Popular films and colonial audiences: The movies in Northern Rhodesia

American Historical Review

Volumn 106, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 81-105

  Ambler, Charles ^a,b  

^a Graduate School   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 19044374215     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2652225     Document Type: Article

References (215)

1. The British colony of Northern Rhodesia became Zambia at independence in 1964. During the 1950s, Northern Rhodesia was linked with Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in a Central African Federation dominated by white settler interests.
2. H. Franklin, "The Central African Screen," Colonial Cinema 8 (December 1950): 85.
3. "Jack" was supposedly a tribute to the actor Jack Holt. Also see "The Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," Colonial Cinema 2 (June 1944): 22.
4. R. J. Allanson to Director, Department of Information, Lusaka, January 27, 1956, National Archives of Zambia (hereafter, NAZ), Sec. 5/16, I, no. 88.
5. According to a 1956 survey, in Dar es Salaam "there has grown up, as elsewhere in East Africa, the cult of the cowboy . . . The young man . . . soon acquires the idioms of tough speech, the slouch, the walk of the 'dangerous' man of the films; the ever-popular Western films teach him." J. A. K. Leslie, A Survey of Dar es Salaam (London, 1963), 112;
6. and see Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond (New York, 1994), 31-35.
7. For an introduction to the large literature on the history of the Copperbelt, see Jane L. Parpart, Labor and Capital on the African Copperbelt (Philadelphia, 1983).
8. Already by the early 1930s, twice-weekly film shows at the Roan Antelope Compound in Luanshya drew an average attendance of more than a thousand. Charles W. Coulter, "The Sociological Problem," in Modern Industry and the African, J. Merle Davis, ed. (London, 1933), 72.
9. Hortense Powdermaker, Copper Town: Changing Africa; The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt (New York, 1962), 227.
10. In the District Six neighborhood of Cape Town, movies were "unquestionably the most popular form of paid entertainment in the inter-war years." Bill Nasson, " 'She Preferred Living in a Cave with Harry the Snake-catcher': Towards an Oral History of Popular Leisure and Class Expression in District Six, Cape Town, c. 1920s-1950s," in Holding Their Ground: Class, Locality and Culture in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century South Africa, Philip Bonner, Isabel Hofmeyr, Deborah James, and Tom Lodge, eds. (Johannesburg, 1989), 286.
11. The globalized power of the media and its role in transmitting American culture is probably more assumed than it is studied. For an exception, see Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago, 1993), esp. 2-18.
12. In practice, the study of media "development" in Africa has been shaped by assumptions associated with modernization theory. See, for example, Graham Mytton, Mass Communication in Africa (London, 1983), 4-18;
13. and Robert L. Stevenson, Communication, Development, and the Third World: The Global Politics of Information (New York, 1988).
14. For critical evaluation of debates about media globalism, see John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore, 1991), 34-67;
15. and Jonathan Friedman, Cultural Identity and Global Process (London, 1994), 195-232.
16. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 259.
17. NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, "Censorship of Films for Natives, 1932-48," and subsequent files.
18. Response to Mr. R. J. Allanson, February 28, 1956, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 88.
19. Alan O'Shea, "What a Day for a Daydream: Modernity, Cinema and the Popular Imagination in the Late Twentieth Century," in Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, Mica Nava and O'Shea, eds. (London, 1996), 243-45.
20. See, for example, Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York, 1933).
21. The tendency to look for sources of violence and antisocial behavior in the media is noted in a recent analysis in the New York Times, "Rampage Killers: A Statistical Portrait," April 8, 2000.
22. Franklin, "Central African Screen," 87.
23. NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, "Censorship of Films for Natives, 1932-48," and subsequent files.
24. Although not centrally concerned with film, Debra Spitulnik, "Anthropology and Mass Media," Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993): 293-315, provides an effective introduction to some of the theoretical assumptions shaping media studies on Africa.
