Africa's History Through Colonial Films

Source: thisisafrica.com

(This is Africa)--Colonial Film presents “moving images of the British empire” for the viewing pleasure of anyone with internet access. It provides an invaluable resource that I think should be exploited by everyone, especially if you are from a country that was colonised by the British

Colonial Film presents “moving images of the British empire” for the viewing pleasure of anyone with Internet access. On the website, you will find facts, figures and material on upwards of 6,000 films, more than 150 of which can be watched online.

You can search for films by country, topic, keyword or date. Some of the most important films are supplemented by critical notes from the website’s academic research team. All the films reveal what life was like in British colonies around the world and provide excellent history tools for those from countries formerly colonised by Great Britain.

The Colonial Film Project, who are behind the website, brought together Birkbeck University, University College London and archives (British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum) to catalogue films relating to the British Empire in order to enable both the coloniser and the colonised to “understand better the truths of Empire”.

I, too, believe everyone from a country formerly colonized by the British should watch the documentaries available at Colonial Film, whether or not they have an interest in history and/or film. From discussions with folks and from reading comments on forums, it seems to me that there are a lot of people from countries with a history of European colonialism who do not understand exactly what colonialism and imperialism mean.

From watching the films and documentaries available at Colonial Film, one is able to glimpse colonialism in action, and perhaps by going through the website’s archives and really paying attention to the kind of words and themes used in the documentaries, obtain a clearer understanding of colonialism.

I settled down to watch a few documentaries. I skipped searching by themes (such as empire and administration, empire and development, empire and religion and empire at display) or genres (including fiction, newsreels, non-fiction and travelogues), and decided to start closest to home. The site has a selection of films shot in Nigeria, some fiction, others non-fiction.

The first film I watched was African Nurse (1948), which showed Methodist missionaries in the process of training nurses as tools for evangelism in South-Eastern Nigeria. African Nurse specifically follows a girl called Matilda through her exam, training and practice as one of the eponymous African nurses. It is entirely possible that African Nurse was originally meant for fund-raising or to showcase the achievements of the Methodist missionaries in effectively “civilising” African men and women in the art of Western medicine.

Springtime in an English Village (1944) on the other hand was explicitly produced to prove to African countries that the British were not “a dreadful race of people” and that Britain was multicultural. The film shows a young African girl being crowned “May Queen” in an English village. As a sceptic, with thoughts about how the British violently colonised brown and black bodies and minds, I wondered if the coronation had been staged, though the girl being crowned looked happy enough.

I enjoyed watching Giant in the Sun (1959), a study of Northern Nigerian before it achieved self-government, made in the year before Nigeria formerly achieved independence from Britain. In spite of the annoying soundtrack that accompanied this film, I was delighted to watch suya and fura da nono being made. Suyaand fura da nono are popular street foods in Nigeria, and are still eaten today. Giant in the Sun makes interesting connections between the durbar and polo, and it does a great job in showing the potential of Northern Nigeria at that time by highlighting its history, culture, arts and industry.

Contemporary Western reports about Northern Nigeria tend to focus on clashes between the “Christian South” and the “Muslim North”, but Giant in the Sun portrays Northern Nigeria as religiously tolerant, and the film mentions the many Christians and churches in Northern Nigeria. All in all, Giant in the Sun is a good case study for then-and-now comparisons.

As you would imagine, Colonial Film has material on a wide variety of topics, for instance there’s one about Nigeria’s First Women Police (1956), which needs no explanation, and Three Roads to Tomorrow (1961), a fascinating documentary shot at the University of Ibadan that follows students from Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups: Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. Further from home, I enjoyed Castles and Fisher Folk (1933), which showed lovely clips of children playing in the ocean in Ghana, and Caribbean (1951). I have a longer list of films that I have saved to watch later when I have more time.

Colonial Film provides an invaluable resource that I think should be exploited by everyone, especially if you are from a country that was colonised by the British.

By Cosmic Yoruba