The ethics of wildlife documentary making in Africa: Fréderic Rossif's La Fête Sauvage and the school of lies

Critiques of faked sequences in wildlife documentary films have generally ignored films made in Africa. While recent revelations show how David Attenborough and others have misled audiences, the most shocking example is Fr & eacute;d & eacute;ric Rossif's film La F & ecirc;te Sauvage (1976). Though the film remains notable for many reasons - dramatic aerial sequences, lyrical use of ultra-slow motion, technical innovations, the music of Vangelis - from the perspective of Southern African wildlife film history, the production has to be seen as ethically and scientifically dubious. The interviews with the crew in the Making of the Documentary disc, rather than being a clarification of the conditions under which the film was made, were for large parts obfuscatory and misleading, acting simply as justification of their and Rossif's behaviour rather than any kind of honest retrospective.