Reviews for Nionga noted that this was a ‘good novelty booking’, a ‘novel type of film entertainment’, ‘curious and extremely interesting’ and ‘an interesting experiment in film production’. The film’s novelty stemmed largely from the fact that it was shot in Africa, and was, Rachael Low suggested, the first British film using Africans as actors to play in London, although Dean Rapp and Charles Weber argued that Livingstone claimed this title by a few months (Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1989, 17). The African actors were a source of interest within the reviews. Kinematograph Weekly discussed the film as a ‘story of Africa, entirely played by natives, no white man appearing in it at all’, and further noted that ‘all the parts are played by natives, and there is a great deal of interest in their methods’ (Kinematograph Weekly, 21 May 1925, 42, 56). The Stoll press book emphasised the ‘fascination that comes from the fact that all the actors are Savages’.

A poster for Nionga stated that this was ‘not a travelogue but a throbbing drama of native life’, yet Rachael Low argued that Nionga contains ‘all the paraphernalia of the primitive travel film’ (KW, 21 May 1925; Low, 1971, 290). Reviews certainly noted the ‘interesting scenery of the lakes, country and native villages’ and referred less to the film’s narrative than to the ‘many interesting native customs, which are well depicted’ (KW, 21 May 1925, 56). Bioscope similarly noted the ‘many characteristic shots of native dances, fishing sequences, toilet methods, etc.’ but suggested that in its ‘effort to picture the life customs and characteristics of these natives in the form of a coherent story based upon actual tribal traditions’, Nionga offers ‘great improvement upon the conventional patchwork travel productions’ (Bioscope, 28 May 1925, 85). Close Up, in an article entitled ‘London and the Negro Film’, further noted this merging of fiction and non-fiction, but suggested that the ‘dramatic moulding was never obtrusive enough to parody the natives’ psychology and rob us of their naivete and simple charm’ (Close Up, August 1929, 128).

Film scholar Emma Sandon discusses Nionga as a ‘compilation’ of ‘strategies and subject matter drawn from earlier short films, held together by a more or less coherent narrative framework’. She considers this ‘composite’ film as an extension of ‘pre-existing cultural practices’ – for example live ethnographic shows, exhibitions, museum displays and early actuality films – but also as indicative of a shift from non-fiction to narrative and fiction cinema. Sandon considers Nionga, along with Stampede (1929), in terms of genre and argues that ‘these films also point to the consolidation of a distinctive European documentary film practice that runs in parallel with the narrative feature film’ (Sandon, 2002, 204).

Nionga played at trade shows in May 1925 – for example at the Palace Theatre in London on 22 May – and was presented to the public at the Polytechnic Cinema, along with ‘the continental production, Warning Shadows, and the Russian film, Morosko’, in November. The Times suggested that this ‘interesting drama, based on the customs and superstitions of savages living in almost inaccessible regions of Central Africa… entirely acted by natives’ is ‘well worth a visit’ (Times, 10 November 1925, 12). The Polytechnic specialised in ‘ethnographic’ productions, and Close Up suggested that ‘The Poly has been making box-office successes of these films to the extent of record runs… This is proof to the world that in London alone exists a large white public interested in the life of his coloured brethren’ (Close Up, August 1929, 128).  

The critical and popular response to Nionga engages with a widespread interest in the ‘primitive’, which is evident in fiction, in scientific and expedition films and in exhibitions throughout the 1920s. This response rarely positioned Nionga within a specific locale or historical moment, but rather used the characters and location as representations of ‘Africans’ and ‘Africa’. The film responds less then to specific tribes and scenes within Central Africa than to the popular imagination of ‘Africa’ in the 1920s. While colonial officials, speeches and public displays (most notably the Wembley exhibition of 1924-25) sought to offer a reformed imperialism, promoting a message of duty and development, rather than one of conquest and expansion, popular readings often deviated from the official line. As Daniel Mark Stephen recently argued, the Wembley exhibition ‘coincided with the emergence of “blackness” and “the primitive” as powerful British cultural commodities’, while the promotion of British ‘development’ within Africa was invariably dependent on this image of the ‘primitive’ in order to highlight the ‘necessary’ work undertaken by the British.