Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:46:13.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bakari, I. and Cham, M. B. (eds) (1996) African Experiences of Cinema. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
Barlet, O. (trans. Turner, C.) (2000) African Cinemas: decolonizing the gaze. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Bertz, N. (2008a) ‘Race, Urban Space, and Nationalism in Indian Ocean World History: schools, cinemas, and the Indian diaspora in Tanzania, 1920–2000’. PhD thesis, University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Bertz, N. (2008b) ‘Indian Ocean world travellers: moving models in multi-sited research’ in Basu, H. (ed.), Journeys and Dwellings: Indian Ocean themes in South Asia. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Bose, S. (2006) A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the age of global empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brennan, J. (2005) ‘Democratizing cinema and censorship in Tanzania, 1920–1980’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 38 (3): 481–511.Google Scholar
Brennan, J., Burton, A. and Lawi, Y. (eds) (2007) Dar es Salaam: the history of an emerging East African metropolis. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki Na Nyota.Google Scholar
Burgess, T. (2002) ‘Cinema, bell bottoms, and miniskirts: struggles over youth and citizenship in revolutionary Zanzibar’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 35 (2): 287–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, A. (2005) African Underclass: urbanisation, crime and colonial order in Dar es Salaam. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, K. N. (1985) Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudhuri, K. N. (1990) Asia before Europe: economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, A. (1994) Merchants of Maritime India, 1500–1800. Aldershot: Variorum.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, A. and Pearson, M. N. (eds) (1987) India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800. Calcutta: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dudrah, R. K. (2006) Bollywood: sociology goes to the movies. New Delhi: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Fair, L. (2004) ‘Hollywood Hegemony? Hardly: audience preferences in Zanzibar, 1950s–1970s’, ZIFF Journal 1 (1): 52–8.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. G. (1993) South Asians in East Africa: an economic and social history, 1890–1980. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J. (1979) A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jhaveri, K. L. (1999) Marching with Nyerere: Africanisation of Asians. New Delhi: B. R. Publishing.Google Scholar
Kaungamno, E. E. (1973) ‘Mass media in Tanzania’, Occasional Paper No. 2, Tanzania Library Service (TLS), Dar es Salaam.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (1997) ‘Indian films and Nigerian lovers: media and the creation of parallel modernities’, Africa 67 (3): 406–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leveri, M. (1983) ‘Prospects in Developing a Viable Film Industry: a “close-up” of a decade's production performance of the audio visual institute of Dar es Salaam and the Tanzania Film Company Limited (1973–1983)’. MBA thesis, University of Dar es Salaam.Google Scholar
Martin, P. (1995) Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McPherson, K. (1993) The Indian Ocean: a history of people and the sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Metcalf, T. R. (2007) Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean arena, 1860–1920. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ng'wanakilala, N. (1981) Mass Communication and Development of Socialism in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.Google Scholar
Pearson, M. (2003) The Indian Ocean. New York NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petterson, D. (2002) Revolution in Zanzibar: an American's Cold War tale. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Rajadhyaksha, A. and Willemen, P. (1994) Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
Reinwald, B. (2006) ‘“Tonight at the Empire”: cinema and urbanity in Zanzibar, 1920s to 1960s’, Afrique et histoire 5: 81–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sicoloff, J. and Leveri, M. (1978) ‘Film comprehension among rural audiences in Tanzania’, unpublished study, Audio-Visual Institute of Dar es Salaam, 1978.Google Scholar
Smyth, R. (1979) ‘Development of British colonial film policy, 1927–1939, with special reference to East and Central Africa’, Journal of African History 20 (3): 437–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smyth, R. (1989) ‘The feature film in Tanzania’, African Affairs 88 (352): 389–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ssali, M. H. (1988) ‘The Development and Role of an African Film Industry in East Africa with Special Reference to Tanzania, 1922–1984’. PhD thesis, University of California-Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Virdi, J. (2003) The Cinematic Imagination: Indian popular films as social history. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar