Author Archive: Retro

Includes Day of Freedom, Munich 1938 Arts Festival and The Eternal Jew.

U.S. Navy training film, demonstrates how to survive under emergency conditions in the north temperate regions.

This is one of two nature and cultural documentaries by director and writer Heinz Seilman (the other is the 1973 Vanishing Wilderness). He shares the directorial and writing honors with Henry Brandt. Focus is on the wildlife and indigenous peoples in the former Belgian Congo (later Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo). A backdrop for the action is a central volcanic range of mountains flanked by green jungle on the one side and a dry desert on the other. The scenery changes as much as the animals that inhabit the different zones. Even though some of the local customs may have been especially staged for the camera, the people are still interesting, the images and animals striking, and the commentary informative.

Famed explorer-documentarians Martin and Osa Johnson devoted two years to the production of their 1935 Baboona. Covering 60,000 miles by air, land and water, the Johnsons ventured deep, deep into the darkest jungles of Africa. The images range from the spectacular (a huge herd of elephants filmed from overhead, an enormous flock of birds literally blanketing an inland lake) to the dangerous (a charging rhino, a battle between a warthog and a leopard) to the touching (a family of baboons looking out for one another in the midst of marauding predators). As usual, Martin and Osa seldom let the facts get in the way of a good story: If a scene can be “hypoed” with slick editing and contrived close-ups, the Johnson never miss the opportunity. Co-edited by newsreel specialist Lew Lehr (ironically best known for his short-subject series “Monkeys Iss the Cwaziest People”), Baboona was released in the U.S. by Fox Studios.

Wildlife on the Deserts of America’s Great Southwest.

The film is a documentary portraying a struggle as man tries to subdue nature. To prevent flooding and for purposes of land reclamation, the people of the Netherlands struggle and succeed in building a breaker, thereby eliminating the wild inland body of water once known as the Zuider Zee (now called Ijsselmeer).