Robert Leighton: photographer-lecturer and artist

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ROBERT LEIGHTON is as much at home in Carib and Arawak lands as he is in the United States.  His films are the results of long and intimate visits to these colorful islands and countries … differing so oddly in character.

Mr. Leighton's well-known PORTRAITS are pleasantly diverting experiences in human relationships rather than obvious travelogues of sightseeing places  escape—but not picture post card tours … living documents with individuality.



ROBERT LEIGHTON
Photographer-Lecturer and Artist Presents Two Motion Pictures on Unusual Caribbean Areas—Recorded in Outstandingly Beautiful Color Film
Out of the diversity which is this little-known section of Latin America, Mr. Leighton has synthesized a series of dynamic film-lectures that shrink myth into photographic fact and misconception into exciting reality.

His sympathetic film-recordings are primarily concerned with the 'who's who' of places and the native arts, crafts and cultures.

His travels have been motivated by a desire to learn rather than skim, to know people rather than topography, to explore humanity rather than deplore its inconsistencies.  Free of conventional angles, these films are factual without being pedantic … entertaining without being dogmatic.

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DUTCH GUIANA PORTRAIT
DUTCH GUIANA (Suriname) is a sparsely settled jungle country lying on the mainland of the northeast coast of South America, between the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers.  The 'native' population, consisting largely of Bush Negroes, Javanese and aboriginal Indians, is a point of special focus in this film project.  These heterogeneous peoples make a fantastic sequence of contrasts.  Mr. Leighton travelled far up the waterways of the Dutch Guiana Equatorial rain forests to photograph them in their natural jungle environment.  The resultant mosaic is as colorful as it is unique.


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WEST INDIES PORTRAIT
GUADELOUPE and MARTINIQUE, the two 'forgotten' islands of the French West Indies; PUERTO RICO from the 'other' side; ST. THOMAS, a potential playground for continentals; fascinating HAITI, the only Negro republic in the Western Hemisphere; and finally TRINIDAD, home of the Calypso and scene of the most spectacular celebration of the East Indian Hosein festival, comprise this cross-section of the Caribbean.  These six dark islands of the New World are individually as different as their vivid histories.



ABOUT BOTH FILMS
DUTCH GUIANA PORTRAIT and WEST INDIES PORTRAIT are as interesting to the ethnologist as to the casual traveller.  The cultures which have gone into the making of these tropical lands and which reflect their distinctive temperaments, the surface serenity which masks an under-current of turbulence, have all been captured by Robert Leighton's camera.  Musical background for the dance sequences — recorded on the spot — add an unique touch.


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