The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1970 TV Movie) User Reviews

More Different Ways of Seeing (possible 'spoiler')

[Krustallos · 7/10 · 8 April 2004]

There are scenes in this film that have really stayed with me. As has been noted elsewhere, the flying doctors are almost a sideshow, what Herzog is really interested in is the different ways of seeing and understanding the world which are revealed by the doctors' experiences.

The most vivid example is that of the eye. The doctors tried to use a poster campaign to educate their patients about a fly which carries a parasite that can cause blindness. The message was to keep the flies away from your eyes, however the posters were ineffective because they used a disembodied picture of an eye and the Masai did not understand what the picture was supposed to represent. Asked to point at a picture of an eye they ignore the huge eye on the poster and point at the eye on a picture of a whole person next to it. As Herzog points out, it is we who have lessons to learn from this - about our unthinking arrogance in assuming our own understanding of the world is the only possible one.

This focus ties the film in with much of Herzog's other work, for example "Land of Silence and Darkness" and "Kaspar Hauser". A minor work overall but as a precursor to his later films it's fascinating.

A good, but atypical film from a master director

[dbborroughs · 7/10 · 30 April 2008]

Herzog's short film about the doctors that fly all over central Africa to bring medical help to the people living in the bush. We fly with the doctors and they tell us about the history of their service and how they treat their patients.

Its a very good, and considering the director almost too straight forward documentary. It has none of the earmarks of what you would think of as a Herzog film and if I had missed the opening credits I would never have guessed who directed it. To be honest the film is very reminiscent of a Mondo movie. Not because its sensational, rather because its African setting in the late 1960's coupled the narration makes it seem (slightly) more exploitive then it is(I wonder if the English narrator did Mondo work). What I found interesting was the stories of the culture clashes that occur for the doctors, as say some of the tribesmen refused to climb stairs or a poster designed to warn the people about a fly that causes blindness are not understood by the people its suppose to help.

Worth a look for the subject matter if nothing else.

Minor Herzog which still has moments of genuine wonder

[Red-Barracuda · 7/10 · 7 November 2017]

This early documentary from director Werner Herzog was, like some of his other similar films from the period such as Handicapped Future (1971), made for television as opposed the cinema. Nevertheless, it still displays some of the features which would go on to mark him out as such a great documentarian. This one is ostensibly about a group of British physicians who set up a flying doctors operation to help tribe's peoples who populate the vast areas of undeveloped rural east Africa. I say ostensibly because, while it does feature these doctors and describes elements of their operation, it's a film which truly works when it focuses on atypical details. This is a facet of Herzog which he would show an instinctive knack for time and again throughout his career, both in his fictional films as well as his documentaries. In this particular example, it's these odd observations which are the ones which stick with the viewer afterwards. We watch people cover plane wheels with branches and twigs in order to hide them from hyenas and leopards, both of whom we learn have a predilection for eating tyres, we witness the extraordinary sight of a tribe who are afraid and totally unsure of themselves when trying to mount half a dozen steps which lead into the back of a van – these lithe athletic people clearly having some inbuilt problem with navigating something we don't think twice about, similarly a group of Africans are shown a series of pictures and asked to find details we clearly can see such as an eye and a human figure; many find it simply impossible to do so. These latter two segments are frankly incredible and tell us so much about the human brain. The ways in which different cultures which have developed completely independently of one and other have very differing inbuilt ideas about many seemingly ordinary things. Human perception is a complex thing. It made me think about how the representative images that were shown, really are quite strange and abstract and it is only by growing up in a culture surrounded by them that they make any sense at all. Completely fascinating stuff.

When it comes down to it, the material surrounding the doctors themselves can sometimes become a bit dry but it is when Herzog fearlessly goes off message that this film really strikes a chord. This may be a minor work of his but it shows once again that minor Herzog is still something which always offers at least something fascinating.

Flying Doctors of East Africa

[Michael_Elliott · 8 February 2009]

Flying Doctors of East Africa, The (1969)

*** (out of 4)

Original title: Die Fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika

Herzog documentary takes a look at some volunteers in Africa who fly around to various rural parts just to perform operations and spread the word about medicine. Even though the doctors try their best they are often met with people who either refuse to listen or are afraid of what they are actually trying to do. This is yet another fascinating film from the German director who of course would go onto make some of the best documentaries out there. This film here is like many of his future works in that it doesn't take a look at the subject in an usual way but instead takes a look at strange things other filmmakers might overlook. The perfect example of this is a scene where the narrator talks about hyenas and their appetite for the plane tires especially those made by Firestone. The doctors also have to work with other strange things like one tribe being terrified to climb steps so they have to be lured to climb them to reach the treatment. The doctors interviewed for the project are all rather interesting since they are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They discuss the benefit of flying around to the patients but they are open with their frustration of the same people who sometimes make their jobs very difficult. Before operations the doctors will tell people not to eat but the African people think food is the way to get healthy and this here causes many to puke into their masks and kill them (like the story to the Newman film The Verdict). Running a short 45-minutes, the movie never overstays its welcome and in the end this turns out to be another winner for the director.

