Overview

Africa’s Last Romantic: The Films, Books and Expeditions of John L. Brom captures the drama and excitement of John L. Brom’s film expeditions from 1949 to 1962 through sub-Saharan Africa. Brom was the only explorer to follow the footsteps of Henry Morton Stanley and in a documentary interviewed the two last survivors of Stanley’s expeditions from 1874 to 1890. In 1955 he also interviewed the famous nineteenth-century East African slave trader Tippu Tip’s grandson, who defended his grandfather’s trade. Brom’s expedition was the basis for his bestseller 20,000 Miles in the African Jungle, which was translated into eleven languages. Brom managed to interview and film the rulers and tribes he encountered before they were decimated in the civil wars of the Congo after independence, and his historic films are now preserved in the Human Studies Film Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. Over 500 articles were published on Brom’s work on both sides of the Atlantic during his lifetime. Africa’s Last Romantic is a useful addition to college courses in Third World cinema, cinema studies, and African history.

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9781433124792

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Olga Brom Spencer, PhD, a former faculty member at New York University, served as Executive Director of the Center for Family Development, Inc., in Westchester, New York, and the World Trade Center until her retirement. The focus of her studies was the family, women’s changing roles and aging issues. She accompanied her first husband, Dr. John L. Brom to Africa on three occasions and used her African experiences in her books and articles. For her contribution to aging issues, she received a National Award to Seniors remitted in AARP headquarters in Washington, D.C. Glenn Reynolds is Associate Professor of Non-Western History at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York. Graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with a BA in political science, Reynolds earned a PhD in history from SUNY-Stonybrook with a primary research agenda in African film studies and a specialty in colonial cinema. He is the editor of Images out of Africa: The Virginia Garner Diaries of the Africa Motion Picture Project (2011) and has published articles in the Journal of Social History, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of Southern African Studies, and the South African Historical Journal.

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