A Day in the Life of a Msukuma Called Kinga Mkono Bara was made by Ralph Cutler, Superintendent of Education, Tanganyika Territory and G.T. Wheeler, Field Officer, Tsetse Research, Tanganyika Territory. Major R.D. Furse explained in February 1937 that ‘he [Wheeler] and a friend have been taking films of native life, dances etc.’, such as this film – referred to in Sight and Sound as ‘A Day in the Life of an African Native’ – and At School in Tanganyika. The editing of these films was completed by April 1937, during Cutler’s return to England on leave (‘Educational Films’ (1937), CO323/1421/13).

Furse explained that Wheeler – whom he described as ‘rather an odd fish’ – wanted to show these films ‘in Cambridge, where he knows Mr Haddon [a noted anthropologist]’. The films were subsequently presented to an anthropological club, but Furse also discussed the possibility of showing them at ‘one of both of the C.A.S. clubs’ (‘Educational Films’ (1937), CO323/1421/13). Both pictures were presented at a private screening at the BFI in May 1937, after which they were available to hire from the National Film Library at the British Film Institute (Sight and Sound, Autumn 1937, 167).

Film historian Rachael Low later described A Day in the Life of a Msukuma Called Kinga Mkono Bara as a ‘charming, amateur, fuzzy, silent one-reel film with titles, and elementary camera technique’, which was ‘nevertheless a serious and fascinating look at life in an African village in the thirties’ (Low, 1979, 75). Anthony Bevir, of the Colonial Office, who viewed the film at the BFI, thought it had ‘some interesting and I should think unique pictures of native dancing’ and felt that while At School in Tanganyika was ‘technically better’, ‘both of them are quite good…and wholly suitable for showing to Administrative probationers’ (‘Educational Films’ (1937), CO323/1421/13).

However, this was not the only film to address this subject. In 1937, Notcutt and Latham, the filmmakers with the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) produced Msukuma Farmer, which was made near Mwanza. They explained that while at Mwanza ‘we stayed in the spare house at the Central African School as the guests of the headmaster, Mr Cutler and his wife’ (Notcutt and Latham, 1937, 89).

The Sukuma – meaning ‘north’ – were traditionally based in the northern areas of Tanganyika, to the east and south of Lake Victoria. Marilyn Little has argued that the Sukuma were ‘easily incorporated’ into the system of indirect rule promoted by Sir Donald Cameron when he became governor of Tanganyika in 1925, yet she also acknowledged the widespread impact that the British had on the Sukuma, not only on their organisation and political structure, but in particular on their agriculture and labour. Indeed, Little ultimately concluded that ‘colonial economic policies had the impact of impoverishing rather than improving the Sukuma diet’ as labour was diverted from subsistence cultivation to export crop production and government work projects (Little, 1991, 376, 386).