Vegans do not need to watch this. It’s hard to watch even if you’re non-Vegan!
This is from an Italian film called Africa Addio, and this film is quite controversial. However, the controversy doesn’t come from these hunting scenes, which were probably contrived. ( However, the elephant and hippo footage did tick off Roger Ebert.) The film is essentially an apologia for European colonialism. The message is: “Look at them savages. They like torturing animals for fun!”
However, despite all the controversy. I do have one little question.
How do you think our ancestors killed mammoths and mastodons?
Probably something similar to the this.
Contrived?
You gotta be kidding (unless the Itaians were special effects pioneers in the 70s)
Movie Producer: Guys, here are some spears, there is an angry hippo over there that we bought from the San Diego Zoo. Just go run over to it and stick it a few times, and we will give out Ray Bans and gold Seikos as soon as it is all done.
Guys: Ok, wait, what? Spears? We shoot hippos with rifles, have been for generations.
Producer: Just do it, no time for questions, the hippo is waking up…
My adviser in undergrad was from Ghana (and he has since returned). He told me a story about how they would prepare for a forest elephant hunt. (Forest elephants are smaller and more straight-tusked that then savanna elephants we normally see on nature films.)
They would have the local priest (who very often was also a Christian minister– syncretism is very common in parts of Africa) to do a special blessing for the elephant hunters. Even though they used rifles, hunting elephants is pretty dangerous, and only those who had been blessed could go after the animal.
The hunt requires that the hunters respect the animal.
Torturing the animal as they are doing here would not have been good. It probably would have brought bad spirits– at least to their religion.
My guess is that these people were hunting many of these animals but using spears like this would be too risky. Of course, if this is Kenya, it makes sense. Because of the Mau-Mau, Kenya banned all firearms among the indigenous population.
[…] However, despite that criticism, this films is far better than Africa Addio! […]