Fred Ayliff

(b. **/**/1886 - d. **/**/****). Cinematographer. Fred (Frederick?) Ayliff was one of the cameramen who worked for African Film Productions on Harold M. Shaw’s De Voortrekkers (1916) and probably on the newsreel African Mirror. During the early 1920s he spent nearly six months in East Africa, obtaining material for the series The Great African Rift in areas such as the Rwenzori Mountains (better known as the Mountains of the Moon). He also travelled to the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean to produce The Roaring Forties, filming the hunting of seal elephants. Some of this footage is said to have been used later in Cherry Kearton’s film on Dassen Island (1930).

In May 1921, Ayliff was in the Eastern Cape at the time of what became known as the Bulhoek Massacre. The footage he shot was going to be used by African Mirror, but in the event AFP was prevented from doing so. The segment, "Defiant Natives: Israelites at Bulhoek", was debated in Parliament and it was decided that not only should it be banned, but that all copies should be destroyed. One copy survived long enough to be sent for use during the subsequent trial, but there is no evidence that it was and it is not known what happened to it afterwards.

According to Harvey Braban, Ayliff was also the cameraman during the filming of The Reef of Stars (1923), the feature based on the novel by H. De Vere Stacpoole directed by Joseph Albrecht. Interestingly, at the same time that he had been filming in East Africa, Albrecht had spent a number of months shooting on Madagascar and may have chosen Ayliff as his cameraman because he would probably have been familiar with the East African locations. (FO)

Sources

South African Pictorial, 4 June 1921

The Cinema, 22 March 1923

South African Pictorial, 27 December 1924

Gutsche, Thelma - The history and social significance of motion pictures in South Africa 1895-1940

Le Roux, André I. & Fourie, Lilla – Filmverlede: geskiedenis van die Suid-Afrikaanse speelfilm

Makobe, D.H. - Understanding the Bulhoek Massacre: voices after the massacre and down the years (Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol. 26, Nr. 2, 1996)

National Archives of South Africa

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