African History on Screen and in the Classroom

Abstract

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.