25. A partial exception is Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood.
26. The key criticial work on African film is Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Bloomington, Ind., 1992).
27. See also Imruh Bakari and Mbye D. Cham, eds., African Experiences of Cinema (London, 1996).
28. Few locally produced films have reached large audiences. As one scholar's title recently lamented, "African Films Are Foreigners in Their Own Countries." Emmanuel Sama, in Bakari and Cham, 148-56.
29. Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism and Representation: An Introduction," Screen 24 (1983): 4-20.
30. For example, Douglas Gomery's recent book includes only one brief section on audiences, where he addresses the controversy that erupted over silence policies in new theaters in central Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s. The discussion includes no reference to the age, gender, or racial make-up of those audiences. Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison, Wis., 1992), 117-18.
31. Thus Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, N.J., 1998),
32. draws attention to a forgotten genre of overtly political silent films, while showing how technological change encouraged the domination of mainstream Hollywood films. See also Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge, 1990), 100-57.
33. Peter Davis, In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema's South Africa (Athens, Ohio, 1996);
34. and Kenneth M. Cameron, Africa on Film: Beyond Black and White (New York, 1994).
35. Also see Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997).
36. Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln, Neb., 1999).
37. Cynthia Erb raises some of the critical theoretical issues in Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture (Detroit, 1998) but does not move beyond close interpretive readings of various versions of the story.
38. Stam and Spence, "Colonialism, Racism and Representation," 4-20.
39. For example, Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1995), turns out not to be about the position of audiences regarding cinematic images but is instead an account of the representation of voyeurs in specific films.
40. Raymond Williams criticized such textual determinism, apparently with little impact. See Philip Corrigan, "Film Entertainment as Ideology and Pleasure: A Preliminary Approach to a History of Audiences," in British Cinema History, James Curran and Vincent Porter, eds. (Totowa, N.J., 1983), 24.
41. Also see Shaun Moores, Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of Media Consumption (London, 1993), 6;
42. Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 3-7;
43. and David Bordwell, Narration in Fiction Film (Madison, Wis., 1985), esp. 29.
44. This critique might be extended to the scholarship on the representation of history in film. See Robert A. Rosenstone, ed., Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, N.J., 1995);
45. and Tony Barta, ed., Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History (Westport, Conn., 1998).
46. Rosaleen Smyth, "The British Colonial Film Unit and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1939-1945," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 8 (1988): 285-98;
47. Smyth, "Movies and Mandarins: The Official Film and British Colonial Africa," in Curran and Porter, British Cinema History, 129-43;
48. Smyth, "The Development of British Colonial Film Policy, 1927-1939, with Special Reference to East and Central Africa," Journal of African History 20 (1979): 437-50;
49. Smyth, "The Central African Film Unit's Images of Empire, 1948-1963," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 3 (1983): 131-47;
50. Smyth, "The Feature Film in Tanzania," African Affairs 88 (July 1989): 389-96.
51. A partial exception is Megan Vaughan, "'Seeing Is Believing': Colonial Health Education Films and the Question of Identity," in Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Oxford, 1991), 180-99.
52. "Films for the Colonies," Corona 1 (June 1949): 20.
53. Even the officials charged with organizing film shows for circulation in rural areas acknowledged the need to include some "suitable" commercial entertainment films to make the propaganda palatable. W. Sellers, "Mobile Cinema Shows in Africa," Colonial Cinema 9 (September 1950): 77-78.
54. Surprisingly, the growing literature on the social and cultural history of southern African urban communities, including studies of sports, drinking, and popular theater and music, largely ignores the bioscope, which novels and memoirs make clear formed a vibrant element of town life. See, for example, Ezekiel [Es'kia] Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (London, 1959),
55. and Afrika My Music: An Autobiography, 1957-1983 (Johannesburg, 1984);
56. Modikwe Dikobe, The Marabi Dance (London, 1973);
57. and Godfrey Moloi, My Life: Volume One (Johannesburg, 1987).
