https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2025.12.12
The text presents the issue of landscape construction in wildlife films during the silent film era. Those films focused on images of distant lands at the edges of Western civilization, explored and conquered by white men. The creation of African landscapes or polar regions in cinema employed two main strategies. First, there was the strategy of fabulation, which involved enhancing documentary recordings with staged scenes, elements of plot, intensified dramaturgy. This strategy also used the technique of compositing shots filmed in different locations. Second, there was the strategy of simulation, which used film studios or nearby locations, but gave them a sense of realism by introducing so-called wild animals. In both cases, the death of an animal often sealed the sense of authenticity, as well as colonial and anthropocentric narratives. Additionally, the text draws on publications that contribute to animal studies in the context of art history (Giovanni Aloi, John Berger, Maria P. Gindhart) and, more prominently, cinema (Derek Bousé, Jonathan Burt, Gregg Mitman), as well as texts on landscape in aesthetics (Piotr Schollenberger, Adam Robiński). Using these publications, the contexts of wildlife film production are reconstructed and selected examples are analyzed. Based on this analysis, the author reconstructs this phenomenon in film history, situates it in a broader cultural context, and identifies the dominant strategies of landscape construction in those films.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
Download files
Citation rules
Cited by / Share
Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Język Polski
English