Colonial Cinema In Africa

In Instructional Cinema and African Audiences in Colonial Kenya, 1926–1963, the author argues against the colonial logic instigating that films made for African audiences in Kenya influenced them to embrace certain elements of western civilization but Africans had nothing to offer in return. The author frames this logic as unidirectional approach purporting that Africans were passive recipients of colonial programs. Contrary to this understanding, the author insists that African viewers were active participants in the discourse of cinema in Kenya. Employing unorthodox means to protest mediocre films devoid of basic elements of film production, African spectators forced the colonial government to reconsider the way it produced films. The author frames the reconsideration as bidirectional approach. Instructional cinema first emerged as a tool to “educate” and “modernize” Africans, but it transformed into a contestable space of cultural and political power, a space that both sides appropriated to negotiate power and actualize their abstract ideas.

In recent decades historians and film scholars have intensified their study of colonial cinema in Africa. Yet the vastness of the continent, the number of European powers involved and irregular record keeping has made uncovering the connections between imagery, imperialism and indigenous peoples difficult. This volume takes up the challenge, tracing production and exhibition patterns to show how motion pictures were introduced on the continent during the "Scramble for Africa" and the subsequent era of consolidation. The author describes how early actualities, expeditionary footage, ethnographic documentaries and missionary films were made in the African interior and examines the rise of mass black spectatorship. While Africans in the first two decades of the 20th century were sidelined as cinema consumers because of colonial restrictions, social and political changes in the subsequent interwar period--wrought by large-scale mining in southern Africa--led to a rethinking of colonial film policy by missionaries, mining concerns and colonial officials. By World War II, cinema had come to black Africa.

Many studies focus on film in Africa. Few, however, study cinema as a leisure activity: one that has influenced several generations and opened up spaces to dream, discuss or contest. Movie theatres offered a break from the daily routine, as places of escape and of education. Cinema was also potentially subversive, offering an alternative to colonial discourse. Tropical Dream Palaces seeks to trace this history in a West African context: of broadening horizons on the one hand, and of censorship and control on the other. It fills a historiographic void, following cinema's arrival in the region in the early twentieth century up until the Independence era, and also looking further afield to Central Africa and its different models. Goerg addresses questions of film distribution in colonial times; of screening venues, their implantation, spread and different categories; while also focusing on audiences, their gender or age; the acquisition of a film culture; and the impact of screening foreign images. Her book draws on extremely varied sources to paint a broad picture of this cinematographic landscape: archives, the accounts of African and European spectators or administrators, novels, autobiographies, the local press, interviews and iconography.

“Illuminates the enduring importance of political and economic dynamics not yet fully explored in the study of African cinema.” —Africa Cinema and Development in West Africa shows how the film industry in Francophone West African countries played an important role in executing strategies of nation building during the transition from French rule to the early postcolonial period. James E. Genova sees the construction of African identities and economic development as the major themes in the political literature and cultural production of the time. Focusing on film both as industry and aesthetic genre, he demonstrates its unique place in economic development and provides a comprehensive history of filmmaking in the region during the transition from colonies to sovereign states.

This collection of essays deals directly and compellingly with contemporary issues in African cinema. In particular, they address key aspects of post-colonialism and feminism - the two major topics of interest in current criticism of African films - but coverage is also given to spectatorship, national identity, ethnography, patriarchy, and the creation of key film industries in developing countries.

Providing an analysis of the implications of centuries of Euro-African contact and its effect on cinematic institutions in Africa, this book examines modern African film from the perspective of the global politics of subjectivity, agency, and identity construction.

New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their films. Orlando illuminates the diverse themes evident in the works of filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène’s Ceddo (Senegal, 1977), Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (Angola, 1972), Assia Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes de Mont Chenoua (The Circle of women of Mount Chenoua, Algeria, 1978), Zézé Gamboa’s The Hero (Angola, 2004) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (Mauritania, 2014), among others. Orlando also considers the influence of major African film schools and their traditions, as well as European and American influences on the marketing and distribution of African film. For those familiar with the polemics of African film, or new to them, Orlando offers a cogent analytical approach that is engaging.

Films for the Colonies examines the British Government’s use of film across its vast Empire from the 1920s until widespread independence in the 1960s. Central to this work was the Colonial Film Unit, which produced, distributed, and, through its network of mobile cinemas, exhibited instructional and educational films throughout the British colonies. Using extensive archival research and rarely seen films, Films for the Colonies provides a new historical perspective on the last decades of the British Empire. It also offers a fresh exploration of British and global cinema, charting the emergence and endurance of new forms of cinema culture from Ghana to Jamaica, Malta to Malaysia. In highlighting the integral role of film in managing and maintaining a rapidly changing Empire, Tom Rice offers a compelling and far-reaching account of the media, propaganda, and the legacies of colonialism.