Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair
and powerful.
Prior to World War II, movie theaters were among the rare public venues where working-class and wealthy patrons encountered each other and enjoyed the same entertainments as relative equals. Few places in the world were as democratic in this regard as the United States, where patrons all paid the same price for a ticket and sat wherever they chose—so long as they were white.70 In Britain, India, and Tanzania, theaters—like ships, trains, and other public amenities—were divided not by race but by class. The elite typically occupied the balcony, if there was one, and paid substantially more for a ticket. “Second-class” patrons occupied the rear of the main floor, and the poor sat closest to the screen. Such seating arrangements allowed middle-class and elite patrons to maintain their sense of propriety, while simultaneously giving the poor and working-class patrons the satisfaction of knowing that they were traveling the same journey and arriving at the same destination, for a fraction of the cost. Despite—or perhaps because of—divisions by class within the theaters, cinemas were one of the few public places that brought patrons from residentially restricted neighborhoods and clearly distinct class backgrounds into the same space. Whether the cinema was in Bombay, India, in Bukoba, Tanzania, or in Bristol, England, it was while waiting in the queue for a ticket, milling in the lobby, or buying concessions that many encountered the most diverse cross section of people from the town where they lived.71 Exposure to the novel and foreign—on screen, in the city, and within the crowd—was part of the thrill of any adventure at the cinema during these early years of mass commercial leisure.
Film viewing was a collective form of entertainment, and the collective sense of engagement was enhanced by the fact that it seemed nearly everyone was watching—and then talking about—the same film. Opening day frenzies generate a lot of buzz the world over. But in this regard, the Tanzanian experience diverged from the global standard in several important ways. First, Tanzanian audiences took their obsession with being part of the opening day crowd to the extreme. No one with the means to attend would ever agree to be turned away on opening day. Long-standing coastal social conventions of wanting to claim attendance at the biggest and most elaborate public gatherings—be they weddings, dance competitions, or football contests—parlayed into public excitement for filmgoing. Moving-picture technology was incorporated into a long-established cultural milieu that placed immense social value on being able to say that you were part of the largest social gathering around. Local exhibitors and distributors played with and into these desires; most films were screened for only one day or maybe two. Thus, if you wanted to see a new film, you needed to see it the day of its premier—otherwise, you would likely miss it entirely. People paid close attention to the coming attractions; if a film by an applauded director or featuring a popular star was announced, news quickly traveled through the town. If rumors spread that tickets for the most prized seats were selling on the black market, everyone rushed to the ticket windows to book while they could, rather than risk being left out of the party.
Tanzanian exhibitors and distributors had to innovate on more standard industrial practices in order to meet the demands of these large and insistent audiences. In India, Europe, and the United States, first-run openings at numerous theaters were made possible by the simultaneous release of hundreds of prints of a new film. But in East Africa, importers and distributors could rarely afford to buy more than one print. African ingenuity, agility, and ability to make the most of a limited situation saved the day. Depending on anticipated demand, Tanzanian distributors and exhibitors would agree to release a new film in two to four of the largest theaters in a given town simultaneously. By staggering start times by twenty minutes and employing “reelers”—agile men with well-tuned bicycles who sped reels of film from one venue to the next—multiple theaters could run a premier using a single print. At the time, films were wound on a series of small reels, each of which contained roughly twelve minutes of run time for a given production. Indian films, which were the only ones ever “reeled,” typically consisted of nine to twelve reels. As each reel finished at the first theater, it was quickly rewound and handed over to a reeler, who hopped on his bicycle, raced through town, and delivered it to the second theater in line. The second theater would then send its first reel to the third cinema in the line, after starting the second reel that had just arrived by bicycle from the first cinema. All nine to twelve reels of a film would be sped around town in this way.72 Moving-picture technology may have been somewhat standardized across the globe, but it required the ingenious application of indigenous tools to overcome local constraints when operating in Tanzania.
In most respects, however, Tanzanian exhibition practices were commensurate with global standards of technological sophistication and modernity. Local exhibitors brought talkies, CinemaScope projection, spring-loaded seats, air-conditioning, and stereophonic sound to their theaters as soon as they were able to do so, often within months of an innovation’s debut in New York or London. The latest global architectural trends were also featured at movie theaters in East African towns. Cinematic entrepreneurs consciously built dynamic regional and transnational networks to keep abreast of the world’s latest developments in the art, craft, and industry of film and exhibition, and they were committed to giving local audiences access to the best product they could possibly deliver.
The glamour and sophistication exuded by the film industry accentuated East African entrepreneurs’ innate predilections for using their businesses to project not just films but modernity, elegance, and style as well. Modernity was a prominent discursive and developmental category of the twentieth century, as important in Tanzania as anywhere in the world. But how the modern was defined, measured, valued, and imagined was open to considerable debate. Drawing on a rich Africanist scholarship exploring the contested nature of modernity, successive chapters in this book illustrate how differently positioned historical actors conceived of the modern; how they imagined and gave form to their place within it; and how, to cite Lynn Thomas, they used the term to make political claims for inclusion or articulate visions of “new—often better—ways of being.”73
Figure I.4 Plaza Cinema, Moshi, c. 1947. From the personal collection of Chunilal Kala Savani
SOURCES AND METHODS
My first waged job, when I was thirteen years old, was working as a ticket and concession stand girl at a small local theater. Years of working at this theater clued me in to the fact that a lot more goes on at the show than watching films. This was where uptown girls met downtown boys and relationships crossed the tracks, often behind parents’ backs. Bold young couples sneaked upstairs to the baby cry room—a soundproofed enclosure with seats and a large glass window looking out on the screen—to make out. Teens too young to purchase alcohol found willing buyers among the slightly older men who hung out at the adjacent hot dog stand. Those with cars, tricked-out bicycles, and hot stereos to sell positioned themselves on the streets outside the theater to take full advantage of the crowd. Adults probably socialized and made deals too, but none of us teens paid much attention to them. The owner taught me how to sell a single ticket over and over again, but it was only while doing this research that I came to appreciate how critical such acts of subterfuge were to the economic survival of American small exhibitors. The mysteries of projection were also first revealed to me there, although our projectionist was gruff and rather creepy and deemed us girls unworthy of learning the trade. But the older girl who filled in for the owner each Monday, his sole day off, more than made up for the creepy projectionist. She spiked the orange fountain drink with gin for employees and let us dance in the lobby after the patrons were gone. She also took me to my first rock concert, Bruce Springsteen’s, and later helped me learn how to drive. My job at the theater later spurred me to ask Tanzanian cinema employees not only about the movies they screened but also about the characters they worked with and the people in the neighborhood they got to know from working at the show.
Data gathered from beyond the traditional archive form the bedrock on which this book is built. Interviews turned my attention from the films people went to see to what going to the movies meant and how people made use of films in their own lives. Kiswahili terms such as mshabiki (fan, fanatic), mpenzi (lover), or mteja (addict) were often used by people to describe their relationship