Colonialism in the cinema has been the subject of many books and essays. Stereotyping, distortion, imagistic mistreatment, assimilationism and caricatural visions of colonies have been practiced in this type of cinema. Before 1960 most colonialism films were made with narratives constructed from the point of view of the colonizing nationals. During the era of colonialism, many European governments funded film projects which involved their overseas colonies; either for instructional purposes for individuals living in colonies or to support colonialism in general. The United States' settler colonialism resulted in the American westward expansion which led to the establishment of the so-called Western genre, which dealt with many colonialist topics; these have been subverted in Revisionist Westerns, which came about during a re-evaluation of the genre in the 1960s.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
In June 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a formal written apology to actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather in relation to the management of her appearance on behalf of Marlon Brando to decline an Academy Award. In 1973, Sacheen declined the best actor award on Brando's behalf "...in recognition of the misrepresentation and mistreatment of Native American people by the film industry..."[12]
List of colonialism-related films
The following is an alphabetical list of films and series that feature or relate to colonialism.
About a slave revolt in 1839 by Mende captives, who had been captured and sold to European slave traders, and illegally transported by a Portuguese ship from West Africa to Cuba. Two Spanish plantation owners, bought 53 captives, including four children, in Havana, Cuba, and were transporting them on the ship Amistad to their plantations in Cuba.
An American drama film that depicts African Americans in a negative light and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Despite its controversy and protests by activists, the film was a commercial success.
Based on the life of Nat Turner, a former slave in America, who leads a liberation movement to free African Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.[15]
An agent provocateur is sent to the fictional island of Queimada, a Portuguese colony in the Caribbean to replace the Portuguese administration by a formally sovereign state controlled by white latifundistes friendly to the British government. To realize this project, the agent persuades the black slaves to fight for their liberation from slavery.
A film about the history of Indigenous peoples in the American West in the 1860s and 1870s, focusing upon the transition from traditional ways of living to living on reservations.
Senegalese film about the struggle for decolonization in French Senegal depicting the Thiaroye massacre. The film was banned in France for a decade and censored in Senegal as well.[17]
The film is set in the 17th century, and focuses on the conflict between traditional African customs and encroaching foreign cultures. It analyses the multi-dimensional reactions of African traditionalists to the advent of Islam, Christianity, and colonialism.
A film about the controversy in America surrounding the life of Christopher Columbus, an Italian official commissioned by the Spanish Crown to find an alternate commercial route to Asia by travelling West. Commentators challenge traditional representations of Christopher Columbus, bringing issues of imperialism, colonialism, racism, greed, religion, and human rights into focus.
At a young age, an Indigenous child is sent to a residential school. There, she is renamed and grows up ignorant of her Māori culture, language, and family.
On the orders of Hernan Cortés, three Spanish soldiers travel to the Popocatepetl volcano with the task of looking for sulfur necessary for the war. The conquerors will face their fears on the journey in an inhospitable territory.
British film of the story surrounding Irish-Australian rebel and politician Peter Lalor and the gold miners' rebellion of 1854 at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria.
The film tells the story of five Sixties Scoop survivors – 4 women and 1 man – all of whom had someone close to them become either missing or murdered. The film points to the inter-generational trauma of colonialism, residential schools, and the Sixties Scoop as forces that connect all of these tragedies Video.
Robert Lohmeyer is a photographer who captured the first color photographs of Togo, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa in a way that promoted colonialism.[20]
It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon Basin. The film is derived from the historic events of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald and his real-life feat of transporting a disassembled steamboat over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald.
A rebellious character returns to a colonial town in South Africa after fleeing police aggression two decades before, and finds the town under a new threat.
Not released until 1972 because of a military coup in Brazil, this Brazilian film highlights Ganga Zumba, a 17th-century slave revolutionary against the Portuguese Empire.
Ghosts of Amistad chronicles a trip to Sierra Leone to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner La Amistad in 1839, to interview elders about local memory of the case, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began.[21]Video
A fictional story set in 16th century Brazil where rival French and Portuguese settlers are utilizing the Indigenous people as allies in their struggle to establish control.
At the end of the 19th century, four groups of Indigenous people (a total of 25 people, from infants to the elderly) were taken from Chile by a German businessman and were shown as animals in different fairs and public exhibitions in several Europeans cities.
A six part video series journeys back through history to the battles from the first settlements to the last massacre that created a change of worlds as the United States stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
A look at the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1935. Following the construction of a monument dedicated to Fascist general Rodolfo Graziani, the film addresses the unpunished war crimes he and others committed in the name of Mussolini's imperial ambitions.
In the early 1900s, Ishi, the last of the Yahi Indian nation in California, is discovered nearly 20 years after the Yahi tribe was thought to be wiped out.[citation needed]
A story based on true events about Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, a nineteen-year-old that goes into self-exile following the 1976 Soweto uprisings to join the liberation movement.
