In their writing on film production in East Africa, Notcutt and Latham largely endorsed the arguments of the influential William Sellers – a medical officer for the Nigerian government who became head of the Colonial Film Unit in 1939 – that illiterate African audiences required a different ‘set of rules’ from Europeans. To an extent, this is evident within Tropical Hookworm, with its slow pace, repeated shots, minimal editing and close-ups, which direct the viewers’ reading of the film. Yet the film also relies on associations across shots and uses forms of abstract representation.

For example, close-ups of the worms under a microscope are shown, even though popular colonial rhetoric – in particular a story reported by George Pearson, who worked with Sellers at the Colonial Film Unit – argued that African audiences accepted films literally. The story, of an African audience which saw an enlarged picture of a mosquito and decided that ‘there was no need to worry about the tiny mosquitoes that they knew’, was also reported by Notcutt and Latham. The film thus sought to present a complex scientific problem to an audience that, according to colonial rhetoric, had great difficulty in reading a film (Burns, 2002, 50).

The film has a clear narrative structure, outlining the symptoms of the disease, how it is spread and finally how it can be treated and prevented, yet it uses intertitles extensively, often including only a single shot between titles. This may highlight a desire on the part of the filmmakers to direct the audiences’ reading of the film but, while a ‘local official, missionary or educated African’ on occasion would speak before the film, for illiterate audiences the film’s narrative must ultimately be told visually. For example the physical symptoms are shown in close-up, the cause is revealed through repeated shots of the bush, and the preventative processes are carefully outlined and, in the example of the shoes, repeated for the audience.

Although this narrative is told through the experiences of an African protagonist, the emphasis throughout is on the disease itself rather than the African characters. For example, when an African man contracts the disease, the camera focuses on the plant from which the worms emerge, with the character’s leg partially in shot. When showing the preventative measures, the cassava leaves are framed centrally – cut, crushed and then cooked – with only a man’s hand shown. Similarly when showing the ways of making sandals, the African man is barely in shot, until the camera finally pans up to show an African boy with his new shoes, smiling excessively.

While an audience may be encouraged to identify with the African characters – to recognise their mistakes and responses – the close-ups of the ailments, causes and preventative measures suggest that the filmmakers sought to instruct the audiences without distracting their gaze with background material or extra characters. Indeed, Notcutt and Latham explained that the ‘chief point’ of the film was to serve as ‘instruction in a simple method of making sandals’ and the film’s direct pedagogical function is apparent in both the manner and detail in which the preventative processes are shown. For example with the cassava leaves, Notcutt and Latham explained in their writing that they wished to show ‘the quantity necessary and the manner of cooking’ as the British filmmakers sought to directly educate the Africans through this modern technology (Notcutt and Latham, 1937, 61-62).

Tom Rice (May 2008)