58. The social historian Bill Nasson suggests some of the possibilities in " 'She Preferred Living in a Cave,' " 285-309, esp. 287-95.
59. Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship (London, 1993), 8-9, 17, 65.
60. Also see Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 3-5.
61. Linda Williams, ed., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995).
62. But see the essays in the section on "Black Spectatorship," in Black American Cinema, Manthia Diawara, ed. (New York, 1993), 211-302.
63. Some of the work on early film audiences in North America and Europe has focused attention on perspectives of working-class and immigrant audiences. See Judith Thissen, "Jewish Immigrant Audiences in New York City (1907-1914)," in American Movie Audiences: From the Turn of the Century to the Early Sound Era, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds. (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 15-28;
64. and Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1983), 191-221.
65. For example, E. Ann Kaplan, "Film and History: Spectatorship, Transference, and Race," in History and Histories within the Human Sciences, Ralph Cohen and Michael S. Roth, eds. (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 179-208.
66. Also see Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation," Framework 36 (1989): 68-81.
67. For example, Carol J. Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, N.J., 1992);
68. and Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London, 1993).
69. The issues raised by these scholars have not yet made their way into studies of filmgoing in Africa. The special issue of Matatu 19 (1997) devoted to "Women and African Cinema" includes no article that explores the female film audience or interprets Spectatorship in gendered terms.
70. For the role of imported videos in local cultures, see Minou Fuglesang, Veils and Videos: Female Youth Culture on the Kenyan Coast (Stockholm, 1994);
71. and Brian Larkin, "Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities," Africa 67 (1997): 406-40.
72. Most of the work on video concentrates on local production and distribution and on the analysis of video film content. The most important studies are Onookome Okome and Jonathan Haynes, Cinema and Social Change in West Africa (Jos, Nigeria, 1995);
73. and Jonathan Haynes, ed., Nigerian Video Films (Jos, 1997).
74. Martin Allor, "Relocating the Site of the Audience," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988): 217-33, traces the development of theoretical approaches to the relationship between medium and audience.
75. According to Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz, "Cinema, as it developed in the late nineteenth century, became the fullest expression and combination of modernity's attributes." "Introduction," Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, Charney and Schwartz, eds. (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 1; also, 1-3.
76. For a stimulating analysis of ideas of "the modern," see Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis, 1995 [Spanish edition, 1989]).
77. The reception of film images was linked as well to the development of a mass-consumption economy. See Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, N.C., 1996).
78. F. Spearpoint, Compound Manager, Roan Antelope Mine, Luanshya, to General Manager, October 2, 1935, "Films for Compound Bioscope," RACM WMA/94, 204.2, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, Archives, Ndola (hereafter, ZCCM);
79. and "Film in Northern Rhodesia," Colonial Cinema 11 (December 1953): 81.
80. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 255.
81. Commissioner, Northern Rhodesia Civil Police, to Chief Secretary, August 22, 1932, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 1; and "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," Colonial Cinema 2 (June 1944): 22.
82. The Copperbelt became the site of intensive social scientific research carried on by scholars affiliated with the Rhodes Livingstone Institute, including A. L. Epstein, J. C. Mitchell, J. A. Barnes, and Gordon Wilson. See Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship: The Domestic Domain on the Copperbelt of Zambia, 1950-1956 (London, 1981).
83. Spearpoint, "Films for Compound Bioscope."
84. "The Colonial Film Unit," Colonial Cinema 5 (June 1947): 27-31; and African Film Library Purchasing Committee, List of Films Purchased, 1942, NAZ, Sec. 2/1122, 84/1.
85. Note for Finance Committee, May 29, 1945, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121 (5), no. 245; and "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22.
86. "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22.
87. Colonial Cinema 6 (September 1948): 56-57.
88. Extract, January 6, 1956, ZCCM, RACM WMA/94, 204.2 (2).
89. "Film in Northern Rhodesia," 82.
