Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair
attendance was five hundred patrons who paid less than ten cents for each ticket, how many shows over how many decades would it take to pay off the cost of construction, let alone turn a profit? Furthermore, how sure could anyone be in the 1910s that cinemagoing would be an enduring pastime—especially in East Africa, which was in the early, brutal years of imperial conquest? To comprehend the rationale behind building a cinema in colonial Tanzania, we need to see that investments of this type were about much more than monetary profit: they earned proprietors, townspeople, and even colonial officials valuable social and cultural capital.
Figure 1.2 Royal Cinema, Zanzibar, opened 1921 (renamed the Majestic in 1938). Photo by Ranchhod T. Oza, courtesy of Capital Art Studio, Zanzibar
All the men who built cinemas in Tanzania were either immigrants or the children of immigrants, but after settling in Zanzibar or Tanganyika, they invested heavily in developing not just business and commercial networks but also the physical, social, and cultural infrastructure of their towns. Sinking their capital literally into the ground spoke louder than any words could about their commitment to making East Africa home. The architectural history of the region is largely a lacuna, but Robert Gregory estimates that upwards of 90 percent of the cityscape in East African colonial towns—from private homes to markets, courthouses, and schools—bore the mark of immigrant Asian contractors, architects, craftspeople, financiers, and laborers.10 From private homes and shops to public buildings of many types, South Asians played a major role in giving East African towns concrete form. Privately owned buildings offered opportunities to display artistic style, architectural competence, and financial power.11 And cinemas, as monuments to the idea of a collective public sphere, enabled businessmen to demonstrate their commitment to building a beautiful town and a social community as well.
The religious traditions and personal experiences of many South Asian immigrants helped generalize expectations that financial success came with communal obligations. Many early immigrants were from regions prone to drought, famine, and debt. Most had fled because they had few other options. A common trope in the stories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigration is the young man, perhaps barely in his teens, who arrives in East Africa poor and alone. He is saved from abuse and the vagaries of life only by the generous intervention of some kind soul who takes him in; provides food and shelter; gives him a job; and helps him mature into a solid, successful, and respected man.12 In fact, a number of poor immigrant boys became some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in East Africa. And according to individual and communal narratives, they never lost sight of where they came from. Personal experience both inspired and obligated them to help others.
In neither India nor East Africa did the colonial state invest substantially in health, education, or social welfare. Consequently, such obligations fell largely on local communities. South Asians built many formal and informal institutions for fund-raising and communal development; the annual tithe of 10 percent of one’s income collected by Shia Ismailis and Bohora Ithnasheris for communal investment was but one expression of the strong commitment to social improvement. These acts of philanthropy were, of course, just as fraught with struggles over class, gender, and religious norms and decorum as benevolent donations by the Fords, Rockefellers, or Gateses, but they were still critically important for feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and housing the poor. They also reinforced the conviction that financial success came with communal obligations. Many of the first public hospitals, clinics, and maternity wards in East Africa were built and endowed by successful South Asians, as were some of the best public libraries, the first universities and preschools, sports stadiums, social halls, cultural centers, and public parks. In many instances, these institutions were the first of their kind serving all, regardless of race, religion, or class.13 By making charitable gifts, endowing public institutions, and supporting critical social welfare institutions, individuals and families displayed their wealth, demonstrated their generosity, and enhanced their own social standing as patriarchs and communal elders. Through generous giving, they acquired blessings in the afterlife and social power in the here and now.
Cinemas were certainly not charities like orphanages or medical clinics, but they were nonetheless treasured gifts to the community: they healed souls, opened minds, and provided aesthetic and emotional nourishment for old and young alike. They were, to be sure, businesses first and foremost. But investing in a business enterprise that simultaneously provided a social good was a culturally and historically specific ideal of prudent spending. The men who built East Africa’s cinemas were typically of much more modest means than those who endowed the universities and hospitals, yet in giving what they could, they too sought to endow their communities with cultural facilities. Cinemas were also frequently given over to charity organizations for fund-raising events, further demonstrating the owners’ commitment to philanthropy. As early as 1920, for example, Jariwalla was dedicating the proceeds from various evening shows to charity, a tradition that was followed by proprietors up through the 1980s. Exhibitors were also known to dedicate proceeds to fledgling political parties or public institutions, including the police, schools, and sports teams. In addition, owners and managers frequently allowed local social groups to utilize their facilities rent-free for music, dance, and theatrical shows.14 Charitable donations enhanced the personal and institutional bonds between theaters and the people of the town.
PROJECTING MODERNITY, TECHNOLOGICAL SOPHISTICATION, AND COSMOPOLITAN CULTURAL STYLE
The social capital that came from having a cinema accrued to the community at large as well as to the proprietor. One recurring theme across the hundreds of interviews conducted for this project was that having a cinema of any kind, especially one as beautiful and impressive as the Royal, dramatically enhanced the cachet of a town and, by extension, the prestige of its people. Haji Gora Haji, a poet and film fan from Zanzibar who worked as a sailor on a jahazi (sail-powered cargo boat) in his younger days, described the status he and his crewmates enjoyed as Zanzibaris when they docked in “sleepy backwater towns” along the coast where few had ever witnessed the wonders of moving pictures. The two main islands comprising the Zanzibar archipelago, Unguja and Pemba, boasted six cinemas during much of Haji’s life, making it the equivalent of a regional cultural Mecca.15 Coming from a place with so many cinemas also gave young, economically poor but culturally rich Zanzibaris, Haji among them, artistic license to weave enraptured tales of evenings at the moving pictures for adoring crowds—tales that allegedly inspired others to stow away onboard boats headed to Zanzibar.16
Like picture palaces erected elsewhere in the world, the architecturally opulent theaters built in East Africa were intended to serve as spectacles and as sources of visual pleasure in and of themselves. At a time when the vast majority of Tanzanians lived in mud-and-wattle homes and almost no one had electricity, entering such a monument to modernity thrilled patrons nearly as much as the film entertained them. Going inside these glorious buildings evoked luxury and delight. As one woman said of the cinema in Tanga, “The Majestic was a classy theater, a truly chic, modern space. You felt elegant simply going in. Everyone dressed in their best clothes. You wanted to dress up, dress for your part, because the theater was such an elegant place.”17 Remarking on the Majestic Cinema in Zanzibar, one man recalled, “The building itself was astonishing, truly modern. When it opened our whole neighborhood felt proud. It was really something to be able to say you lived next door to the Majestic.”18 Another man made similar comments about the opening of the Sultana Cinema at the other end of town. “I was only a dockhand at the port, a day-laborer. You know, a man of little consequence or stature,” he said. “But I remember when the cinema opened and my son was so proud. He kept telling all his friends that his father worked next door to the cinema [laughing]. It was like I built the place or something.”19 The general public claimed cinemas as their own and drew personal pride from their affiliation.
The architectural grandeur and names of the cinemas built in the first half of the twentieth century articulated the owners’ perception of their towns’ parity with cultural capitals across the world, as well as their commitment to enhancing residents’ stature as fully engaged cosmopolitans and discerning cultural connoisseurs.