Although contemporary reports claimed that Buchanan’s expedition was largely organised to examine the bird and animal life of the Sahara, for colonial historians it is the lengthy ethnographic shots of African communities that provide more historical interest.

The film, in describing the Emir of Katsini as ‘a staunch friend of the white man who recently visited England and was amazed by the sights of civilisation’, immediately draws a distinction between what it perceives as the white ‘civilised’ world and Africa. This contrast is reiterated in the next title: ‘“From Mud-Built Palace to Gilded Hall”. The Home from which the Emir departed to discover the marvels of Europe’. This representation of the Africans is partly dictated by the generic conventions of the educational travel film.

First, in order to boost the scientific value of its discoveries, and the courage of its participants, the film must represent the depicted areas of Africa as largely ‘uncivilised’ and undeveloped lands. This is evident from the opening title, which claims that this is ‘the First Photographic Record Ever Secured of the Life, Vastness and Mystery of the World’s Greatest Desert’. It is also apparent in advertisements, which promoted ‘a film of British conquest’ (The Times, 17 January 1924, 10). 

Secondly, the film, as an educational picture, presents Africa as an area of scientific study and adopts a voyeuristic approach towards the Africans as ‘subjects’. The film is filled with shots of Africans dancing, boxing, wrestling, hunting and playing instruments, and these customs and people are literally displayed as discoveries, alongside the birds and wildlife. A title introduces ‘A Fulani Woman’, and then presents a staged shot of a woman standing in front of the camera. Before a profile shot of a local man, a title urges the viewer to ‘Note the curious decoration of Cowrie shells’. The film does introduce, and through the commentary differentiate between, the various local tribes, but at some points these people are represented as if they were exotic species. The dancers of the Fulani hunters crawl on all fours, while the hunter wearing the white crest represents the ‘Queen Bird’. The film also depicts ‘the hard pressed natives digging out anthills’, employing their ‘primitive instincts’ and the ‘wildest moments’ of their dancing.

The historical veracity of these sequences is less important than the decision to film, and repeatedly feature, these ethnographic shots. The film includes a few powerful shots of the barren, dry land and starving cattle, but even here the camera focuses on the Africans climbing trees to collect leaves to feed their ‘beasts’ and on the local people hunting ‘the ungenerous land’ for guinea fowl. The film’s attitude towards, and representation of, the Africans as hunters, animals and almost as museum curiosities, extend into the discourses surrounding the film. For example, a review in Bioscope commented on ‘the hitherto unknown tribes whose primitive but exceedingly human manners grotesquely reflect aspects of our own civilisation as in a distorting mirror‘ (Bioscope, 31 January 1924, 54).

To an extent though, the film merely confirms existing popular colonial attitudes towards Africa and exploration. A tale, widely reported at the time, told how the camel ridden by Buchanan – the only one of 36 to survive the trip – had died two hours after completing the journey. One of the Arab servants was said to have pronounced its funeral oration. ‘It is Kismet’, the servant is quoted as saying, ‘he has all the time carried the big white man and it is not fit that the Nomad should ride him after that; so he has died’ (Journal of the Royal African Society, 1924, 236).

Tom Rice (February 2008)