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INDIAN OCEAN WORLD CINEMA: VIEWING THE HISTORY OF RACE, DIASPORA AND NATIONALISM IN URBAN TANZANIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Ned Bertz
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Abstract

This essay considers the role of Hindi films in urban Tanzania in writing new chronologies of Indian Ocean world history. Examining films and movie theatres through overlapping local, national and transnational lenses, the article contributes to our understandings of the encounter between the Indian diaspora and nationalism in East Africa, and extends the history of Indian Ocean world connections into the second half of the twentieth century. In order to escape the historiographical dialectic between nation and diaspora which splits scholarship on Hindi films overseas, cinema needs to be denationalized, and everyday social histories of urban cinema halls can then be framed within the Indian Ocean world. To do so successfully, however, we must challenge scholarship which asserts the collapse of this world in the early modern or colonial period (at the latest), in order to extend an Indian Ocean scale to capture the vibrant twentieth-century creation of a regional popular culture. The history of Bombay films in urban Tanzania thus enables a viewing of the transnational production of culture, and the ways in which cross-cultural flows are part of the construction of important categories like race and nationalism across the history of East Africa.

Résumé

Cet essai traite du rôle des films hindis, en Tanzanie urbaine, dans la rédaction de nouvelles chronologies de l'histoire du monde de l'océan Indien. À travers l'examen de films et de salles de cinéma sous des angles locaux, nationaux et transnationaux parfois mêlés, l'article nous aide à mieux comprendre la rencontre entre la diaspora indienne et le nationalisme en Afrique orientale, et retrace l'histoire des liens dans l'océan Indien jusqu’à la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle. Pour échapper à la dialectique historiographique entre nation et diaspora qui divise les spécialistes sur la question des films hindis à l’étranger, il faut dénationaliser le cinéma avant de pouvoir définir dans le monde de l'océan Indien les histoires sociales quotidiennes des salles de cinéma urbaines. Pour y arriver, il faut cependant remettre en question les études qui revendiquent l'effondrement de ce monde au début de la période moderne ou coloniale (au plus tard), afin de saisir la création vibrante d'une culture populaire régionale au vingtième siècle en étendant l’échelle de l'océan Indien. L'histoire des films de Bombay en Tanzanie urbaine offre par conséquent une vue de la production culturelle transnationale, et de la manière dont les flux transculturels s'intègrent dans la construction de catégories importantes comme la race et le nationalisme dans l'histoire de l'Afrique orientale.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 81 , Issue 1: Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics of the Indian Ocean , February 2011 , pp. 68 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2011

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