Colonial Educational Film

The “colonial educational film” goes by many names. Recent scholarship in this emergent field has identified these films as “official film,” “official documentary,” “colonial documentary,” “empire film,” “colonial film,” and “imperial propaganda film,” among others. Crossing a variety of genres including dramatic, documentary, instructional, amateur, newsreels, travel, and ethnographic films, these films shared a common objective—they were films made by the state (or individuals and institutions associated with the state) that sought to teach audiences the fundamentals of good colonial citizenship. The sheer number of terms that have been used to reference this mode of cinema indicate the diversity of genre, address, and audience concerning cinemas of colonial education. For example, colonial educational films ranged from being fictional to nonfictional in format. The Griersonian mode of documentary filmmaking influenced a nonfictional style of colonial filmmaking that was later inherited by the film units of Britain’s colonies. Humanist in outlook and poetic in aesthetics with a strong ideological leaning toward narratives of progress and modernity, these films educated audiences both within and beyond the empire about the industries, natural resources, and cultural practices of colonial territories on the path to modernity. Other films, including many that were produced by the Malayan Film Unit in the 1950s, were scripted as dramatic and fictional narratives that featured both professional and nonprofessional local actors. Intended specifically for local nonwhite audiences, these latter films sought to educate people to adopt specific practices and beliefs on topics such as thrift, personal hygiene, and anticommunism. Indeed, many filmmakers adopted specific formal modes of address that accounted for perceived racial differences in visual literacy between European and non-European audiences. Colonial educational films in the colonies circulated to audiences via traveling mobile film units and were shown in nontheatrical settings—schools, community centers, cultural centers, churches, plantations, mines, and trade exhibitions. They would also often be screened in movie theatres along with dramatic feature films. Hence, while the emergent field of nontheatrical film is aligned with the work that is being done in colonial educational film, the former certainly cannot encompass the range of ways in which cinematic education would have been encountered in colonial contexts. It is moreover, a field that moves beyond colonial/postcolonial binarisms. For example, the Films Division of India emerged from colonial educational filmmaking practices that would later become part of the production of postcolonial and national visual culture. Whatever their form, these films invariably seek to present a vision of empire that speaks to its project of modernity and capitalist governmentality. In that sense, colonial filmmaking was more of a practice, or an agenda, than a genre. This entry is limited to sources in English and citations have as a result been limited to those pertinent geographical regions. Non-English language sources have been cited where possible.