Uli Schueppel tried to capture his childhood fantasies about Tanzanian wild life with an old Super 8 camera. Programmer Gertjan Zuilhof enjoyed the ride.
Going on safari is a kind of elite tourism. You need a four wheel drive car (at least that is what they tell you, but inside the park you notice that the roads are much better than outside the park) and a driver. You need an offical guide as well (to prevent your children from caressing the lions) and stay overnight in an overprized lodge in the park. So we did the poor man's version with a trainee guide (who we could bribe to let us out of the car to get closer to the crocodiles), we stayed overnight outside of the park in an old DDR campus (so Uli felt right at home) and the old Landrover barely made it out of the work shop. In other words: it was great fun.
Uli Schueppel and Super 8 Camera
Uli had the idea that only Super 8 mm film could capture his childhood afantasies about lions and other wildlife in Tanzania. Super 8 was still new in those days (it came on the market in 1965) and the specific colors and textures (still appreciated by experimental filmmakers) colored the impressions of exotic places (since television was still in black & white). Just before the trip Uli noticed that his Super 8 camera did not worked too well and in a hurry he bought another old one (everything concerning Super 8 is second hand, since production has stopped). Only inside the park he noticed that the camera originally belonged to the DFFB, the German film school he went to. Maybe it was this same camera that got me into the school he said, since for the entry exam you have to make a short film with one of their camera's.
Reliving a dreamed Safari
The park was strange and surreal and did not feel like Africa at all. The grass in the park was burned which gave it a kind of post-apocalyptic feel. Almost Science-Fiction even. No humans to be seen (other than tourists locked up in their SUV's). And very crowded with animals. Hundreds of zebra's, giraffe's, buffalo's, impala's and elephants. Pretty overpopulated was my guess.
Outside the park is the real wild Africa. Impossible roads with real danger: totally reckless driving lorries and busses creating a real wildlife. So going out of the park was a shock with the real. With slums and living without electricity and streaming water.
Buying bread from the village beauty
The next day we saw (and smelled) our lions. A telephone alarm of all the guides created a traffic jam around the old stinking king. Some Dutch father without a guide indeed let his son out of the car. He was corrected in time, but what more to say about our loss of contact with nature (once a dangerous place and now a photo opportunity).
Uli shot all the cassettes of Super 8 film he brought and continued with his digital camera. After a day we felt more free and like Dutch ignorant tourists we got out of the car every now and then to have a better shot or just to stretch our legs.
Fearing Malaria more than Lions. Rule number 1. Don't leave the car.
No Bite is the local mosquito repellent, Uli trusted it more that the anti-malaria cures most people take when traveling these parts of the world.
After Super 8 Giraffes the Digital Video Zebra's
The Mikumi Wild Life Park, the park we went to (the famous Serengeti was too far and too expensive) is like a big zoo you can drive around in. The people are kept out of it and the animals are driven in to it. But like zoo's can be nice to visit, so was the visit to the park really nice. I was grateful to this unknown Danish man that came to visit the Schueppel's family house in the sixties and told his colorful stories about the animals of Tanzania. Thanks to his story telling gifts I could sit on a Landrover and watch the herds of wildebeests and zebra's and feel like an American writer from the fifties.
Under the Baobab Tree
One of Uli's other projects is that he films musicians under trees. The tree here was overwhelming, but unfortunately there was no musician at hand.