Tropical Dream Palaces: Cinema in Colonial West Africa (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780190089078)

Many studies focus on film in Africa. Few, however, study cinema as a leisure activity: one that has influenced several generations and opened up spaces to dream, discuss or contest. Movie theatres offered a break from the daily routine, as places of escape and of education. Cinema was also potentially subversive, offering an alternative to colonial discourse. Tropical Dream Palaces seeks to trace this history in a West African context: of broadening horizons on the one hand, and of censorship and control on the other. It fills a historiographic void, following cinema's arrival in the region in the early twentieth century up until the Independence era, and also looking further afield to Central Africa and its different models.

Goerg addresses questions of film distribution in colonial times; of screening venues, their implantation, spread and different categories; while also focusing on audiences, their gender or age; the acquisition of a film culture; and the impact of screening foreign images. Her book draws on extremely varied sources to paint a broad picture of this cinematographic landscape: archives, the accounts of African and European spectators or administrators, novels, autobiographies, the local press, interviews and iconography.

Author: Odile Goerg
ISBN-10: 0190089075
ISBN-13: 9780190089078
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2020
Pages: 208
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 10.00h x 5.60w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2020