Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-448) and index.
Contents:
Introduction -- Building business and building community : the exhibition and distribution industries in Tanzania, 1900s-50s -- The men who made the movies run -- Making love in the Indian Ocean : Hindi films and Zanzibari audiences in the 1950s -- Global films and local reception : audience preferences, 1950s-80s -- Cinemas, cities, and audiences : cultural geographies and social difference at the show -- Drive-in socialism : debating modernities and development in Dar es Salaam -- The independence generation goes to the show, 1960s-80s -- The political economy of cinema, 1960s-80s -- Epilogue. A new world : transformations in mediascapes, the 1990s and beyond.
Summary:
Reel Pleasures brings the world of African moviehouses and the publics they engendered to life, revealing how local fans creatively reworked global media--from Indian melodrama to Italian westerns, kung fu, and blaxploitation films--to speak to local dreams and desires. In it, Laura Fair zeroes in on Tanzanians' extraordinarily dynamic media cultures to demonstrate how the public and private worlds of film reception brought communities together and contributed to the construction of genders, generations, and urban citizenship over time. Radically reframing the literatures on media exhibition, distribution, and reception, Reel Pleasures demonstrates how local entrepreneurs and fans worked together to forge the most successful cinema industry in colonial sub-Saharan Africa. The result is a major contribution to the literature on transnational commodity cultures.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.