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African History on Screen and in the Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Emma Hunter
Emma Hunter*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

In 1954, an African welfare association, the African Association of Tanganyika, decided to create a new organisation, TANU, to campaign for selfgovernment. Their reasons for taking this step were many, but among the long list of criticisms of the colonial government documented at that first conference was one which related to films. According to the colonial government's report on the conference, among the “social topics” discussed was “the portrayal of Africans as savages in popular films”, and “a campaign to persuade people not to perform dances or allow themselves to be photographed by Europeans was proposed”.

The representation of Africa in general and African history in particular in film is not, then, a new concern. Created in a web of power relations, films are both shaped by and in turn serve to shape our understandings of the present and of the past.

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 110 , 2009 , pp. 29 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2009

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References

Notes

1 ‘Summary of the Territorial Conference of the Tanganyika African Association held at Dar es Salaam on the 6th-10th July, 1954’, CO 822/859, f. 1, Appendix A, p. 2.

2 Trish Thomas, in a briefing paper on the use of film in the teaching of Classics, makes many similar points, stressing the ways in which film can promote ‘active learning’ and ‘heighten emotional as well as intellectual engagement’. Trish Thomas, ‘Film as a resource for teaching and learning Classics’, The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology, Briefing Paper July 2004. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/hca/classics/featureResources/practicalAdvice/NonLanguageTeaching/VisualMaterial/usingfilm.pdf, p. 2. Accessed 11 October 2009.

3 Once in power, TANU was able to use censorship policies to attempt to control the ways in which Africans were represented in film. Rashidi Kawawa took a leading role in developing these policies, as the chairman of the National Film Censorship Board. James R. Brennan, ‘Democratizing Cinema and Censorship in Tanzania, 1920-1980’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38 (2005), 481-511, esp. pp.503-504.

4 Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Unity, (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1966);Google Scholar Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Socialism, (London: Oxford University Press, 1968);Google Scholar Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Development, (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

5 ‘Kumbukumbu ya Mw. Nyerere’. For more details see ITV Schedule Week 36 2009, www.itv.co.tz. Accessed 11 October 2009.

6 ‘Mau Mau Disorders in Kenya’, 6 November 1952, British Pathe, www.britishpathe.com. Accessed 11 October 2009.

7 Smith, Vivian Bickford, ‘Rosenstone on Film, Rosenstone on History: An African Perspective’, Rethinking History, 11:4 (2007), pp.531-545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Bickford Smith, ‘Rosenstone on Film, Rosenstone on History: An African Perspective’, p.542.

9 Dawson, Andrew, ‘Tutor's Guide to: Teaching Hollywood for Historians’, The Higher Education Academy: Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology, July 2007.Google Scholar Accessed online 11 October 2009, www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/hca/document/guides/History_tutors_guides/Teaching_Hollywood_for_Historians.pdf, p. 2.

10 Katy Ivko, ‘Depictions of Genocide in Rwanda’, (Unpublished BA Diss., University of Cambridge, 2008). My thanks to Katy Ivko for permission to discuss her work here.

11 Brennan, ‘Democratizing Cinema and Censorship in Tanzania’, p.504.

12 Thackway, Melissa, African Shoots Back: alternative perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone film, (Oxford: James Currey, 2003), p 2.Google Scholar Saul, Mahir, ‘History as Cultural Redemption in Gaston Kabore's pre-colonial era films’, in V. Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn, (eds.), Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen, (Oxford: James Currey, 2007), pp.11-27.Google Scholar

13 A point made in Bickford Smith, ‘Rosenstone on Film’, p.533.

14 Vanessa Chambers, ‘The teaching and assessment of Contemporary History in UK higher education institutions’, HEA Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology, March 2008, p.6. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/hca/documents/reports/history/DP_Contemporary_History.pdf. Accessed online 11 October 2009.