In the Blood

2005 FESTIVAL
90 min.
The ACFF selection committee selected In the Blood as an interesting counterpoint to Kalahari Family. This controversial film follows the hunting education, in Africa, of a young American boy. The film raises hunting to the level of a religion—a rite of passage. Filmmaker George Butler documents an African expedition that retraces the 1908 safari of Theodore Roosevelt. Butler places his own son at the center of what becomes a lesson in “ancestral heritage.”; As animals are stalked and taken down, we learn that the role of an active hunting culture as key to wildlife conservation. Viewers should be prepared to hear the drumbeat: Man’s desire to hunt is “In the Blood.”