In January 1949, Arthur Creech-Jones, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, announced the formation of an East African Film Production Unit. Although the Colonial Film Unit had employed a film crew in East Africa from 1946 – headed by Robert Kingston-Davies – the unit would now consist of ten technicians under the control of a senior director, H.L. Bradshaw. Three one-man units were sent to the public relations offices in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika – and subsequently Zanzibar – with a central editorial section established in Nairobi (Smyth, 1992, 170). Colonial Cinema explained that this editorial department would ensure that ‘before going to England for printing, films in their final shape suited the requirements of sponsor departments’ (Colonial Cinema, December 1949, 54).

Working with the CFU in Uganda was Norman Spurr, who was described by George Pearson as ‘an education officer and film pioneer’ (Pearson, 1957, 213). Spurr wrote extensively on the pedagogical function of film in Africa. He argued in Colonial Cinema that film audiences in East Africa were less advanced than their West African counterparts – where literacy rates were higher – and so proposed a less ‘sophisticated’ level of production (Colonial Cinema, May-June 1952, 42). Spurr’s attitudes towards the local audiences are also revealed in his comments on a proposed Colonial Film Unit training school in Uganda. Spurr stated in 1948 that he was ‘apprehensive lest the proposed training course may be overloaded beyond the capacity of African trainees’ (Smyth, 1992, 170).

In December 1949, Colonial Cinema listed as a work-in-progress Murram Block Making, which was described as the ‘first of three films showing the correct method of making the blocks, their uses and a family building a house’. The film was reviewed in September 1950 along with Why Not You?. Colonial Cinema stated that Why Not You? ‘shows that by organising a family unit more murram blocks can be made every day, and the making of three kinds of blocks is demonstrated’ (Colonial Cinema, September 1950, 72).

Rosaleen Smyth argued that these two films, and two further films produced by Spurr in 1950 – A Challenge to Ignorance and Dysentery – were ‘virtually visual aids, for illustrating lectures’. These educational films would be presented with a commentator who ‘should be an expert on the subject, familiar with the methods of extension work, and on hand to oversee the follow-up’. Spurr further argued in Colonial Cinema that ‘films designed to teach and films designed to entertain make poor bedfellows’ as he disapproved of placing entertainment films on the same programme as instructional pictures (Smyth, 1992, 171).