In lion-land with the movie camera: Gustav Grahn

              IN LION-LAND WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA GUSTAV GRAHN

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THE ROUTE OF GRAHN'S EXPEDITION PENETRATING EAST AFRICA OF THE BEATEN PATH


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IN LION-LAND WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA

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G
USTAV GRAHN—in person, gives you African adventures in thrilling motion pictures.  Exciting battles with the beasts of the jungle … primitive savages in weird ceremonies and native dances … some of the world's wildest and most inaccessible regions, never before traversed by white men.






He Made the Lions His Friends



The king of the beasts stalking his prey in broad daylight within a few feet of the lens is one of the most daring scenes ever filmed.  This camera hunt for the great cats was actually made without blinds or cover of any kind.  Breath-taking battles with two-ton rhinoceros give a vivid illustration of the dangerous but fascinating sport of photographing the jungle beasts.




One sees marvelous close-ups of the stately giraffe moving among the acacia trees, hippo and crocodile sporting in the water, impalla bounding over the bush, the gazelle gracefully moving over the veldt, intermingling with gnu, zebra, oryx, warthog and monkey.




Pictures showing the gorgeous plumage and infinite variety of African bird life fascinate old and young alike.





Tribes Never Photographed Before



Equally interesting is the intimate portrayal of the natives in their daily life, showing how they dress, how they obtain food and how they amuse themselves.  There are dramatic scenes of weird ceremonies and dances,—of witch-doctors performing their incantations.  A quaint but beautiful wedding ceremony is one of the most unusual picturizations ever presented.




The journey is interspersed with magnificent scenery of tropical vegetation, mountains and waterfalls.  The course of the expedition is traced by animated maps and diagrams.






Different New Thrills Human Interest Greatest of Animal and Native Motion Pictures A Hit—
Everywhere




NEWEST MOTION PICTURE ADVENTURES FROM THE DARK CONTINENT



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Mr. Grahn was born in Sweden, a few miles south of the Arctic Circle.  As a boy he was initiated into Arctic thrills.  Early in life, in a true Viking spirit, his wanderlust brought him to America.  Between years of schooling and the acquiring of a higher education, with graduate study at two European Universities, travel and a flair for the unusual became his avocation.




The art of picture-taking grew as a natural accompaniment.  So absorbing did this hobby become that he now processes his own films in his private laboratory.




His outstanding pictures, his smooth delivery, his magnificent voice, his dynamic personality won him immediate approval as a lecturer both here and abroad.





His Movies



Grahn's motion pictures are in 35 mm and 16 mm—
Black and White and Natural Colors




Mr. Grahn brings his special 16 mm machine which is powerful enough to give brilliant pictures for an audience as large as 2500.  Whenever 35 mm film is desired engaging party must provide projection and operator.  Local screens are preferred, but a large screen is available.  Window cards and programs are available for advance advertising.





Other Lecture Subjects Illustrated With Motion Pictures



Alaska and the Pacific Northwest Sweden, the Land of the Sunlit Nights Modern Palestine






ST. PAUL DISPATCH
MOVIES OF AFRICAN JUNGLE AFFORD REAL THRILL

Mr. Gustav Grahn's Films Have Special Interest Because Fictitious Element of Professional's Wild Animal Pictures Is Absent.




By 
KATHRYN GORMAN
, Movie Critic




BECAUSE OF THE TREMENDOUS activity of Frank Buck and the intrepid Martin Johnsons, who have taken to doing their Dark Continent work from a plane, movie followers are inclined to think that Africa is their exclusive property.  Mr. Buck and the Johnsons give the impression, although not intentionally, that they have put 
no trespassing
 signs on the land Mussolini is interested in, have made it their private photographic pass.




But now it seems that those three professional adventurers are not the only ones who are able to tote a camera into the lion land to focus it at the strange animals of that part of the world.  They aren't the only ones who are able to persuade the citizens of those lands to put on tribal dances for the special benefit of the cameras.




A man whose pictures are frequently as exciting as any of those taken by the professionals, is Mr. Gustav Grahn who returned a short time ago from a jaunt to Africa.  Unlike Buck and the Johnsons, Mr. Grahn, who lives at 150 Montrose place, has none of the swagger of the daring citizen who hunts with the camera.  His quiet ways, his lack of stock adventurer's tricks make his picture more exciting.