90. For discussion of the development of clubs generally, see Charles Ambler, "Alcohol and the Control of Labor on the Copperbelt," in Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa, Jonathan Crush and Ambler, eds. (Athens, Ohio, 1992), 352.
91. District Commissioner Mufulira to Provincial Commissioner, Ndola, December 23, 1954, NAZ, Sec. 5/16 (3), no. 53/1. Frederick Cooper connects these local policies to broad questions of labor and decolonization in Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996), 336-48.
92. Extract from Central African Post, November 5, 1956, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 107A; Rev. George Shaw (Member, Film Censorship Board), February 23, 1960, and J. V. Savanhu (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Race Affairs), March 18, 1960, in Enclosed File, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party, 1960," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16.
93. See Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator" [1989], rpt. in L. Williams, Viewing Positions, 114-33, 115.
94. Gunning, "Aesthetic of Astonishment," 129.
95. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 258.
96. "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22.
97. Harry Franklin (former Director, Northern Rhodesia Information Service), February 12, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16.
98. Vanessa Schwartz argues in a study of early film audiences in Paris that "cinema's spectators brought to the cinematic experience modes of viewing which were cultivated in a variety of cultural activities and practices." "Cinematic Spectatorship before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in 'Fin-de-Siècle' Paris," in Charney and Schwartz, Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, 298.
99. Franklin, February 12, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16.
100. J. V. Savanhu, March 18, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16.
101. African Film Library Purchasing Committee, List of Films Purchased, 1942, NAZ, Sec. 2/1122, no. 84/1; and extract from Northern News, May 9, 1957, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 170.
102. Louis Nell, "The Mobile Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," Colonial Cinema 6 (June 1948): 44.
103. H. Stelling, Chingola to Committee for Local Government, March 16, 1955, NAZ, Sec. 5/16 (3), no. 69/1.
104. Sellers, "Mobile Cinema Shows in Africa," 80.
105. These concerns, of course, resemble fears inspired by immigrant, working-class, and youth audiences in the United States and Europe. See Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 191-215.
106. Recent public debates about theater location and selection of films in contemporary American cities reveal the persistence of assumptions about the effects of movies on racially and age-defined audiences. New York Times, December 28, 1998, and January 31, 1999.
107. District Commissioner Kitwe to Provincial Commissioner, November 25, 1937, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121 (2), no. 54/1.
108. Letter from Interested Citizens, February 8, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16;
109. and Memorandum on Native Film Censorship, December 12, 1947, Sec. 2/1121 (7), no. 348.
110. J. D. Cave, Native Welfare Officer (and Film Censorship Board member), to District Commissioner Kitwe, August 7, 1940, NAZ, Sec. 1/1121 (3), no. 130/4.
111. Smyth, "British Colonial Film Unit"; "Movies and Mandarins"; and "Development of British Colonial Film Policy."
112. Also see Thomas August, The Selling of the Empire: British and French Imperialist Propaganda, 1890-1940 (Westport, Conn., 1985), 101-02.
113. J. Merle Davis, "The Problem for Missions," in Davis, Modern Industry and the African, 323.
114. Smyth, "British Colonial Film Unit";
115. Smyth, "Movies and Mandarins"; and L. A. Notcutt and G. C. Latham, eds., 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, 1937).
116. "Films for African Audiences," Colonial Cinema 1 (June 1944): 1-2.
117. Colonial Cinema 1 (May 1943): 1.
118. Colonial Cinema 1 (December 1942): 3.
119. "Films for African Audiences," 1-2.
120. See Corrigan, "Film Entertainment as Ideology," 29.
121. Acting Chief Secretary to Government Secretary, Mafeking, March 8, 1946, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121 (6), no. 297.
122. Minutes of a Meeting of the Native Film Censorship Board, August 31, 1951, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 12A.
