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- Convenors:
-
Charles Ambler
(University of Texas, El Paso)
James Burns (Clemson University)
- Stream:
- Literature, media and the visual arts
- Location:
- G2
- Start time:
- 11 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
none
Long Abstract:
These papers explore the emergence of cinema culture in Colonial Africa. They focus on cinema houses as novel spaces in African cities. They reveal the role of cinema culture in constituting new urban identities. They also explore the place of commercial cinema in shaping African conceptions of modernity, domesticity, and masculinity in a colonial context. The papers draw on colonial archives, newspapers, journals, and personal interviews to throw new light on a little known, but important aspect of urban life in colonial Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Odile Goerg (Paris Diderot University)
Paper long abstract:
Going to the movies as a new urban leisure has been a great success from the start. But studies clearly show a different chronology (periodisation) and a different policy between Southern Africa (basically South Africa and Rhodesia) and other parts of Africa. This paper seeks to stress and explain this situation by focussing on the relationship between the expectations of the various audiences and the response of the colonial (and eventually post-colonial) authorities.
Did the rigid censorship, applied to foreign movies distributed in some British colonies and in the Belgian Congo, and the strict criteria imposed on the production of movies intended for an African audience, exist elsewhere ? How did the spectators react to the limited range of movies available ? What was the reception of Western as well as, some years later, Asian or Arab movies ?
As is often the case, a unique model is not appropriate for the whole continent. Rather, there was a whole range of reactions and negociations between the spectators, the movie theater managers and the authorities, be they administrative or moral.
This contribution draws on a wide range of sources, including colonial and post-colonial archives, interviews with movie-goers from various backgrounds, the press; and the existing literature.
Charles Ambler (University of Texas, El Paso)
Paper long abstract:
Film came to Africa early in the twentieth century and by the 1920s and 1930s American and European movies were attracting large audiences of African film-goers across the continent. Westerns and gangster films grew in popularity through the 1940s and 1950s, making their cultural imprint in the ubiquitous popularity of cowboy and other "American" styles. As elsewhere, movie attendance declined in the 1960s as Kung Fu films replaced westerns and television slowly emerged as a competing visual medium. In the 1980s the availability of cheap VCRs and videos resulted in a dramatic revival of interest in film-going, even in small towns and market centers. This development merged in the 1990s with the rapid growth of a domestic video industry in South Africa, Ghana, and especially Nigeria. For the first time, mass African audiences were consuming films, with African settings and plots, made by African directors. This paper brings together original research on African movie going and a growing literature on African film and video to explore the consumption of media products. The paper has two key goals: To look at the history of film and video consumption from the perspective of the audience experience and to link the histories of film presentation to video spectatorship-topics that to date have been investigated in isolation.
James Burns (Clemson University)
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the rise and fall of motion picture theaters in British colonial Africa. Cinemas were new public spaces that emerged in the rapidly expanding cities of Britain’s African territories. They offered a novel form of entertainment in a unique of urban venue. In cinema houses Africans congregated in large numbers, relatively free from colonial observation, where they viewed a steady diet of action films—initially American Westerns, later Asian Martial Arts films and Bollywood musicals. These audiences created their own form of movie-house culture that would prove puzzling and at times menacing to European observers. Elements of this culture—the raucous behavior of audiences, the active nature of spectatorship, and the influence of cinema icons on urban identities—were shared widely, from Nigeria, to Kenya, to South Africa. This paper charts the history of movie house culture from its beginnings in the early 20th century, through its meteoric rise in the inter-war period, to its collapse during the nineteen sixties.