Flickering Shadows
Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5129337 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charles Ambler (0000-0001-6994-6759), Jeffrey M Burns (0000-0001-7609-8954) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 2/3 |
| Pages | 488 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of African Historical Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0361-7882 • E-ISSN: 2326-3016 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3097636 |
| OpenAlex | W279200606 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
Every European power in Africa made motion pictures for its subjects, but no state invested as heavily in these films, and expected as much from them, as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. This volume explores the little-known world of colonial cinema. J.M. Burns pieces together the history of the cinema in Rhodesia, examining film production, audience reception and state censorship, to reconstruct the story of how Africans in one nation became consumers of motion pictures. Movies were a valued tool of empire designed to assimilate Africans into a new colonial order. Inspired by an inflated confidence in the medium, Rhodesian government officials created an African film industry that was unprecedented in its size and scope. Transforming the lives of their subjects through cinema proved to be more complicated than white officials had anticipated. Although Africans embraced the medium with enthusiasm, they expressed critical opinions and demonstrated decided tastes that left colonial officials puzzled and alarmed. This work tells the story of how motion pictures were introduced and negotiated in a colonial setting. In doing so, it casts light on the history of the globalization of the cinema. It is based on interviews with white and black filmmakers and African audience members, extensive archival research in Africa and England, and viewings of scores of colonial films
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Identity (music · Movie theater · Visual arts · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Cinema and Media Studies · History
A post-colonial reading of the Central African Film Unit’s (Cafu) comical films
Cinema and Wage Labour in Colonial Kenya
Afrika Zamani
Cinema and Highlife in the Gold Coast
Introduction to scholarship on early cinema in the British colonies
Fables of death
African Jim
Censoring India
Afterword
African Screen Media Studies
On the Town and Underworld in South Africa
On the Matter of Fiction
African educational film and video
The Cinema, a Place of Tension in Colonial Africa
A torn performative dispensation
Salisbury Stakes
Africa Joins the World
| Unique citing works | 17 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2025 (17) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |