In 1925, French filmmaker Marc All\u00e9gret\u2019s traveled to the French Equatorial Africa colonial region with writer Andr\u00e9 Gide to create a documentary record of the customs and cultures of the diverse tribal groups within the region. Unlike other documentaries of that era, most notably Robert Flaherty\u2019s \u201cNanook of the North\u201d and \u201cMoana,\u201d All\u00e9gret took an observatory approach to the subject, capturing the everyday life and special events of the African people.
\n<\/p>\n
The resulting \u201cTravel to the Congo\u201d is mostly unknown in the U.S. outside of the circle of ethnographic nonfiction film scholars \u2013 it never crossed the Atlantic for a theatrical release following its 1927 premiere in France.<\/p>\n
This DVD offering provides a digitized and restored presentation of the film, along with a new score by Mauro Coceano that effectively mirrors the remarkable imagery captured by All\u00e9gret\u2019s camera.<\/p>\n
Some contemporary viewers might find the film\u2019s pacing a bit too leisurely, and the film has a tendency to drift from segment to segment without effective bridging. Nonetheless, it provides an important film record of African culture at a time when European colonial authority still reigned on the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1925, French filmmaker Marc All\u00e9gret\u2019s traveled to the French Equatorial Africa colonial region with writer Andr\u00e9 Gide to create a documentary record of the customs and cultures of the diverse tribal groups within the region. Unlike other documentaries of that era, most notably Robert Flaherty\u2019s \u201cNanook of the North\u201d and \u201cMoana,\u201d All\u00e9gret took an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":35154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[2723,292,2721,2722],"class_list":["post-35153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-indie","category-movie-reviews","tag-africa","tag-documentary","tag-marc-allegret","tag-travels-in-the-congo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35155,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35153\/revisions\/35155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}