Colonial Cinema in Africa: Origins, Images, Audiences

by Glenn Reynolds

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786479856
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	06/16/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Glenn Reynolds is a professor of history at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York. He specializes in forgotten cinemas at the margins, especially colonial cinema in Africa, and the global proliferation of missionary films. He lives in Ossining, New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi

Preface 1

Introduction: Flash Forward: A Century of Cinema in Africa 3

1 In Search of Origins: Screening Motion Pictures in Africa 17

2 The Scramble for Images: Strange Savages, Paid Primitives, Negotiating Natives 39

3 Silver Screens and Cities of Gold and Copper: The Mines' Compound Cinema Circuit 86

4 You Don't Know Jack: Hollywood, Hybridity and the African Cowboy 115

5 From Red Blanket to Civilization: Movies and Migration in South Africa 131

6 Image Imperium: The Origins of British Film Policy in Africa 153

7 Films of Africans, Made in Africa, for Africans, Under Effective Control: The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment 171

Conclusion: From Reel to Real: New Horizons 197

Chapter Notes 203

Bibliography 227

Index 231