Country and People (documentary series)

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Land und Menschen (Original title: People and Places ) is a series of 17 American documentaries that were produced by Walt Disney Productions between 1953 and 1960 .

History and production method

The film series was created in the wake of and quasi as a "waste product" ( Christopher Finch ) of the series of journeys of discovery in the realm of nature ( True-Life Adventures ). Shortly after the end of World War II in the middle, Walt Disney commissioned the documentary filmmaker couple Alfred and Elma Milotte to film anything that seemed interesting to them in Alaska . Because Disney had in mind - albeit still unclear - to possibly make a documentary out of it. However, this was supposed to be purely entertaining - in contrast to the military instructional and training films that the studio had produced on behalf of the government during the war, as well as the industrial films that have been a mainstay of the company since then. From the Alaska recordings of the Milottes, the Disney studios soon created their own small archive, but Walt Disney was initially unable to discover any scenes of artistic value in them. Finally, in 1947, he himself flew to Alaska to get to know the country and its people a little better. Finally, Milotte expressed the wish to be able to film the colonies of the northern fur seals on the Pribylow Islands in the Bering Sea . Disney agreed and ended up getting clips that captivated him. These recordings were then put together to form the nearly half-hour documentary The Seal Island (1948), the start of the series of journeys of discovery in the realm of nature .

When these documentaries were very successful in the cinema, the studio remembered other unused material from the Milottes in the archive, including recordings of the life of the Eskimos in Alaska. The Alaskan Eskimo was then assembled from this and released in 1953. The film promptly won an Oscar in 1954 for “best short documentary”. This established the new film series Land und Menschen . Walt Disney himself wrote about their intentions:

"In the films and books of the new series" Land und Menschen "we look to strange worlds and strange people, describe their thoughts, their feelings, their everyday and festive life - and try to arouse understanding and friendship for them."

In contrast to its documentary films in the series Discovery Journeys in the Realm of Nature , Disney was by no means entering new cinematic territory with the land and its people. Rather, travel documentaries (English Travelogues ) had been in the cinema since the days of silent films. One of the best-known representatives of this genre was James A. FitzPatrick , who had been producing series such as FitzPatrick Traveltalks and The Voice of the Globe since the mid-1920s , many of them in color. With Vistavision Visits he also experimented briefly with widescreen in 1954/55. Lowell Thomas , for example, was similarly active, first working on the Movietone News Reel Travelogues from the early 1950s , then also on the Cinerama documentaries, which impressed with their extreme large-screen projections. Against the background of this competition, it was not enough for Disney to produce its country-and-people films in color only. Rather, starting with Switzerland (1955), all episodes in the series were filmed and performed using the CinemaScope method. The cameramen also made extensive use of airplane and helicopter shots to get spectacular overview shots.

The signet of the film series was the drawn image of the globe, which unfolds in a cartoon animation to display maps in widescreen format. As with the voyages of discovery in the realm of nature , music also played a central narrative role in the films of the Land-und-Menschen series. Oliver Wallace was responsible for the film music for most of the episodes, but the documentary filmmakers also recorded some of the original folk tunes on location.

Most of the 15 to 45 minute long travel documentaries were directed by Ben Sharpsteen , but also by Ralph Wright and Winston Hibler , who also acted as narrator for all films, for two episodes each . The episodes Wales and Scotland (both 1958) were an exception , the design of which Walt Disney entrusted the British film editor Geoffrey Foot with , because he was very impressed by his editing work on the feature film Rob Roy - The Royal Rebel (1953). With Disneyland, USA (1956), Walt Disney also "smuggled" a veritable self-promotion for the theme park that he opened last year . From today's perspective, however, this film can be described as a valuable historical document from the initial phase of the park and the intentions of its builder. Finally, Tiburon was one film project in the series that was never completed. However, excerpts from it were shown in the Disney television show Peole and Places - Tiburon, Sardinia, Morocco, Icebreakers, which aired on October 5, 1955 . With The Danube , a film about the Danube , the series expired in 1960 at the same time as the nature films.

Overall, the Disney travel films were and are less popular than the Disney nature documentaries. They were also shown less in cinema and television overall, although it should be noted that many excerpts from them were used as educational films in 16 mm format . And at least three films in the series - The Alaskan Eskimo , Men Against the Arctic and The Ama Girls - each won the Oscar for “best short documentary”. Siam , Switzerland , Samoa and Portugal also received other Oscar nominations .

The films in the country and people series

literature

  • Jane Werner Watson et al .: Walt Disney's People and Places . Golden Press, New York 1959, 174 pp.
  • Richard Holliss, Brian Sibley: The Disney Studio Story . Octopus, London 1988, ISBN 0-7064-3040-9 , 256 pp.
  • Dave Smith: Disney A to Z. The Official Encyclopedia . 3. Edition. Hyperion, New York 1996, ISBN 0-7868-6223-8 , 564 pp.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Official census according to Dave Smith: Disney A to Z. The Official Encyclopedia . 3. Edition. Hyperion, New York 1996, ISBN 0-7868-6223-8 , p. 382
  2. ↑ Christopher Finch : Walt Disney. His life - his art (Original title: The Art of Walt Disney. From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms ). German by Renate Witting. Ehapa, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-7704-0171-9 , p. 358
  3. ↑ See inter alia Bob Thomas : Walt Disney - the original biography (original title: Walt Disney - An American Original ). German by Peter Schad. Ehapa, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-7704-0705-9 , pp. 210-212
  4. ↑ Christopher Finch: Walt Disney. His life - his art (Original title: The Art of Walt Disney. From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms ). German by Renate Witting. Ehapa, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-7704-0171-9 , pp. 342-343
  5. ↑ Walt Disney in the foreword to the book version by Raymond Bricon , Maurice Croizard and Pierre Galante : The Blue Men of Morocco . Blüchert, Hamburg 1957, p. 5
  6. ↑ Geoffrey Foot: Film editor noted for his work with David Lean, Walt Disney and Peter Sellers , Tony Sloman's obituary in The Independent , online version October 25, 2010; Retrieved April 10, 2012
  7. ↑ See for example Richard Holliss, Brian Sibley: The Disney Studio Story . Octopus, London 1988, ISBN 0-7064-3040-9 , p. 178
  8. ^ Dave Smith: Disney A to Z. The Official Encyclopedia . 3. Edition. Hyperion, New York 1996, ISBN 0-7868-6223-8 , p. 382
  9. ↑ Richard Holliss, Brian Sibley: The Disney Studio Story . Octopus, London 1988, ISBN 0-7064-3040-9 , p. 179
  10. ↑ German titles mainly determined after 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963