African Paradise
Film Details
Synopsis
This film includes footage of a mid-1920s trip to Africa taken by Martin and Osa Johnson and filmed over the years 1923-1927. Traveling by boat, train, oxcart and camel, the Johnsons, together with their African bearers and servants, make their way across Kenya to a forest near a volcanic crater on the Ethiopian border where they will live for four years. Some of the terrain is so rough that trucks containing their supplies must be pulled by men with ropes. On the way, the travelers encounter and photograph native tribes and a performance of a native dance. In addition to supplies and guns, the Johnsons carry twenty cameras--ten motion picture cameras and ten still cameras. The documentary contains footage of Mt. Kenya and of wild game, including elephants, antelope, monkeys, cheetas, birds, giraffe and zebra taken during several journeys across the Kaisoot Desert. Shots of the African animal migration of 1925 are shown. Also included are scenes of daily life at the Johnson camp and footage of the photographic studio and the surrounding countryside.
Film Details
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
A viewed print of this film and additional information about it was provided by the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute, KS. Although ads indicate that African Paradise was a sound film, officials at the Safari Museum state that it was silent. African Paradise was distributed with the short silent, Tulagi and the Solomons, also produced by Osa Johnson. Osa Johnson, whose husband Martin died in in a 1937 airplane crash, went on a nationwide tour with African Paradise and delivered a lecture with each screening. The film's story was published in book form and entitled Four Years in Paradise. Although the book was copyrighted in 1941, it was not published until 1944. According to modern sources, this film chronicled the Johnsons' second trip to Africa between 1923 and 1927. The Kaisoot Desert referred to in the film was probably what is now know as the Chalbi Desert in northwestern Kenya.
The film opens with the following written foreword: "Everyone had told them it couldn't be done. Of course, it would be a great contribution to scientific knowledge-to make an authentic film record of the vanishing wildlife of the world. If, in the future, cities should crowd out the elephant and wars bomb the giraffe from the plains and the baboons from the treetops, these films would be an invaluable treasure for posterity. But how get near enough to wild animals to photograph them? How make them 'perform'? How raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars that would be needed? Would heat and humidity ruin their film? Their life and health would be in constant danger. The work would take years-might take a lifetime. With the aid of the American Museum of Natural History and its friends, Osa and Martin Johnson started for Africa. On a previous visit, they had discovered Lake Paradise, deep in the 'Blue,' where thousands of wild animals lived in a veritable Garden of Eden-undisturbed by man. Now with enough money to last four years, the best cameras and motor cars, the finest of lenses, specially made tents, and every kind of food and equipment, they headed for Lake Paradise, on one of man's most ambitious undertakings and adventures." For additional information on Martin and Osa Johnson, see the entry for Congorilla in the AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.0800.
