Safari

As a child, director Jack Janssen saw the films his father had shot in Kenya and he knew that he wanted to go there. Now, he uses these silent, hand-shot 8mm images of elephants, rhinos and lions next to his own footage of Amboseli national park - clear images with an eye for the vastness of the landscape and the attitude and attire of the local Masai warriors. The film focuses on 'the professor', a Masai safari supervisor who, with his three-piece suite but with the characteristic stretched earlobes, unites the old and the new. The role of the white visitors has changed; what still looks like a romantic visit in the footage shot by Janssen's father has now become an at times embarrassing kind of tourism. The documentary is lightened up by scenes from a British colonial promotion film about 'the national park'.