CHANG – A Drama of the Wilderness
Thailand, USA 1927 | 70 Min. | 35 mm
with musical accompaniment by Günter A. Buchwald
Before they created the most famous ape in the history of film, KING KONG, Earnest B. Schoedsack and Merian Cooper undertook a two-year journey to the jungle of Northern Thailand in order to collect shots for their second quasi-documentary film, CHANG. CHANG dramatizes the struggle of the boy Kru and his family of the Lao tribe. They leave their territory in the Siamese jungle, wrest a clearance from the thicket, fight against leopards and tigers and tame a young elephant. The thrilling and diligently structured story moves into a partly re-enacted scene that shows the destruction of a complete village through a herd of elephant cows. With this documentary classic Cooper and Schoedsack have established aesthetic standards for later jungle adventure films. Importantly, this early work also anticipates themes of their own later fictional work, particularly KING KONG (1933). CHANG shows impressive documentary shots of animals that can no longer be captured by a camera, as the land has been cultivated and many species are either threatened with extinction or have, in some cases, completely died out.