In November 1947, an advertisement for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation appeared in The Times, under the heading ‘Leslie Meets Lesaoama’. The advertisement stated: ‘Last Saturday morning Leslie took a sixpenny trip to Basutoland – in his seat at the Children’s Cinema Club. A group of British producers, which makes over 50 films a year for the clubs, finds that what children like best is seeing how other children live’ (The Times, 27 November 1947, 6).

This advertisement referred directly to Basuto Boy, which was produced by Children’s Entertainment Films (C.E.F. and formally the ‘Children’s Film Department’). Arthur Rank, the chairman of the Odeon and Gaumont cinema chains, had set up C.E.F. in 1943 in order to produce suitable material for children’s cinema clubs. Rank believed that, although his cinema clubs housed an estimated half a million children every Saturday morning, the film programmes were not designed to morally improve or educate young people.

Basuto Boy was thus intended as an educational film for children, teaching geography, as the advertisement later noted, but also moral lessons. Mary Field, the head of the unit from 1944 until its closure in 1950 explained that ‘we set out to provide the children in the cinemas, Saturday by Saturday, with an opportunity of coming into contact with children and adults who were, unconsciously, good examples. These screen characters behaved well, but not too well, in circumstances into which our young audiences could readily project themselves’ (Field, 1952, 28). 

Basuto Boy played at the Edinburgh Festival in September 1948, as one of a selection of films for children. The Cinema suggested that ‘the interesting setting and the suitably naïve story make this ideal entertainment for children’ (Cinema, 24 November 1948). Yet Basuto Boy, and indeed all of the C.E.F. films, were not intended only for British audiences. Mary Field noted that ‘the educationists of Australia, themselves rather bored by the simplicity of Basuto Boy, were surprised how this story of life in Africa captivated the children of Melbourne’ (Field, 1952, 104).

Basuto Boy was shot by Gaumont British Africa Ltd, and directed by Aubrey Singer. Singer would subsequently serve as controller of BBC Two from 1974-1978, as Managing Director of BBC Television and as Deputy Director General in the 1980s.

The film was produced on a tight budget and, like many C.E.F. films, was shot on location, which avoided the cost of hiring a studio. The cast consisted entirely of Basuto villagers and (very typically of low-budget films of the time) was photographed without sound, ‘which was added economically in England’ (Field, 1952, 128).

The small mountain area of Basutoland, surrounded entirely by South Africa, had traditionally been an agricultural community, producing and exporting grain. However, after the great drought of the 1930s, the country became a net importer of grain, and increasing numbers of men moved to work in the mines.

In March 1947 the Royal Family visited Basutoland, now governed by the High Commissioner, Sir Evelyn Baring. The Times’ special correspondent reported that ‘Basutoland is conspicuously a black man’s country, where a tiny white community is present only to help him make the best of it.’ A census in 1936 found that there were 559,000 Africans in Basutoland, and only 1,000 whites. The Timesadded that Basutoland served as a reminder that ‘there are places where the great tradition of paternal imperialism has still its indispensable part to play’, before adding that ‘this is a happy people… exempt from the preoccupations of industrial civilization’ (The Times, 12 March 1947, 3).