H.J. Ayliffe

(b. Bath, Somerset, 10/10/1882 - d. South Africa, **/**/1949). Cinematographer. Herbert John (Jack) Ayliffe had served in the Royal Navy as a boy and had left the sea to become an actor. For some time he ran a theatrical agency and eventually came to South Africa in 1915 because of his wife’s health. He joined African Film Productions as a cameraman, was one of the cinematographers who filmed the military campaign in German East Africa and contributed to both Harold M. Shaw’s De Voortrekkers (1916) and to the African Mirror newsreel. From December 1920 he spent some three months on 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, Ayliffe 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 used in the subsequent trial, but it is not known what happened to it afterwards. After that 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). According to Harvey Braban, Ayliffe 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 Ayliffe as his cameraman because by this time he would probably have been familiar with the East African locations.

(Note: One source identifies the cameraman who shot the Bulhoek Massacre as F. Ayliffe, but it seems unlikely that African Film Productions would have employed two cameramen with the same surname at precisely this time.) (FO)

Sources

South African Pictorial, 4 June 1921

The Cinema, 22 March 1923

South African Pictorial, 27 December 1924

Green, Lawrence – Almost forgotten, never told (1965)

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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