Travel & Nature Films
Nature films varied widely, with some even focused on dogs with jobs!
Many travel films focused on U.S. nature and hospitality, especially national parks.
Bringing adventure and nature to communities across the U.S., travel and nature-based moving images were popular types of nontheaterical films. The genre has a long history predating celluloid as traveling presenters showed interesting plants, animals, landscapes, and adventures using lantern slides.88 Lantern slides were transparent photographs on glass which could be projected using a device called a magic lantern; similar in concept to the later slide projection system. The transition to film in the late 1800s allowed for the capture of movement, giving greater immersion for viewers and more interesting presentations. With both mediums, filmmakers would embark on journeys to interesting places, document their findings, and create a touring presentation with the media forming the core. The rise of small gauge film was particularly useful to these filmmakers as more affordable film allowed for more content recorded and an easier time lugging gear on expeditions.89 Citizens across the U.S. would experience travelogues and nature documentaries through extensive touring shows set up in schools, museums, churches, and even parks.90
Nature and travel films possess unique characteristics in comparison to other types of nontheaterical film. Frequently these films lacked hard order within shots, allowing the films and its presenters to skip to individual topics, themes, or aspects without regard to chronological or sequential order.91 For instance, it matters little what animal or landscape follows a particular shot for a film highlighting a national park, so filmmakers had greater freedom to edit clips to individual tastes as opposed to say, industrial process films, which were restricted to a sequential order of the creation of a product from start to finish. Moreover, while often filmed by or captured in adventures with the presenter themselves and having presentations with personal anecdotes from the travels, few moving images in this category featured presenters - or any characters - on screen in films.92 This direct approach was not as strictly followed with industrial or educational films, where filmmakers would more regularly create a film for projection by salespeople, teachers, and other individuals. Like other types of nontheatrical film, travelogues and nature films often lacked clear credits and dates on films for ease of extended reuse.93 With a focus on presenting one’s own explorations and including more stylized content choices about nature and travel, the genre became unique from other nontheaterical films.
The later invention and popularity of color film would be huge for nature and travel films to show the vibrancy of the subject.
Subjects of travelogue and nature films reveal much about the interests of the filmmakers and the sponsors funding the industry. Essential to the genre was the capture of life, both, within nature and among people. An appeal to the exotic and interesting had the potential to draw in audience interest, resulting in many films concentrated on America and especially the western U.S.94 National parks and other natural attractions were commonly depicted. With the strong connection to nature, themes of conservation were naturally invoked but it was often a fine line to balance between protecting nature and exploiting it for profit.95 Entities providing funds ranged widely and included a multitude of government entities, business organizations and groups, and even large corporations. Local government units, as well as national agencies like the National Park Service, were frequent donors to these films to encourage visitors to national parks, towns, and everywhere in between.96 Likewise, large businesses, especially those dependent on the travel trade like railroads with newly established lines in the western U.S. were strong supporters of travelogue films.97 Even businesses in the fur industry were noted to have financed films, as with the french fur company Revillon Freres in Robert Flaherty’s 1922 film Nanook of the North.98 Other interested parties were composed of organizations which sought to benefit from more permanent population relocation, like real estate groups and business associations.99 American and western themes came to dominate travel and nature nontheaterical films due in part to the financial interests of their many sponsors.
Refreshingly direct, these film listings show the direct sponsoring authority in the listings.
Underlying these early films was the presentation of society by racial and ethnic divides. Depictions of adventure and travel in these films were chiefly filmed by, featured, and presented to white Americans or Europeans.100 What was unusual and interesting came from a baseline of this point of view. A central appeal of these films was the exoticism depicted on the celluloid and spoken on during the presentation.101 Such expressions were spectacles that drew in crowds. Sometimes the exoticism would spread from the screen and into the live event, as Great Northern’s film exhibition at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 demonstrated when the company included a band of actual Native Americans from the Blackfeet Tribe performing a ‘genuine Pow-Wow’ on Glacier National Park Day.102 Depictions and inclusion of non-white culture and customs in early nontheaterical nature and travel films often showed racial and cultural insensitivities.
The longevity of travel and nature films would be remarkable, with the genre being one of the most enduring in the face of competition brought by new technologies. Although VHS and other emerging technologies would eventually cause the field to stop using small gauge film, the tradition of touring travel presenters showcasing their experiences with film would continue into the 1990s and beyond. Film historian Jeffrey Ruoff researched the continued use of film within the small ecosystem of travel lecturers, including several still making films and subsequent tours across America as late as 2002. These 30 or so filmmakers were noted to possess a disdain for video formats, yet even so adapted to selling copies of their works in VHS at their shows for funds.103 Especially compared to other categories of nontheaterical film, this longevity was a feat, likely due in major part to the passion for film by the presenters and the self-reliance of the creators in financing and presenting their works as singular entities without worries of distribution. Moreover, the audiences these films attracted in this late period were described as middle and high class, thus allowing for enough patronage by fewer people to keep the operation profitable.104 A technique predating film, travelogues and nature documentaries would outlive many other nontheatrical film categories and continue the tradition of individual creator-presenter into the twenty-first century.
Many travel films were of distant, but domestic lands for US viewers.
Nature films were sometimes branded for children, as these listings indicate.
As these travel film listings show, many travel and nature films lacked dates to allow for longer lifespans.
Adventures to far off lands were often mixed in with domestic destinations, as this listing of travel films show.