Aspects of Colonial Tanzania History

6. Colonial Tanganyika on Film, 1935-1961

6 Colonial Tanganyika on Film, 1935-1961 Introduction The study of film as a medium of communication in colonial Tanganyika, like that of radio broadcasting, has attracted little research attention from students of Tanzania history.273 By and large studies about cinema in Africa have devoted only a few pages to the film industry in colonial Tanganyika.274 Yet colonial Tanganyika was the scene of several pioneering experiments in film production for African audiences in British Africa. Moreover, the literature on colonial film production in Africa deals overwhelmingly with the technical and policy matters and less with the propaganda value of the films themselves. 275 It was during World War II that the British government recognized that the film, like the radio, could effectively 273 Ssali, Mike H. “The Development and Role of an African Film Industry in East Africa with special reference to Tanzania, 1922-1984,” PhD dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1988; Rosaleen Smyth, “The Feature Film in Tanzania,” African Affairs, vol. 88, no. 352 (July, 1989): 274 Ukadike, N. Frank, Black African Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 33; Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992): 1-3; Rosaleen Smyth, “The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927-1939, with special reference to East and Central Africa,” Journal of African History, vol. 20, no. 3 (1979): 437-450; Rosaleen Smyth, “Movies and Mandarins: The Official Film and British Colonial Africa,” in British Cinema History, James Curran and Vincent Porter, eds., (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, n.d.); Rosaleen Smyth, “The Post-War Career of the Colonial Film Unit in Africa,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 12, no. 2 (1992): 163-177. 275 PRO, CO 875/52/4, Norman Spurr, “Making Films for Africans,” BBC broadcast, 5 February, 1950. 82 ASPECTS OF COLONIAL TANZANIA HISTORY be used to deliver information and propaganda to illiterate African audiences. This chapter looks at film as a medium of communication in colonial Tanganyika with an emphasis on the development and use of “instructional” agricultural films for rural audiences from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. The chapter also examines Hollywood’s mania for safari-themed pictures and colonial Tanzania as the setting of MGM and Paramount Pictures films. Colonial film productions in general were intended to act as a stimulant towards social and material progress. However, the choice of the themes and the content of colonial films tended to shift the blame for the shortcomings of colonial society from the State to the peasants.276 Some of the films were based on reconstructed stories and real life experiences, but most were scripted fictional storieswith“educational”messagesinthem.Fromthebeginning,thepreferencewas to produce and show “educational” rather than entertainment films. When William Sellers, a pioneer in the use of instructional films in Nigeria who became a key figure in the Colonial Film Unit (CFU), was asked why entertainment films made for Western audiences should not be shown to Africans, he had this to say: “There is overwhelming evidence that this would be a disastrous policy. Such films more often than not deliberately set out to falsify the facts of life, and would not only be misleadingbutevendangerouswhenshowntoilliterateruralaudiencesinAfrica.”277 What Sellers was really opposed against was the screening of entertainment films which portrayed whites in “undignified” roles, such as prostitutes, which could compromise the racial superiority of whites in the minds of Africans. Since British imperialism rested on the myth of white racial superiority, it was imperative that colonial African audiences be shown film images that consolidated rather than undermined white racial superiority. This became the guiding principle for colonial film censorship. There were Europeans who believed that no African man should be allowed to see a picture of a white woman on the screen at all, irrespective of what she was doing. Even pictures of female film stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich on display outside the cinema halls were deemed undesirable for Africans.278 For purposes of censorship colonial films were designated and labeled “instructional” or “non-instructional”. Films that were labeled “instructional” included plays, light operas, travel pictures, etc., while reviews, musical comedies and other pictures of no educational value were categorized as “non-educational”. To shield Africans from exposure to “undesirable” Western films colonial administrations used racial as well as social discrimination. Racial discrimination involved the licensing of films for exhibition to European and Asian audiences only.279 Social discrimination included the use of legislation that fixed a...