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Contribution short abstract:

Focusing on the film productions of the White Fathers in Belgian Congo, Rwanda and Burundi (1948-1967), this paper will discuss contemporary colonial missionary discourses about supposed African film literacy, and chart evidences of local experiences of missionary cinematographic practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The film collection of the Belgian White Fathers consists of 80 mission films dated between 1948-1967, and mainly shot in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Providing a rich tapestry of missionary perceptions and representations of Central Africa, the White Fathers’ film production should primarily be seen as an exponent of postwar Belgian colonial cinematographic practices and ideas. Whereas during the interwar period attendance to film screening was structurally prohibitive, postwar Belgian colonial policies became more lenient regarding local film consumption, leading to the emergence of film productions that specifically addressed local audiences across the colony. This paper aims to bring the immediate context of their creation and application into sharper focus. It will do so by, first, examining contemporary colonial missionary discourses about supposed African film literacy, at the time imbued with the idea that ‘Africans’ needed films tailored to their supposed ‘capacities’ as a film audience. Secondly, it will present fragmentary evidences of how communities and individuals participated in, reacted or opposed to missionary filming activities and film screenings, as represented in non-filmic sources such as missionary periodicals, scripts, correspondences and photographic archives. By connecting these traces, this paper will shed light on the underexposed yet revealing encounters that took place behind the scenes and during screenings, and doing so will attempt to chart local experiences of colonial missionary cinematographic practices.