Neocolonial Echoes in the Heart of Darkness: Peter Kubelka, Ulrich Seidl, and the Distrust of Sound

Abstract:

The fascination with gaining insight into the motivation of European participants for the private and secretive world of hunting safaris in Africa informs both the avant-garde short film Unsere Afrikareise (1966) by Peter Kubelka and the more recent documentary Safari (2016) by . Both films provoke audiences with an interpretive openness that nonetheless must be understood as unveiled critiques of hunting practices and neocolonial attitudes. By drawing out formal and thematic similarities and differences, this comparative film analysis of Kubelka and Seidl illuminates the function and centrality of hunting via three interconnected aspects of their films: human and nonhuman bodies of otherness as central to understanding how both filmmakers view and instrumentalize the proximity of hunting and neocolonialism; the tension between word (sound) and image, with a focus on how the whitewashing of the hunting industry and conservation practices is exposed and challenged by images; and the key role of controversial images of slayed animals, dissected carcasses, and almost completely voiceless Africans in both films, which prove paradoxically indispensable for both Kubelka and Seidl in producing works that leave viewers with more interpretive specificity than is sometimes acknowledged.