From the Inside: The Colonial Film Unit and the Beginning of the End

In January 1948 the British Film Institute organized a conference entitled "The Film in Colonial Development." While speakers at the conference trotted out, as the journal West Africa termed it, "the old rusty arguments about primitive, illiterate peoples … ad nauseam," they also acknowledged a shift in colonial film policy that was clearly closely aligned to broader political developments.¹ "Throughout our Colonial Office policy we are working at one main thing," explained K. W. Blackburn, the Director of Information Services at the Colonial Office, "trying to teach the people of the Colonies to run the show themselves and doing precisely that thing in the film world as in every other field."² Speaking at the conference, John Grierson further outlined the need to create "a genuine African Unit that can work with native units in other colonies," what he described as a "Colonial Film Unit with true regard for decentralization and the part which natives will play in it."³

The conference marks a public shift in colonial film policy, revealing at a moment when the British government was outlining concurrent changes in its political strategies toward Africa. It represents a moment of transition, one marked by uncertainty surrounding decentralization and the alacrity and extent to which power would be transferred. The discussions address the position, function, and structure of the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) and, as throughout the history of the CFU, these film policies were intricately connected to greater political changes.

When the CFU began in 1939, under the aegis of the Ministry of Information (MOI), it sought to produce "propaganda" films encouraging African audiences, exemplified by its first production, Mr. English at Home (dir. Gordon Hales, 1940, Great Britain). After the war, the role of the CFU began to change in ways that often mirrored the broader processes of decolonization. At the start of 1946, the CFU sent units to East and West Africa. Now funded by the Colonial Development and Welfare Act and under the direction of the Films Division of the Central Office of Information (COI), the CFU made instructional films for African audiences, as practical instruction replaced more general imperial propaganda. By 1948, the CFU was increasingly looking to take production (and with it expenditure) away from London and into the colonies. The Home Unit now accounted for no more than twenty percent of the CFU's output and was financed separately as an allied service from the vote of the COI. The increasing marginalization of the Home Unit is indicative then of this shift in film policy, which closely mirrored changes in political policy.⁴

The Home Unit serves to connect the traditional functions and structure of the CFU with its ultimate ambitions. Its role in filming Africans brought over to London may appear anachronistic within the context of an administrative and film policy that was increasingly looking away from London and towards the colonies. Yet, in filming a series of conferences, tours, and public exhibitions, these Home Unit productions reveal some of the ways in which the Colonial Office visualized Britain's changing relationship with Africa and, more significantly, sought to articulate these impending changes to an African audience. The films depict African sportsmen (Nigerian Footballers in England, 1949), musicians (Colonial Cinemagazine 9, 1947), and leaders (An African Conference in London, 1948). They celebrate British interest in the empire (Colonial Month, 1949) and show social and political events that sought to challenge popular perceptions of African political life. Yet, in their largely traditional formal structure, which defined London through its landmarks, institutions, and repeated references to the royal family, as the ideological center from which the empire could be controlled and contained, the films reveal the still tentative and reactionary nature of the British government's moves toward decolonization.

The films of the Home Unit thus provide a starting point when examining these shifts within colonial film and political policy. In showing official events and tours, they reveal some of the ways in which the Colonial Office and the COI sought to promote and represent a reconfigured empire to the British public and...