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The Black Face Of Cinema In Africa

African films only rarely hit the screens of European and American (and even African) film theatres. Their screening is often limited to African film festivals like FESPACO or the Milanese Festival del Cinema Africano, where adepts meet to watch and discuss the latest films and the urging problems of the African film industry. Yet, (scholarly) books on African cinema are starting to trickle down and are becoming available to Western readers. Let it be clear, most of these books are not published in Africa, but come from American and European publishing houses and university presses. In this review article, I want to present and discuss four recent and very

‘Snapshots’: Local Cinema Cultures in the Great War

The Great War broke out at the moment that the film industry at all levels, production, distribution and exhibition was becoming established. Here the attention is on the local cinema cultures of three spaces: Louvain in Belgium, Southampton in England, and Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in the United States. The areas share marked differences: Louvain suffered considerably, including direct damage to its buildings, reprisal executions of its citizens and German occupation for the four years of the war; Southampton witnessed the parade of war through its role as the main embarkation point for British troops, as well as suffering the loss in unprecedented number of casualties which the British people endured; and Stevens Point was different again in that the war directly touched the local community, with its considerable German and Polish immigrant population, as the politics of the nation shifted from isolation to engagement. These were all factors in the exhibition strategies of local cinema exhibitors who negotiated new audiences. The article draws out similarities and differences in these areas to argue that the war’s impact on particular local cultures was significant in the establishment of cinema’s social function within each community.

A Captivated Audience. Cinema-going at the zoological garden in occupied Antwerp, 1915–1918

Abstract A Captivated Audience studies the organization, regulation and consumption of culture in occupied Belgium during the First World War. Through a case-study of the founding and day-to-day operations of Cinema Zoologie, the film theatre located at the Antwerp Zoo, it is demonstrated how tensions between organizers, audiences and the occupying force are played out in the leisure sphere. The film theatre is presented as an arena of conflicting interests where politics, business and patriotism clash. Cinema Zoologie was operated by the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp (owner of the Antwerp Zoo), a bourgeois society with an international membership and ties with the German community in Antwerp. As a movie theatre located in this thoroughly bourgeois environment, Cinema Zoologie is also an ideal microcosm to study wartime reactions to filmed entertainment and information as well as bourgeois cinema-going experiences. The research presented here is largely based on primary sources from the extensive archives of the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp kept at the Antwerp City Archive (Felixarchief).