123. Memorandum on Film Censorship, n.d. [1956], NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 121.
124. Memorandum on Film Censorship, no. 121.
125. Mr. Shaw, Lusaka, July 28, 1959, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15.
126. District Commissioner Kitwe to J. D. Cave, Native Welfare Officer, August 6, 1940, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121 (3), no. 130/3.
127. Cave to Kitwe, Nkana, August 7, 1940, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 130/2.
128. Censorship Board, Lusaka, minute, June 20, 1945, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 246.
129. General Notice 596 of 1945, September 16, 1945, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 269.
130. Notably, Great Britain, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Disturbances in the Copperbelt [Russell Commission] (Lusaka, 1935).
131. H. A. Fosbrooke, Rhodes Livingstone Institute to Governor Arthur Benson, March 5, 1957, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 147.
132. Similarly, the director of information argued in clear racial terms for banning the movie Huckleberry Finn. Director of Information to Chief Secretary, December 8, 1940, NAZ, Sec. 2/1125, no. 19.
133. R. J. Allanson to Director, Department of Information, Lusaka, January 27, 1956, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 88.
134. "Guiding Principles for the Use of Native Film Censorship Board," n.d., NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 121.
135. Rev. George Shaw, February 23, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15, 16.
136. Allanson to Director, January 27, 1956.
137. Quoted in P. Davis, In Darkest Hollywood, 23.
138. New York Times, December 7, 1997.
139. Emmanuel Akyeampong, personal communication with the author, January 1998.
140. Interview by the author, Mrs. W., Kamwala, Lusaka, July 5, 1988.
141. "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22.
142. Capt. A. G. Dickson, "Effective Propaganda," Colonial Cinema 3 (December 1945): 82-85.
143. Roan Antelope Mine Welfare Office, Annual Report, 1952-1953, September 26, 1953, ZCCM, RACM 1.3.1C.
144. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 255-56.
145. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 337-38.
146. George Fenin and William K. Everson, The Western, from Silents to the Seventies, rev. edn. (New York, 1977), 31-42, 199.
147. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 258.
148. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 228-29.
149. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 256;
150. also see Michael O'Shea, Missionaries and Miners: A History of the Beginnings of the Catholic Church in Zambia with Particular Reference to the Copperbelt (Ndola, Zambia, 1986), 246.
151. J.H.G., "My First Visit to the Cinema," Colonial Cinema 8 (September 1950): 60-61.
152. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 256-58.
153. Lawrence W. Levine, "The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences," AHR 97 (October 1992): 1396.
154. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 261;
155. "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22;
156. and Franklin, "Central African Screen," 85.
157. M. O'Shea, Missionaries and Miners, 245-46;
158. and Powdermaker, Copper Town, 259.
159. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 258.
160. Allanson to Director, January 27, 1956, italics in original.
161. See Yvonne Tasker, "Dumb Movies for Dumb People: Masculinity, the Body, and the Voice in Contemporary Action Cinema," in Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, eds. (London, 1993), 230-44.
162. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 260-61.
163. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 264.
164. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 260.
165. In contrast, George Pearson, director of the Colonial Film Unit, claimed it was evident that "coloured films help tremendously in getting a story across to Colonial peoples . . . We know from the reactions of the audiences there that these films are greatly appreciated." Quoted in David R. Giltrow, "Young Tanzanians and the Cinema: A Study of the Effects of Selected Basic Motion Picture Elements and Population Characteristics on Filmic Comprehension of Tanzanian Adolescent Primary School Children" (PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1973), 17. Giltrow's own study showed audience preference for color but no real difference in didactic terms, p. 15.
166. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 263-64.
167. In the 1960s, Tanzanian schoolchildren who had rarely attended films had little trouble identifying objects and actions represented on screen. Giltrow, "Young Tanzanians and the Cinema," 132.
