Travelogue (films)

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Travelogue films, a form of virtual tourism or travel documentary, have been providing information and entertainment about distant parts of the world since the late 19th century.

In 1893 Burton Holmes created the first travelogues. His travelogues were primarily lectures, illustrated by hand colored glass lantern slides, but he soon began adding film clips. After World War II, Lowell Thomas created popular Movietone News Reel travelogues shown in movie theaters across the U.S.

During the 1950s and 1960s independent film producers created film travelogues which were shown in towns and schools across the U.S.A. and Canada. Public travelogue series, offering several evenings of travelogue films during the winter months, were often sold on a subscription basis in small and medium sized towns. Travelogues were usually about eighty minutes in length, consisting of two 1000-foot reels of 16mm film, with an intermission in-between to change reels. The travelogue film speaker, often but not always the filmmaker, would usually introduce each reel, ask for the lights to be dimmed, and then narrate the film live from an onstage lectern. Patrons could then meet the speaker in-person after the show.

One popular travelogue filmmaker, Al Bell, traveled throughout the midwest during the 1960s and into the 1970s showing his travelogues in grade schools.

In the 1970s and 1980s the popularity of traditional travelogues declined. But the advent of cable television channels such as the Discovery channel, and the availability of small, high quality, digital video equipment has renewed the popularity of travel films. Today's travelogues, often also called Travel Adventure Cinema Shows, may be shown with either live or recorded voice-over narration, often with an in-sync audio soundtrack featuring music and location sound. The shows remain more popular in rural areas where cultural activities are less accessible than in urban areas, and are performed in school gymnasiums, civic auditoriums, senior center multi-purpose rooms, private clubs, and theatrical venues. Travelogues have been a popular source of fundraising for local non-profit community-service organizations such as Kiwanis, Lions, and Rotary clubs among others, with many such clubs hosting travelogue series for decades.

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[edit] Further reading

  • Caldwell, Genoa, Editor. (1980). The Man Who Photographed the World: Burton Holmes : Travelogues, 1886-1938. Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0810910594
  • Caldwell, Genoa, Editor. (2006). Burton Holmes Travelogues: The Greatest Traveler of His Time, 1892-1952. Tacshen. ISBN 3822848158
  • Soule, Thayer. (2003). On the Road With Travelogues: 1935 - 1995 A Sixty-Year Romp. Authorhouse. ISBN 1410799719
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