In British-controlled Africa, the first moving pictures were made in the Sudan, in 1897, by John Bennet Stanford (1870–1947), who shot a film of the battle of Omdurman, entitled Alarming Queen’s Company of Grenadier Guards at Omdurman. Fifteen years later, Charles Urban had a Kinemacolor film shot in Khartoum of Lord Kitchener, the “hero” of Omdurman, reviewing Egyptian troops. During these years, numerous filmmakers travelled up the Nile to the Sudan and even Kenya because there was no tropical forest to hinder their filming. One of the more famous, Félix Mesguich, filmed for Charles Urban Trading Company in Khartoum in 1906. Later that year, the Colonial Office in London, also now interested in showing the British presence on the continent, granted Warwick Trading (cameraman E.L.Lauste) special privileges to film around Mombassa in East Africa. Other well-known filmmakers active in the area of Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya were Alfred Machin,Cherry Kearton, Paul Rainey, and Theodore Roosevelt. Between 1909 and 1913, moving pictures also were projected in theaters as well as in the open air by itinerant exhibitors in cities such as Nairobi.
By 1903, the British government set about making films to demonstrate economical development and modernization in its African colonies. Between late 1906 and late 1908, British cameramen filmed in Rhodesia, Mashona, and Barotseland. An impressive surviving image was that of the Victoria Bridge, the highest in the world at the time, near Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River. Specifically, as a result of the Urban-Africa Expedition, films such as Life on the Zambezi River, Amongst the Central African Natives, and A Trip on the Rhodesian Railway were shown around the world. Because investment in the colonies was a long-term financial adventure, moving pictures could assure “anxious shareholders” that their money was being well spent so far from home.
British investors such as the British South Africa Company (BSAC) used films about the construction of railways and bridges—for instance, connecting the diamond, copper, and tin mines in Rhodesia—not only to attract shareholders but also to present themselves as essential in conquering the world for the Empire. In 1912, BSAC produced Rhodesia To-Day, shot by Alfred Kaye and R.C.E.Nissen in the region between Bulawayo and the Zambesi. That film especially nourished the British Imperial dream of constructing a Cape to Cairo railway. Itinerant showmen also were active in the mining areas of Rhodesia and densely populated cities such as Bulawayo or Salisbury early in the century. Around 1910, films were being programmed (for whites) at theaters such as the New London Bioscope and Empire in Salisbury (Rhodesia). In 1912, as film screenings in theaters became accessible to the black population, Rhodesia’s Native Affairs Department, along with the industry, was pressured by (white) women’s groups to censor those films presented to blacks.
Moving pictures also arrived relatively early to Nigeria on the west coast. The first screenings took place at Glover Memorial Hall in the capital of Lagos, on ten consecutive nights, beginning 12 August 1903. Ten years later, a BSAC film expedition shot more than 10,000 feet of high quality film showing the tin mines of Nigeria and the countryside as far inland as Kano. By 1913, itinerant showmen had brought moving pictures to most of the coastal cities of British West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana).