Herzog's East African "report"

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 20 March 2015]

Herzog described this as a 'report' rather than a documentary and I'm inclined to agree. It's a short film that explores the working lives of flying doctors who work with rural tribes in Kenya, struggling to deal with the ignorance and superstition that prohibits their effective work. As usual with the director, here's a film that refuses to take sides or criticise ignorance; there's none of that "white saviour" myth here, just an intriguing and little-known situation well described.

Common themes of the director's work are present and correct: the doctors visit an incredibly primitive village which consists of straw huts dotted along the edge of a lake, so it's man vs. nature again. The shadow of death hangs over the production with some extremely grim and upsetting scenes, but there's also humour here, as when the natives refuse to climb steps because they've never seen them. As a whole it's thoroughly informative and educational.

review

[yoshi_s_story · 5/10 · 18 November 2014]

Herzog relates the activity of the Flying Doctor Service, an organization founded by UK surgeon Michael Woods, that try to provide local tribes with medical assistance and education, operating in Kenya Tanzania and Uganda. They avail themselves of airplanes to fly where normal missionaries' (usually Christian nuns and priests) skills in surgery are not enough and a professional surgeon is required.

Among the other things, we are shown a faith-healer (who gets paid from people he deceives, but would never admit his earnings), and related how differently a different animal species than the Western mankind perceives and conceives reality, even in regards with diseases and how to heal those. For some instance: the successfulness of an operation is believed to be in proportion with the dimension of what is taken away, many are afraid to step on little stairs leading to the inside of a van, they try to eat food at any occasion before undergoing surgery no matter the medical personnel's effort in explaining it will probably be fatal; an operation or injection is trusted to be effective much more than something having no immediately visible effect, like pills, since the brain of these species has not reached the stage where it can link cause and outcome over a temporal distance.

This exhaustive documentary concludes — which extensively features Flying Doctors's founder presence — criticizing our inability to realise how diverse the brain and thus the thought structures are between European and Central African human species, how groundless is our expectation they may learn anything we explain them in our terms, and what a wide change of mindset about educating these populations would it take of us to be of real help. This is a work from Herzog in the beginnings of his career and moreover in the 70s' cultivated European milieu: it is well comprehensible that he speaks of this question in zealously time-serving terms. That parents frequently refuse to let a son returning from medical treatment live again with them, and this might be the only chance for kids to go to the school and receive a modern education, makes Herzog wonder whether this be good for the child or not. One could notice that it is oddly inconsistent to wonder about this and not also if it be good or not for these populations to receive financial and medical support.

Honorable, but just not entertaining

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 8 June 2015]

This is a 44-minute television documentary by writer and director Werner Herzog (still in his 20s here) about a group of white doctors providing medical help to African tribes living in the middle of nowhere. I have to say I was impressed by the efforts of the doctors, but as a piece of filmmaking this did not wow me sadly. Maybe one reason was that Herzog did not narrate the story. The guy who did it wasn't bad or anything, but with Herzog's narration it's just usually something else for me and it is a great addiction to every documentary. The only real drama in here was that relatives gave food to sick people although they were not allowed to. That says it all pretty much. worth a watch for people with lots of interest in life in Africa, but everybody else can give this one a pass. Also, I'm pretty sure this documentary would not be known at all without Herzog's involvement. Usually his films have something very unique to them where you see who was behind the camera, but this one completely misses that aspect unfortunately.

A sheen but hollow National Geographic short...

[Auctioneer · 5 March 2003]

Here Herzog sets out to document a small group of British physicians who provide medical supplies and aid to the vast undeveloped interior of tribal eastern Africa.

Werner's fascination with these "flying doctors" seems genuine though comes across as exploitive and poorly realized. He focuses primarily on the indigenous tribes' primitive conditions and quirky cultural differences largely avoiding focusing on the actual doctors the film is named after. Their backgrounds - their motivations - their passion for helping these people through great adversity is hardly touched upon leaving behind a sheen but hollow "National Geographic" short.

It certainly doesn't help that the film's English dialog is spoken over by German narration often without the benefits of English subtitles. And when subtitles are present, they are blocked and very poorly translated.

Still, there are good scenes providing reflection on culture, adaptation to environment and the nature of health care.