Africa Joins the World: The Missionary Imagination and the Africa Motion Picture Project in Central Africa, 1937-9

This paper explores the films and filmmaking process of the Africa Motion Picture Project (AMPP) in Central Africa, 1937-39. Involving a missionary film experiment designed to portray Africa 'as it really is' to American church-goers for fund-raising and recruitment purposes, recently discovered diaries and scrapbooks of the film crew offer a counter-narrative to the early twentieth century stereotypes of Africa guiding the AMPP narratives. Focusing on production issues in the field as well as the final product allows us to resurrect a measure of agency on the part of the colonized, including on-going cultural negotiations, forms of micro-resistance, and demands for remuneration on the part of Africans acting in the films.