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Abstract
The Boy Kumasenu (Sean Graham, Gold Coast, 1952) produced by the Gold Coast Film Unit during the 1950s, before independence in Ghana, had a public impact and success with local Ghanaian audiences that other colonial films never achieved. About a boy, Kumasenu, who moves from a rural village to the city of Accra, the film attempts to represent an African experience of modern life, using a local cast. This article explores the film’s popular reception by drawing on advertisements, newspaper coverage, reviews, awards it received, as well as contemporary personal correspondence and retrospective interviews with the filmmakers. It proposes that the film’s appeals lay in its inclusion of highlife, its fashions, styles and music, popular in the Gold Coast, alongside cinematic conventions of documentary, drama-documentary, neorealist film styles and the Hollywood gangster genre, already familiar to urban Ghanaian audiences. Furthermore, its theme of urban youth and citizenship evoked the concept of the “African Personality,” an identity that Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party would link with highlife music at independence. By tapping into the popularity of cinema and highlife, the film promoted nascent nationalist sentiments, and became associated with anti-colonialism and social change in the newly emerging independent Ghana.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Kylie Thomas, the editor of Social Dynamics, Nate Plageman and the anonymous reviewers for feedback on an earlier draft, and Mansour Shabbak for help with the stills. Special thanks to Jacqueline Maingard for her insightful comments, research assistance and support.
Notes
1. The Gold Coast became independent from Britain in 1957 and was called Ghana, taking the name of an earlier African empire. The Boy Kumasenu is accessible for viewing on the Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire website, http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk. This is a 63-min, six-reel version held at the British Film Institute. The originally released feature film was a 95-min version in 10 reels, and the 63-min version was distributed shortly afterwards. There is also an extended synopsis, context and analysis. See Rice (Citation2008a).
2. They were both college connections from Nkrumah’s time in America and his study at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania. William Beverley Carter was a journalist and went to Ghana as part of a West African assignment facilitated by the United Nations (Carter Citation2008, 28). Julius Belcher was a Philadelphia accountant and later a businessman who worked in the early Nkrumah administration (Kilson Citation2009).
3. The Daily Graphic was established in 1950 by the London Mirror group. It was privately owned by Cecil King, whose West African Graphic Company set up a number of newspapers in West Africa. The Daily Graphic was produced by local Ghanaians, and it had a high circulation amongst Ghanaians (Hasty Citation2005; Plageman Citation2010).
4. See Austin (Citation1964) for an account of the political changes in this period.
5. I am grateful to Peter Bloom and Kate Skinner for the use of the Chris Hesse interview.
6. Nkrumah was not the only one to use the notion of the “African Personality,” but Botwe-Asamoah (Citation2005) interprets his conceptualisation as particularly linked to his cultural thought.
7. Rouch was an important French filmmaker and anthropologist. He made many films in West Africa and founded the Le Comité du film ethnographique at the Musée de l’homme in Paris. He was one of the founders of the documentary style of “cinema-vérité” and pioneered “reflexive anthropology” and “ethno-fiction” in his film practices (Rouch Citation2003).
8. For this idea, she draws on Priya Jaikumar’s notion of the redemptive aesthetics of British imperial cinema (2006, 25 cited in Garritano Citation2013, 33).
9. UNESCO recruited filmmakers and colonial instructors from CFU and other institutions, including Alexander Shaw, William Farr, Julian Huxley, Basil Wright. For their different views on these film practices see their contributions to the publication, Visual Aids in Fundamental Education, Some Personal Experiences (UNESCO Citation1952). Smyth (Citation2011) also discusses their role in West Africa in the post war period.
10. On the use of mobile cinemas and censorship of films for African audiences, see Ambler (Citation2011); Burns (Citation2011); Reynolds (Citation2005); Smyth (Citation1983a, Citation1992).
11. See Rice (Citation2008d).
12. Three of BEKE’s films can be viewed at http://colonialfilm.org.uk. The history of this formative colonial film experiment can be found at: Reynolds (Citation2009); Rice (Citation2010a); Sanogo (Citation2011); Smyth (Citation1979); Windel (Citation2011).
13. See Colonial Cinema, produced by the CFU, available at: http://cinemastandrews.org.uk/archive/colonial-cinema/.
14. John Grierson had established a film unit at the Empire Marketing Board in 1926 under Stephen Tallents, which then moved and became established at the General Post Office (GPO) in 1933 until the outbreak of WWII in 1939. Grierson ran the GPO Film Unit, as a producer, advocating the use of documentary amongst other film practices. Many people trained in documentary film under him. See Aitken (Citation1990; Citation2013); Anthony and Mansell (Citation2011); Enticknap (Citation2013).