The motion picture films, which he exhibited privately in his home recently, are to be shown at 8:15 P. M.  Tuesday in the Lyceum theater, Minneapolis.  This public showing will be the first and the pictures to be flashed on the screen have been collected under the title 
With the Camera in Lion Land.
 … Movie fans who enjoy unusual films should find the reels of great interest.  Clear and well-edited, the picture is one the sensational Buck and the Johnsons should find to their liking.




Animals, Birds, Weather Make Interesting Scenes.



With a great stock of film on hand and a camera he had constructed to fit his purposes, Mr. Grahn and his party spent part of their travel time in East Africa.  They were there about four months.  Having a good news sense, Mr. Grahn turned his cameras on the animals, the birds and even the weather.




There are some shots of vultures gathered like ants on the body of a dead zebra…  Sinister birds seem always to be hovering on the edge of tragedy, Mr. Grahn has some pictures of them which are close to character sketches.




He has shots of other kinds of inhabitants of those lands, too.  Some of the most graceful of the animals are Grant's gazelles, creatures that spring across the rolling country.  He caught the oryx, a horned animal which you will meet in Hemingway's African book, drinking water.  The giant giraffes figure in the pictures also.  They are strange beasts, left-overs from a pre-historic age and one of Mr. Grahn's prize pictures shows one of the animals drinking at a water hole.  Because of his ungainliness, the giraffe is completely at the mercy of his enemies when he bends his neck to drink.  He is thrown completely off balance when he lowers his head to a water spot.  For that reason the animal approaches the hole with great caution and looks about before he quenches his thirst.  In the Grahn pictures the markings on the giraffe show plainly, and the photographer caught the animals when they seemed to be at ease.




There is a lengthy sequence in which the zebra figures.  Close-ups of zebras are scarce, even in these days, so that phase of the film is fun to see.  And there is one dandy stretch devoted to African lions.  Mr. Buck always manages to work a kind of scenario into his animal pictures and usually the lions are the least agreeable of the denizens of Africa.  In the Grahn pictures they appear in a different light.  The truck carrying the supplies for the expedition became part of the plot to lure them into camera range.  A dead animal was tied to the truck as a bait and the lions lured along in that way.  It might be well to explain that the country in which Mr. Grahn was shooting was relatively open.





Record of African Life Is Unadorned by Fiction.



As almost all movie fans know, the Buck pictures are invested with a drama which is quite unlike the jungle.  Mr. Buck quite rightly builds his animal pictures along fiction lines.  The shots he gets of them are marvels in their way but there is an artificiality about them.  Mr. Grahn simply went into Africa with his camera and photographed animal and human life as he found it.  For that reason it is a simple, yet extremely effective, collection of pictures he has obtained.




The problems of the photographer on such an expedition are as interesting as the pictures he brings back.  It is difficult to preserve film there because of the intense heat.  It is also difficult to develop pictures.  Sometimes the pictures cannot be developed until months after they are taken.  For that reason they are apt to lose some of the definiteness, some of the detail.  This presents a problem which the photographer must think of when he shoots them.




The light there is of a peculiar yellowish quality and it is intense.  That, too, has its effect on the finished picture.




Mr. Grahn is to be complimented on his good camera cover of his trip.





AMAZING ADVENTURES RECORDED BY THE CAMERA


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Gustav F. Grahn, plunged deep into the heart of primitive Africa with a camera.  He spent four months recording by photograph some of the most amazing adventuures[sic adventures] in the dark continent.  His pictures are appearing exclusively in a series of full Rotogravure pages each




SUNDAY IN THE MINNEAPOLIS JOURNAL




Raw Meat!


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And the answer must have been—RAW MEAT.  At least, Mr. Grahn has returned home with some of the most amazing animal and native pictures ever taken in the dark continent.  He succeeded in 
shooting
 unusual close-ups of lions and other wild animals and in other instances took pictures of native rites never before photographed.  His pictures are appearing in a series of Rotogravure pages exclusively in The Minneapolis Journal.




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