168. Roan Antelope Mine Welfare Office, Annual Report, 1952-1953.
169. Welfare Officer, Luanshya Municipal Board to Chairman, African Film Censorship Board, November 6, 1953, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 44/1.
170. South African black intellectuals had criticized the book on which the movie was based for its negative view of urban life and the "religiosity, deference, and the urban incompetence" of the central character, Reverend Kumalo. Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood, 27.
171. J.H.G., "My First Visit to the Cinema," 61.
172. Nasson, "'She Preferred Living in a Cave,'" 289.
173. Tony Lawman, "Information Research: An Experiment in Northern Rhodesia," Colonial Cinema 10 (September 1952): 59-61.
174. Colonial Cinema 4 (September 1946): 64-65;
175. and Nell, "Mobile Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 43-46.
176. Nell, "Mobile Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 45.
177. Lawman, "Information Research," 56-61.
178. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 257.
179. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 269.
180. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 168, 267;
181. Rev. George Shaw, February 23, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15;
182. and Lawman, "Information Research," 59.
183. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 267.
184. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 196-97.
185. Franklin, "Central African Screen," 85;
186. "Cinema in Northern Rhodesia," 22; and Allanson to Director, January 27, 1956.
187. Lawman, "Information Research," 56-61.
188. Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood, 12, 31-35;
189. and Don Mattera, Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa (1987; Boston, 1989), 75.
190. Nelson Namulango, African Representative Council Debates, July 1, 1948, excerpted in NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 346.
191. Leslie, Survey of Dar es Salaam, 112-13.
192. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 198.
193. Extract from Mufulira Monthly Police Report, 1947, Rex vs. John Kandu and Five Other Africans, NAZ, Sec. 2/1121, no. 346/1. In the end, however, each received a punishment of twelve strokes.
194. Film spectators quoted in Powdermaker, Copper Town, 263; also see 256-59.
195. Among a number of memoirs, see, for example, Bloke Modisane, Blame Me on History (1963; New York, 1986), which refers repeatedly to the allure of cinema and its importance in constructing elements of cosmopolitanism.
196. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 298.
197. Philip Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City (Cape Town, 1961), esp. 111-17.
198. Film censorship had a parallel in the regulations that restricted African consumption of European-type alcohol. Africans were forbidden to consume spirits until late in the colonial period. See Michael O. West, " 'Equal Rights for All Civilized Men': Elite Africans and the Quest for 'European' Liquor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1924-1961," International Review of Social History 37 (1992): 376-97.
199. A few private clubs sponsored by mining companies provided relatively privileged Africans the opportunities to see films not approved for African audiences. Memorandum on Film Censorship, Cinema Officer, n.d. [c. 1956], NZA, Sec. 5/16, no. 121.
200. Mr. Kemple, Chairman, Capricorn Africa Society, to Native Film Censorship Board, Lusaka, March 10, 1957, NAZ, Sec. 5/16.
201. Extract, Central African Post, May 10, 1957, NAZ, Sec. 5/16, no. 171a.
202. H. A. Fosbrooke to Governor, March 5, 1957, NAZ, Sec. 5/16.
203. Kemple to Native Film Censorship Board, March 10, 1957.
204. Northern Rhodesia Bishops Conference, Secretary General, March 9, 1960, "Film Censorship: Evidence Submitted to Federal Working Party," NAZ, Sec. 5/15.
205. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J., 1996), 62-90.
206. Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919-1945 (London, 1999), 28-38.
207. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 1-33.
208. 14S Ariel Dorfman and A. Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialism Ideology in the Disney Comic, David Kunzle, trans. ([1972]; New York, 1975).
209. See also Dorfman, The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds (New York, 1983).
210. This critique is drawn from Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 35-45.
211. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 47.
212. Note especially Ien Ang, Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (London, 1985).
213. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 50-57.
214. Debra Spitulnik, "The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of Communities," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6 (1997): 161-87.
215. Powdermaker, Copper Town, 270.