Abstract
By 1930 commercial movies were spreading from town to village throughout much of Asia, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa. They were seen in a variety of venues, from art deco picture palaces to makeshift tents run by traveling entrepreneurs. During the 1920s colonial peoples began to get moving pictures from a new source — directly from their government, and from its allied institutions, such as missionary societies and commercial growing associations. These were educational films produced specifically for rural peoples, and were often distributed on vehicles rigged with projection equipment. These traveling screenings differed significantly from the cinema exhibitions of the growing urban centers. Unlike audiences in the city, rural people often had little or no experience with modern media when they first encountered these cinema demonstrations. For many people the mobile cinema presented them with their first exposure to internal combustion engines, or electric lights. The fact that these films arrived on government trucks and were screened by government agents further established a close connection between the state and the new medium. Through these shows the colonial state played a key role in spreading cinema technology in the inter-war era.
‘The caravan has arrived!’ With the speed of a Llalang blaze the glad news travels through the ‘Mukim’. Malay villagers, Indian trappers, and a few Chinese squatters hurry to the village Centre. There stands the Caravan. The Penghulu, a dignified figure in ceremonial dress, signals for silence. The Caravan show begins. But instead of the dark-eyed gypsy girl there emerges from its wide awning a khaki-clad figure, and under his practiced fingers a cinematograph machine throws a shimmering beam of light. Open mouthed with fascination, the dark brown peasant faces behold the shadowy pictures dancing on the screen — it shows them growing rubber trees, luscious padi fields, exemplary veg-etable plots, buffalo herds, and poultry yards.1
The Straits Times, Singapore, 1936
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Rosaleen Smyth, ‘The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927–1939, with Special Reference to East and Central Africa’ in The Journal of African History, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1979), pp. 437–450.
Glenn Reynolds, ‘The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment and the Struggle for Hegemony in British East and Central Africa, 1935–1937’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2009), pp. 57–78.
Martin S. Pernick, ‘On Behalf of the Mothers: Thomas Edison’s Tuberculosis Films: Mass Media and Health Propaganda’ in The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 8, No. 3 (June 1978), pp. 21–27, p. 22.
J. Ettling ‘The Role of the Rockefeller Foundation in Hookworm Research and Control’ in G.A. Schad and K.S. Warren (eds) Hookworm Disease: Current Status and New Directions (London: Taylor & Francis, 1990), p. 3.
Steven Palmer Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 57.
Donald Fisher, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation Philanthropy and the British Empire: The Creation of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’ in The History of Education, Vol. 7 (1978), pp. 129–143, p. 130.
Annie Stuart, ‘We Are All Hybrid Here: The Rockefeller Foundation, Sylvester Lambert, and Health Work in the Colonial South Pacific’ in Health and History, Vol. 8, No. 1, History, Health, and Hybridity (2006), pp. 56–79, p. 67.
J. Russell Orr ‘The Use of the Kinema in the Guidance of Backward Races’ in the Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 30, No. 120 (July 1931), pp. 238–244.
Rosaleen Smyth ‘The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927–1939, with Special Reference to East and Central Africa’ The Journal of African History, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1979), pp. 437–450, p. 440.
Megan Vaughn Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991).
Brian Larkin Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 99.
Bulchand Karamchand and Morley Dainow The Use of the Kinematograph in Education: A Scheme for India (Hyderabad: self published, 1915) June 1915.
Clive Dewey Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), p. 92.
Maria Misra Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 115.
Ruth Frances Woodsmall ‘Women’s Interests and Activities in India’ in Orville A. Petty (ed.) Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry: Fact Finder’s Reports, India-Burma Volume IV Supplementary Series Part 2 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1933), pp. 460–472, p. 472.
William Marston Motion Picture Problems: The Cinema and the League of Nations (New York: Avondale Press, 1929), pp. 22–23.
Rosaleen Smyth, ‘The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927–1939, with Special Reference to East and Central Africa’ in The Journal of African History, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1979), pp. 437–450.
Glenn Reynolds, ‘The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment and the Struggle for Hegemony in British East and Central Africa, 1935–1937’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2009), pp. 57–78.
J. Merle Davis Modern Industry and the African (London: Macmillan and Co., 1933).
Notcutt and Latham The African and the Cinema: An Account of the Work of the Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment During the Period March 1935 to May 1937 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh House Press, 1937).
Howard Johnson ‘The British Caribbean from Demobilization to Constitutional Decolonization’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire v. 4: The 20th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 597–622, p. 608.
Elaine Binedell ‘Debating Educational Films for “Natives”: South Africa in the 1930s’ in Limina, Vol. 8 (2002), pp. 75–92.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 James Burns
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Burns, J. (2013). Uplifting the Empire: Colonial Cinema and the Educational Film-Movement, 1913–1940. In: Cinema and Society in the British Empire, 1895–1940. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137308023_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137308023_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45578-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30802-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)