Original subtitles

Listen well.

One day, all the animals who are domesticated

humiliated, imprisoned by man

will leave, will go far away

to live once again as citizens of the Wild Nation.

Everything starts anew

as if it was the first dawn, as it were fifty million years ago.

In this land, where it all began

in the animals Africa, an amorous combat between impalas.

Listen well.

The Bushmen, the oldest inhabitants of Africa

who can still speak the language of animals

say that the cheetah always attacks impalas

when they are not vigilant: the time of love.

At 70 miles an hour, he is the swiftest of beasts

but he doesn't run for long.

Like death, he prefers to surprise.

When he runs between sky and water

the big hippopotamus is as graceful as a horse.

The tiger is of all the animals

the most ferocious, the most voluptuous.

He chooses to hunt at night.

They are the first form

drawn by the first hand on the wall of the first cave.

They are the first image on the fabric of our first dreams.

Animals are our first dream companions.

Look well at this insect

the praying mantis is a living code.

Somewhere, another praying mantis

will receive her message and understand it.

A message she has danced for two hundred million years.

Long ago, animals with their bodies

drew the first signs expressed the first emotions.

Long ago

animals knew what love is

what death is

what the rhythm of life is.

Look well at this millennial insect.

Its rhythm and language

can teach us the one lasting truth: instinctual life.

This almost human form, the sloth

has been journeying towards us for fifty million years.

He is one of the oldest animals in the world.

He drinks only dew.

His age old companion, the great anteater

also lives along the Amazon river.

He is called lazy in all the languages of the world.

He sleeps nineteen hours a day.

At top speed he travels two hundred yards an hour.

His digestion time is eight days.

How has this prehistoric animal

been able to pass through so many millions of centuries unarmed?

How many thousands of years

to make out of the toothless head of the anteater

the perfect instrument for putting ants to death?

With his 24 inch long gluey tongue

he traps the pounds of ants he eats every day.

It's in a tree

that the sloth is the swiftest and the happiest.

The firebird or red ibis.

The Indians of the Orinoco river call it the bird of love.

Joining together heaven and earth, they expand in space.

For the Hindus

the crane is three times divine

in beauty, in song, in movement.

By imitating her, man learned to talk.

The pelican always dives in one swoop

for the small fish at the bottom of the river.

The handsomest, the biggest, the lightest of wind sailors

the frigate bird

whom the Indians of Amazonia

call simply the bird or the God Bird.

A wingspan of six feet for a surprisingly small body.

They say that the frigate bird

created the earth with one stroke of his wings.

In mating seasons, it's the male who calls the females.

It's the male who swells out the bursting point

the red naked skin of his neck.

It's the male who hammers out his percussive love cry

while for a very long time the females remain indifferent.

Until exhaustion, he will call his lovers

who will come from the sky.

Midway between earth and sky

the pink flamingo.

The flamingo first witness of all earthly adventures.

For it's from the sky

one can really see the goings-on on the ground.

In the desert, a wild race

the hare of Afghanistan pursued by his death the fox.

Like a character in a child's dream, the jump rabbit.

For him, everything is a reason to play and to be alert.

His love cry carries far into the Kalahari desert.

His timeless enemy, the jackal.

Upright in the desert, fragile sentries

the suricates.

Small alert rodents, always ready to forget fear for the sake of a game.

They flee up at the cry of the rapacious Sagittarius bird.

Elegant, all feathered out

he looks as he's made himself up for the killing.

In the land of animals

a mountain is just a continuation of a desert.

Twelve thousand feet up

drank with space and thin air

the ibex.

Mad with love, happy to exhaustion.

From the alps of Europe to the summits of the Palmyres

the ibex, magical creature

springs off empty space to fly over the abyss.

In India, motionless in mid river

the Anhinga, a fishing bird.

For the Hindus, in the beginning there was the elephant.

It is he who holds up the four corners of the earth.

He lives to be 100

grows throughout his lifetime procreating until 80.

An orphan always finds another she elephant

who will look after him.

The elephant has known so much for so long

that sometimes he stops to think about it all.

The African elephant is more powerful than the elephant of India.

In one day

he can walk 18 miles, swallow 80 pounds of food

and drink 15 gallons of water.

When God had finished creating all the animals of Africa

he realized that he still had some pieces left.

He put them together as best he could and made the elephant.

To comfort him to being last he received some extras

memory and lightness.

Dusk is the quiet hour when the animals go to water.

For an African, it's the hour when dreams come to man.

It's the hour when, if you listen well

you will hear a certain music.

At nightfall, all the flesh eating animals

all the great beasts of the world go in silence.

In the south, the lion of the African savannah.

The cheetah of the plains.

To the east, the Indian panther.

To the west, the puma of the two Americas.

To the north, the night of the wolf.

The boar will fight a long battle

against the organized horde of the wolves.

The lone wolf will run a long way.

He'll run during his whole wolf's life from land to land

to the mountains of Persia

where we meet another runner, the shy mouflon.

The rhinoceros is prehistory alive.

The giraffe

feminine and in love.

This tall beauty is mute.

The neck is too long for vocal chords

but perfect for expressing love and inventing caresses.

The otter, called by the Indians waterdog or friend of the moon.

He swims as fast as a fish.

He barks to sound the alarm.

The panther, absolute danger.

She can swim, run, climb.

She attacks man and beasts alike.

But on certain days, on the banks of the Ganges

she is a lover.

On the other side of the world, along the Amazon river

two jaguars.

The male takes all two water hens all for himself.

But the time of love is over and the female too can be fast.

To protect her prey from other beasts

the African panther hoists into a tree the impala she has killed.

According to the Bushmen, the greatest hunters of Africa

no one can see the panther hunting

because she is quicker than lightening.

Watch closely.

And sealed in the branches of the tree she's on the lookout for living prey.

Watch closely.

She sees the baboon before he sees her.

The oryx.

In ancient Egypt

man believed he had the power to increase fourfold

his saber like horns.

The fight between males is often mortal.

It's the Oryx who inspired the sculpture in movement

which is the African mask.

The Bushmen sing:

Mask: image of supernatural forces.

Mask: sacred way leading to ecstasy.

The greater Kudu

so difficult to spot that it was said it didn't exist

that it was just a hunter's dream.

The Bushmen sing:

Children, all the animals are now awake.

They leave their resting places led by the great Kudu.

With his long leaps he creates the light of day.

He can leaps so high

that if he likes he can eat the moon.

This strange antelope who looks more like a buffalo

is the gnu, the lion's favorite prey.

For the Bushmen, the oldest inhabitants of Africa

the fight between the lion and the gnu

personifies the opposition between sun and shadow

day and night

summer and winter.

The lion can go a long time without eating

and he kills only for food.

A lion's life:

hunting, sleeping, caressing.

It is said in Africa: when the lion loves

the sun stands still.

In reality, for the adult male

it's the beginning of hard times.

First he has to get rid of his son, a young male

who would like to enter the game.

Then without food, without rest

he follows the lioness.

Always the asker, always almost refused.

Often provoked and then kept at a distance.

This goes on for ten days and ten nights.

The lioness is the one who commands the hunt.

The lioness is the one who grants love.

My beloved is likened to a gazelle.

SUBTITLING SILVERWAY MEDIA