Slavers - The slave hunters

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Movie
Original title Slavers - The slave hunters
Country of production Germany
original language English
Publishing year 1978
length 98 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Jürgen Goslar
script Jürgen Goslar
Chick Morrison
production Jürgen Goslar
for Lord-Film-Produktion GmbH, Grünwald
music Eberhard Schoener
camera Igor Luther
cut Alfred Srp
occupation

Slavers - Die Sklavenjäger is an internationally cast, German feature film by and with Jürgen Goslar from 1976, which deals in sensational form with the late excesses of slavery in Africa at the end of the 19th century.

action

East Africa, early 1880s. The worldwide slave trade is officially as good as abolished, but immediately before the area comes under German colonial rule, Arab and Portuguese slave traders are still engaged in heavy property struggles. Both sides proceed with extremely brutal violence: both against the captured blacks and against the respective competition. Both camps are led on the one hand by the despotic Arab Hassan, who sometimes likes to shoot down one or two slaves to amuse his party guests on his property, on the other hand by the gruff DaSilva, his Portuguese counterpart, who is in no way inferior to him in brutality. When it comes to catching black slaves, both sides are in tough competition with each other and don’t give each other anything.

In this atmosphere of relentless manhunt, a small group of European travelers get caught up around the German diplomat Max von Erken and his wife. Also there is tall, slim Briton Steven Hamilton. After initial indifference towards the black locals, he begins to realize that the human hunt is deeply inhumane and reprehensible. This quickly puts him in opposition to his uncle Alec Mackenzie, who does good business with “Negro slaves”, as it was called until the 20th century, but treats his “goods” with much more care. Soon Hamilton's rebellion against the inhumane hunters and human traffickers leads him to get caught between all fronts and be shackled. Some blacks finally begin to revolt against their oppressors, and Hamilton now definitely knows where he has to stand.

The film ends with all protagonists killing each other except for the Arab Hassan. Hassan now controls the slave market alone.

Production notes

Slavers - The slavers was filmed in the then British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The shooting time was from September 28th to November 17th, 1976. In Germany, a duel scene playing in the snow was made on January 4th, 1977 as a re-shoot. In total, there were 42 days of shooting. The film was completed on April 29, 1977, the premiere was delayed for various reasons until February 24, 1978. On this day, Slavers - Die Sklavenjäger was premiered in three cinemas in Munich , Augsburg and Fürth .

Peter Röhrig , who had been cinematically inactive for many years, returned to his job as a film architect for this production. Milan Bor provided the sound .

Reviews

Despite the star cast, the reviews were mostly devastating. Above all, the unrestrained brutality, which was perceived as an end in itself and which was shown in numerous scenes, was criticized.

The Lexicon of International Films found: “An accumulation of brutalities; raw, inhuman, cynical. "

Jürgen Goslar's biography of his rough Africa films from the 1970s can be read in Das Großes Personenlexikon des Films : “It was not until the mid-1970s that he returned to cinema directing, this time with three international and top-class, sometimes quite brutal, exotic adventure stories Flair, which, like his work in the early 1960s, revealed considerable technical, stylistic and taste deficiencies. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 7, S. 3491. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987
  2. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 3: F - H. Barry Fitzgerald - Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 331.

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