number of fictional melodramas, notably The White Goddess of the Wangora, but also Odd Man Out, The Outlaw of the Sudu Mountains and The Heroes of the Paratau – all seemingly now lost.
Schomburgk planned to make these fictional films alongside the more ethnographic footage, hoping to pay for the expedition as a whole through later box-office takings. Shortly after their return, in 1915, Gehrts published a memoir about the expedition that is interesting, though often irritatingly prejudiced to a modern reader. It includes some good photographs mostly taken by Schomburgk but also some by Gehrts herself. This is available on the web here.
The principal expedition film appears to have been released in various versions. A first version was premièred at the Royal Philharmonic Hall in London in 1914 under the title “Treks and Trails in West Africa”, but the material then appears to have been re-edited and presented under the title Im Deutschen Sudan for the first time in 1916 with a running time of 65 minutes. Other sources refer to a 76-minute version released in 1917. Either way, this was exceptionally long for an expedition film of ethnographic interest made prior to the First World War in Africa.
Content – Although some of the footage concerns wildlife, notably the sequence showing the capture of a pygmy hippopotamus which was filmed during the earlier expedition to Liberia and which is inserted in the middle of the film, most of the footage concerns the indigenous groups of northern Togo, particularly the Kotokoli. This material includes market scenes, cotton harvesting, spinning, men weaving on a treadle loom and women weaving on a vertical loom, selling of the cloth, games, basketry, making of belts from palm nut shells, men fishing collectively, equestrian games, and a visit to a traditional ruler (Uro Dyabo Bukari IV).
Market scenes recorded at Sansane-Mango mainly show the making of leather goods by the Hausa, but there are also scenes of salt and kola trading. Childcare and the preparation of food were filmed among the Tyokossi. Also important are iron processing among the Bassari and Konkomba archers shooting their bows and arrows. The film as a whole is framed by scenes of expedition life.
Texts: Gehrts 1915/1996, Zwernemann 1978.
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