Black and White Bioscope
Making movies in Africa 1899 - 1925
Neil Parsons
ISBN 9781485309550
Protea Boekhuis, October 2018
Protea Distribution is proud to announce an exciting new history title! Black and White Bioscope will take you back in time to when the movie industry started in Africa!
Black and White Bioscope by Neil Parsons recovers a neglected chapter in the histories of world cinema and Africa. It tells the story of movie production in Africa that long predated francophone African films and Nollywood that are the focus of most histories of this industry.
At the same time as Hollywood was starting, a film industry in Southern Africa was surging ahead in integrating production, distribution, and exhibition. African Film Productions Limited made silent movies using technical and acting talent from Britain, the United States, and Australia, as well as from Africa. These included not only the original "long trek movie" and the prototype for the movies Zulu and Zulu Dawn but also the first King Solomon's Mines and the original Blue Lagoon, featuring African actors such as Goba, Tom Zulu, and Msoga Mwana, who starred as the black revolutionary in Prester John. In this lavishly illustrated book, fifty movies are reconstructed with graphic photographs and plot synopses - plus quotations from reviews - so that readers can rediscover this long-lost treasure trove of silent cinema.
