Flickering Shadows: cinema and identity in colonial Zimbabwe (review)

In the tradition of Hortense Powdermaker and Kedmon Hungwe, this book examines the role of cinema in African society. The subject is the Central African Film Unit (CAFU) and its predecessor and antecedent organizations. During its years of existence (1948–63) CAFU produced an array of films for audiences in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Of these films, Burns is interested in those produced for, or seen by, the African population. While the title indicates a focus on ‘colonial Zimbabwe’ the examples throughout the book are drawn almost equally from the other countries of the Federation. Even the image used on the cover is from Northern Rhodesia; ‘colonial Central Africa’ would have been a better locator in the title.

Burns clearly shows that the history of film in Central Africa must begin almost with the birth of the medium in 1895, and hence from almost the first decade of British power in the region. Southern Rhodesia, with its large settler population, became a site for debates over film censorship for all races, and film censorship laws first appeared in 1912. In some sectors of colonial society there was great concern over the effect of moving images upon the African population. For example, the portrayal of European women with loose morals was deemed completely inappropriate for African audiences and potentially dangerous; plots suffered as films were sliced clean. Many educated Africans also expressed anxieties about the effect of film upon the ‘unemerged’ population. Ideas about censorship, then, were also structured by class concerns.

Conversely, film was also seen as a powerful tool for instruction. At first agriculture extension films were brought in from elsewhere, including the USA, on topics such as soil conservation. Then, from 1935–7, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) developed educational films for Africans. Southern Rhodesian officials were inspired by such projects and founded CAFU after the Second World War. Instructional and entertaining films were produced and taken on ‘tour’ using mobile projection units. Films were made to spread agricultural, public health and political messages. When the Federation dissolved in 1963, CAFU was disbanded and the book ends with a hurried examination of government film production and display until independence in 1981.

As well as a history of colonial government film production and censorship, Burns also offers us a history of ideas concerning how the African audiences perceived the films they were shown. The latter is a difficult project. The evidence available to the historian is either that reported by the producers or obtained through interviews with the African film officers who projected the films. We therefore have access only to what observers thought about audience perceptions rather than the thoughts of the audiences themselves. We know even less about the effect of cinema on audience identity. Further reference should have been made to Hortense Powdermaker’s study of audience reactions to film in the Copperbelt during the 1950s. Powdermaker’s conclusion that audiences in the mining compounds were at times honestly perplexed by European films does not condone the colonial regime’s insistence on ‘talking down’ to all African audiences but neither does her work support Burns’s resistance to discussing this confusion as a real phenomenon.

There are a number of other areas in which the book could have probed more deeply. Cheap American Westerns were considered acceptable for African viewing and made up the bulk of their film experience for many decades. This phenomenon is discussed at length in the book although Burns does not link this discourse to concerns about violent images in movies and computer games today. Similarly, the now ubiquitous television and video recorder showing B-grade kung-fu movies in Malawi and children’s emulation of these martial arts is not flagged up as a modern equivalent to the cowboy movie phenomenon. Another notable absence is suggested by fleeting references to the films made by CAFU for the European...