Preserving A Heritage? South African Archive Documentary: 1910-1940

Abstract

Le documentaire occupait une place aussi importante que la fiction dans la production de l’African Film Productions Ltd., le premier studio Sud-africain. Financés par plusieurs départements de la nouvelle fédération de l’Union Sud-africaine, les documentaires de l’AFP jouèrent un rôle crucial dans le développement d’une nouvelle conception de l’Afrique du Sud entre 1910 et 1940. Ce rôle devient évident quand on place les documentaires de l’AFP dans le contexte de la politique législative de l’Afrique du Sud de l’époque.

African Mirror: The Life and Times of the South African Newsreel from 1910 to 1948

“…94 AFP benefited from commissions by the mostly English-speaking capitalist and industrial owners of large agricultural companies, sugar plantations and mining corporations, as well as by those controlling the Chamber of Mines, to produce recruitment, advertising and industrial films. 95 It also acquired commissions from government departments and municipal bodies, such as the Departments of Agriculture, Justice, Mines and Industries, Native Affairs, and the Publicity and Travel Department of South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H). The centralisation of government institutions was accompanied by the rationalisation of regional and provincial forms of administration.…”

Nation-Building Movies Made in South Africa (1916–18): I.W. Schlesinger, Harold Shaw, and the Lingering Ambiguities of South African Union

“…But such competing elements within 'the instability of the national' among whites, and between whites and others, were evident in the feature film industry that flourished in the Union between 1916 and 1922 -23. No fewer than 40 fiction films, and a larger number of short non-fiction or documentary films, 12 were made in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and maybe elsewhere. Twenty such feature films were distributed overseas.…”