In its review of Here is the Gold Coast in December 1947, Kinematograph Weekly explained that ‘the idea of the film is to impress upon audiences the need for spending three-and-a-half million on further developing the territory during the next ten years’ (KW, 25 December 1947, 16). Oliver Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had presented a new Colonial Development and Welfare bill to the House of Commons in February 1945, which would provide £120 million for development schemes and research work in the colonies over the next ten years (The Times, 1 February 1945, 2). Succeeding the existing Act of 1940, which granted up to £5 million a year, the new Act was intended to allow for longer-term development and planning, and proposed to offer just over £30 million to West Africa, of which Nigeria was allocated £23 million and the Gold Coast £3.5 million (The Times, 13 December 1945, 5) In proposing the scheme, Stanley explained to the cabinet that ‘the Colonial Empire means so much to us that we should be prepared to assume some burden for its future. If we are unable or unwilling to do so, are we justified in retaining, or shall we be able to retain, a Colonial Empire?’ (Pearce, 1982, 65).

Here is the Gold Coast brought together existing COI footage filmed by John Page – for example, the lengthy sequence in the Northern Territories had featured in his 1944 film A Mamprusi Village – and played both in England and overseas in theatrical and non-theatrical venues. It was shown at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947 in a programme including films from India, Australia and Palestine and was listed for release through United Artists and described in Kinematograph Weekly as an ‘adequate full quota featurette’ (KW, 25 December 1947, 16). The film was also distributed non-theatrically in America through British Information Services. A publication for the National Association for Secondary School Principals in America in 1948 noted that 24 prints of the film had been sold in the first three months in America (Audio-Visual Guide, 1948, 18). Public screenings included a free showing alongside Daybreak in Udi in March 1951 as part of a monthly series presented by the Los Angeles County Museum, a run a few weeks later at the News-Palace theatre in Long Beach, and a presentation at the University of Michigan in October 1951 (Independent Long Beach, 11 March 1951, 32-A). Posters for the screening in Long Beach, which was described somewhat misleadingly as its ‘1^st U.S. showing’, stated that this ‘British Govt. film’ promised to show ‘West Africa as it is today’ (Long Beach Press-Telegram, 4 April, 1951, B-6).

The film though was not without its detractors and was strongly criticised in the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly in 1955. ‘The Gold Coast students [in Britain] complain bitterly that they were shocked to see the film entitled “Here is the Gold Coast”’, the Legislative transcripts note. ‘The film featured only people from the remotest parts of the country who were perhaps almost all naked’. The speaker suggested that the film generated racial tension – ‘when it was shown, landladies gave students notices to quit’ – and resented, in particular, the stereotypes and emphasis on the ‘exotic’ within the film. ‘I wonder whether the Director of Information Services’, the speaker asked, ‘can say how many of the films shown in this country depict the slum areas of, say, Manchester or Liverpool or 37 Upper Parliament Street. When films are made in this country one finds that poor fishermen living in Jamestown and such other places are the people shown’ (Jahoda, 1961, 67).

Such a representation evidently endorsed the film’s intended message of British development, but it also directed the discourses surrounding the film. Monthly Film Bulletin noted how ‘in the northern territories life goes on as it has done for centuries’, while Kinematograph Weekly argued that this ‘unvarnished half pint documentary’, shows ‘what has been done and what still remains to be done for its teeming native population’ (MFB, 1948, 172). ‘Originally a fever-ridden swamp and death trap’, the review continued, ‘the Gold Coast is now an important industrial and trading centre’ (KW, 25 December 1947, 16). Documentary Film News, while criticising the story construction and the ‘singularly inappropriate and entirely supplementary musical score’, described the film as the story of ‘the development of a backward people’. ‘It shows us much in the lives of the people of West Africa that will be new to English audiences’ it concluded. ‘It helps us to understand and to regard sympathetically many of their problems – and it reminds us, too, that some of the biggest problems (malnutrition, for instance) are only too international’ (Documentary Film News, February 1948, 18).

A number of reviews reserved special praise for the West African commentator, who was deemed to give the film authenticity. Monthly Film Bulletin stated that the commentary, ‘spoken by a native of the Gold Coast’, was ‘excellently delivered’, while the notes for the Edinburgh festival in 1947 stated that ‘The film gives an impression of objective analysis, which is strengthened by the absence of any sense of complacency and the use of a native-born commentator’ (Documentary News Letter, 1947, 153).