Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire Empire

Abstract This is a book review of Tom Rice, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (University of California Press, 2019).

Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism (2008)) but it is nevertheless an indictment of British colonialism and its approach to governance and development. 4 Rice shows the internal workings of the British empire in its final decades (1920s-1960s) through the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) and its variations.
Headquartered in London, the CFU operated from 1939 to 1955 and produced over 200 films for the vast British empire. Films for the Colonies won't be essential for scholars of religion and film in general but will be useful for those interested in how the colonial apparatus of non-fiction film is a microcosm of the larger ideological and operational forms of administering empire. Rice reveals how the imperial use of film in the 20 th century is a continuation of colonial processes of knowledge production and governance demonstrated for an earlier period in the work of Tomoko Masuzawa (2005), David Chidester (2014), and others. While Rice does not provide any specific analysis of 'religious' subjects, the civilizing discourse of British imperial projects that established a hierarchy between Europeans and Africans or Asians is obvious for readers familiar with this background. He shows that the ideas of colonial service, approaches to the 'natives' and their education, fostering forms of loyalty and fealty to empire, and the use of modern technology are central for imperial dominance. Rice does zoom into one Nigerian film Giant in the Sun (1959) which promoted religious tolerance between Muslims and Christians as part of nation building in the lead up to independence in 1960 (p. 212), but otherwise readers will be left to read between the lines.
What Rice shows is how little the British film style changed over this fortyyear period, noting that there is a strange consistency in the British approach to film subject matter, form, and thinking about the audience and their mental capabilities.
For sure, those operating the film apparatus here engage in an institutionalised form of racism, founded on the 'white man's burden' ethic of British colonial service.
The history here is that the colonial film unit was founded by William Sellers who was himself a public health official in Nigeria in the 1920s and was one of the first colonial administrators to use film to promote health messages on hygiene, sanitation, and disease.
One of the enduring models seen in these colonial films is the Mr Wise / Mr Foolish character pairing used to tell morality tales about public health, personal finances, and even good road behaviour. A relatively simple narrative device, Wise/Foolish provides a contrast between undesirable or uncivilised behaviour and so-called civilised characteristics necessary to modern life. This Wise/Foolish model was linked to the perceived simplicity of the African audience and the need to follow certain formulas to ensure maximum indoctrination. Rice notes how this was a pattern of colonial film administration and conception that privileged form over reception (p. 180) and continued in some territories after independence.
It also leads to discussions of two stylistic movements in the documentary world which Rice neatly categorises as 'prestige' and 'educational' with Sean Rice draws our attention to the role of archives and archival research in historical film studies. As archives are newly digitized and made available, conducting archival research is not only easier but benefits from being able to draw from multiple collections. This not only allows for greater coverage, but also provides additional material for corroboration and exploring the polyvocality of multiple viewpoints. One of the rich resources that Rice draws on is the Colonial Cinema magazine published out of the Colonial Film Office in London. He has made scanned copies of this available on the book's accompaniment website. 9 This publication contains news, opinion, and other written perspectives from many of the key people, including William Sellers who wrote the highly influential "Films for Primitive Peoples" in 1940 (pp. 65-68). Rice points to the Media History Digital Library from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as another source of archival material related to cinema. 10 As Rice notes at the end of his book though, only about 5% of the colonial films made have been archived, with many lost to poor storage and institutional barriers. Nevertheless, this book shows the depth of available material and the kinds of media histories that can be researched and written based on that material. Rice makes a compelling case for the digitization of these publications and making them freely available online to other scholars, researchers, and members of the public to explore important media histories of empire.