PUBLIC LECTURE: Hunting and the Appropriation of Africa in two Italian films: The Path of the Wild Beasts (1932) and Goodbye Africa (1966)

Speaker: Dr Daniela Baratieri, History, The University of Western Australia

This lecture will analyse two historical documents, two extremely popular films, in spite of their belonging to the rare cinema-released documentary-reportage genre: the first, 'The Path of the Wild Beasts' belongs to the most confidant phase of Italian colonial expansion, the other, 'Goodbye Africa' to the era of Africa’s struggle for independence. Both films are pro-colonial, but the subordination of Africa is justified in opposite ways: unrestrained hunting in the 1930s and conservation in the 1960s. The juxtaposition of the two films tends to de-familiarise the values expounded in them making it clear that there is not a neutral, apolitical way of perceiving nature. Nature provided and still provides an arena in which different systems of meaning are fought over. Reflecting on it is of vital importance if one thinks how European ideas have and had a dominant role in shaping the aims and methods of conservation policies and practices in Africa. It is quite worrying to see that both the Africa as hunting Eden and the Africa as the Eden to be preserved is not there for the Africans and perhaps just as worrying to see the unquestionable role played by science, technology and progress in sustaining them both.