60 mins., b&w, silent – French intertitles
Source : CNC at Bois d’Arcy
Background – This film was shot in the course of an expedition led by the then-renowned journalist and novelist Jean d’Esme, who was accompanied by a professional cinematographer, René Moreau. It appears to be the same as – or possibly a shorter version of – a film that under the title Peaux noirs, was released in 1932 and which is also held by the CNC, but which is currently not viewable.
Both film and journey involved visits not only to the French colonies listed in the title but also to Oubangui-Chari (now the Central African Republic) and Chad. In 1931, d’Esme published a textual account of the expedition, supported by photographs by Moreau (see ‘Text’ below).
Film content – Although largely structured by a journey narrative, there is little focus on the travellers themselves. Curiously however, as is clear from comparison with the textual account, the journey is presented in the opposite order to that in which it took place in reality. Moreover, at various points, the journey narrative is interrupted and instead a sort of catalogue of people or dances encountered throughout the region is presented. As a result, the film is rather disjointed editorially.
In the early part of the film (corresponding in fact to the last stage of the journey), the activities of various European religious orders are presented in a positive, even propagandistic light, culminating in the mass marriage of 60 couples in a Christian ceremony in Brazzaville. This sequence includes a fictionalised scene in which a bearded priest in a pith helment saves a woman from being married to a ‘pagan’ by paying off the prospective husband with some rolls of cloth so that she can marry a Christian instead.
Thereafter, following a catalogue of regional dances, the focus of the film moves north through Oubangui-Chari to Lake Chad, covering many of the same topics as the earlier expedition films in the region – the Banda Dapkwa initiation dance, the Sara Kaba women and their lip-plates, the Moudang “medieval” cavalry, the fishermen with butterfly nets on the Chari river.
Notwithstanding its ideological and editorial shortcomings, À travers … is well shot and contains a number of sequences of undoubted ethnographic interest.
Text : d’Esme 1931
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