15. R.O. Fenuku, Sam Aryeetey and Bob Okanta from Ghana, and Alex Fajemisin, J.A. Otigba and Malam Yakuba Auna from Nigeria (Hesse Citation2010; Rice Citation2010e).
16. Rotha was Director of Productions at Strand Films at the time and gained commissions to make documentaries through the Film Centre, in Soho, London, an advisory and coordinating body between independent documentary units and sponsors set up by Grierson. He trained as an art director and became an independent documentary filmmaker, as well as writing about documentary film practice through his film criticism and publications, Film Till Now (Jonathan Cape Citation1930) and Documentary (Faber and Faber 1935) (Eason Citation2013).
17. His credits include films made by directors at the GPO Film Unit and Strand Films during the 1930s, such as Edgar Anstey, Arthur Elton, Marion Grierson, Stuart Legg, Alexander Shaw, Evelyn Spice, Harry Watt. He worked on documentaries made by the Canadian National Film Board during the war before going to the Gold Coast (Evans Citation2011, 84, 85); Sussex (Citation1975, 36).
18. Achimota College, formerly the Prince of Wales College and School, Achimota, was built in 1924 and formally opened in 1927. It was an elite co-educational secondary school based on an English public school model to educate Africans. It was founded by the former British Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg with Gold Coast-born Dr James Aggrey, educated in America, and a member of the Phelps Stoke African Education Commission. In 1948 Achimota College became three separate institutions: the University College of the Gold Coast (now the University of Ghana), the Achimota Teacher Training College, and Achimota School. Many influential Ghanaians attended either Achimota College and School, or Achimota Teacher Training College.
19. Vanderpuye directed documentaries for the Ghana Film Unit after independence, whilst Aryeetey, Fenuku and Hesse all acted as director of the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (Hesse Citation2010).
20. Gloria Addae, who later married and was known as Gloria Amon Nikoi. She was educated at Achimota College, became a trained lawyer, held various diplomatic and government posts in the UN and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including briefly Foreign Minister.
21. Ofu Ampofo of Mampong played an important role in visual art, sculpture, and pharmacopoeia. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1940 from Britain, where he had trained in medicine in Edinburgh. He organised the Gold Coast Arts Society, popularly called The Akwapim Six, and held the “New African Arts” exhibitions in 1944, 1946 and 1948. He was also involved with the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana (Botwe-Asamoah Citation2005, 151, 152).
22. He was to become permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport, and Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame-Nkrumah University of Science and Technology at Kumasi, which he played a major role in developing.
23. Graham could not remember the name of the band he recorded at the time of his interview (2010). However he did describe the process whereby he invited a local band to play, told them what he wanted and then recorded the music.
24. Readers of the Daily Graphic are told that the dance scenes were filmed at the Methodist Boys School, Adabraka, in a special Saturday Supplement Issue that features the making of the film. Readers are also assured that the beer being drunk on set is actually tea and that drunkenness shown in the film was performed (July 12, 1952, 7–10).
25. She was the daughter of Edwin Lutyens, the architect who built government buildings in New Delhi, and friend of Jane Drew, modernist architect who designed buildings in Ghana and Nigeria. See Harries and Harries (Citation1989).
26. Elizabeth Lutyens’s filmography is listed on the BFI database (http://www.bfi.org.uk).
27. John Hollingsworth was a prominent British orchestral conductor of concerts, ballet, opera as well as recording film scores. He worked for the Rank Organisation after WWII, as musical director for the COI documentary film unit from 1949, and for Hammer Films in the 1950s.
28. The author has not yet located a copy of this recording.
29. For a discussion of these films, see Rice (Citation2008b, Citation2008c).
30. Bankole Timothy was from Sierra Leone (thanks to Nate Plageman for this information).
31. For such an account see Zachernuk (Citation2011).
32. “Jaguar” refers to persons who exhibited modern appeal (Plageman Citation2013, 170n73).
33. The Arts Council was formed as an interim committee in 1955 and established by law in 1958. Nkrumah was acting President, Dr Seth Cudjoe was Deputy Chair, and Philip Gbeho chaired the Accra branch committee in his capacity as instructor of music at Achimota college. Seth Cudjoe and Philip Gbeho set up the West African Arts Club in London with a group of traditional Gold Coast dancers and musicians in 1950 (Pool Citation1953, 7).
34. Note 73 on page 268 references “Interim Committee for an Arts Council, 1957–1959” PRAAD-Accra, RG 3/7/212.
35. Rice (Citation2008a).