The film is based on historical accounts of Gordon's defence of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army, during the 1884–1885 Siege of Khartoum.[26]
A Hindi-language musical film about a fictional colonial-era cricket competition that pits desperate but untrained villagers against an amateur but seasoned British cricket team. In the midst of a harsh drought, the stakes are a doubling or cancellation of the agricultural tax.
Former Guatemalan dictator and military general Enrique Monteverde (based on Efraín Ríos Montt) is convicted for directing the genocide of native Mayans in 1982–83. He is terrorized by ghosts from the past and present, and becomes ill.
In this one-man Netflix show, John Leguizamo finds humor and heartbreak as he traces 3,000 years of Latin history in an effort to help his son find his identity and deal with abuse.[27]
An American film about a group of British cavalrymen trying to defend their stronghold and headquarters at Bengal against enemy forces during the period of the British colonial rule in India.
Film about the story of an Indigenous woman called Malintzin or La Malinche, who was the translator (and diplomat) of Hernán Cortés back in 1519 when his warriors started the project to conquer Tenochtitlan.
An Australian film set in the Black War of 1830 in Van Diemen's Land. Manganinnie, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, survives a raid and searches for her tribe with the company of a lost white girl.
A Nigerian who works as a clerk for the British colonial civil service and adopts the style of the British colonialists in the belief that he is a true Englishman.
In the early 1900s, a Kickapoo youth is taken from his family and forced to attend a distant American Indian boarding school, designed to achieve to his assimilation into western society.
The film is a drama about the aftermath of the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico told from the perspective of the Indigenous Aztec people. It explores the social, religious, and economic changes brought about by a historical process of colonization that both defined the American continent.
Award-winning film that illustrates the official child removal policy that existed in Australia between 1905 and 1967. Its victims now are called the "Stolen Generations".[29]
A film based on the book of the same name by Jack Shaheen, which also analyzes how Hollywood misrepresents the image of Arabs. The film analyzes 1,000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters, produced between 1896 and 2000.
A member of an American frontier fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival in North America, while trying to avenge his Indigenous family.[30]
During the 1930s, British colonial officer John Truscott (Hugh Dancy) journeys to a remote village in colonial Malaysia to educate and Westernize the local Iban population.
It shows the colonial and native African conflict caused by colonialism and differing views on how life should be lived. It stars Rock Hudson as the colonial and Sidney Poitier as the native Kenyan. The two men grew up together but have drifted apart at maturity.
A German revisionist Western film that turned the traditional American "Cowboy and Indian" conventions on their head, casting the Indigenous peoples as the heroes and the American Army as the villains.
A 2004 film about the British–American clandestine operation that saw the expulsion of the Chagossian population who have lived on Diego Garcia and neighbouring islands.
It follows a young Indigenous leader of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people fighting back against farmers, colonizers and settlers who encroach on a protected area of the Amazon Rainforest.
Partly inspired by events from Te Kooti's War, the film tells of a Māori scout setting out to get utu (vengeance) on colonial forces after the destroy his home village. The film is set in 1870.
A magistrate at an isolated outpost reevaluates his loyalty to his nation when an army colonel uses cruel tactics to interrogate the locals about a possible uprising.
Two siblings are lost in the Australian Outback, where they learn to survive with the help of an Aboriginal boy they meet on his walkabout: a ritual of his culture.
An Argentinian film set in the late 18th century in a remote South American colony under the Spanish Empire, and portrays the period's "naturalness of slavery".[37]
Colonialism is the exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group. Colonizers monopolize political power and hold conquered societies and their people to be inferior to their conquerors in legal, administrative, social, cultural, or biological terms. While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations.
Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power and soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), they established their independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain as the United States of America.
Colonization is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples for the purpose of cultivation, trade, exploitation or settlement, setting up coloniality and often colonies, such as for agriculture, commonly pursued and maintained by, but distinct from, imperialism, mercantilism, or colonialism. Colonization is sometimes used synonymously with settling, as with colonisation in biology.
During the Age of Discovery, a large scale colonization of the Americas, involving a number of European countries, took place primarily between the late 15th century and the early 19th century. The Norse explored and colonized areas of Europe and the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short-term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland circa 1000 AD. However, due to its long duration and importance, the later colonization by the European powers involving the continents of North America and South America is more well-known.
The French colonial empire comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French colonial empire", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost or sold, and the "Second French colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. On the eve of World War I, France's colonial empire was the second-largest in the world after the British Empire.
Maria Louise Cruz, better known as Sacheen Littlefeather, was an American-born actress and activist for Native American civil rights. After her death, she was accused by family members and journalists of falsely claiming Native American heritage.
Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence movements in the colonies and the collapse of global colonial empires.
The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Unified in 1871, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to construct a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German colonial empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands.
Colonial cinema is cinema produced by a colonizing nation in and about their colonies. While typically seen as a Western phenomenon, non-Western countries, most notably Imperial Japan, also had colonial cinemas. Colonial films typically idealize life in the colonies by emphasizing the modernizing aspects of colonization. Feature films set in colonial settings typically represent them as refuges for colonizers looking to escape life in the metropole. As a result, colonial films frequently do not attempt to reflect the social realities of life in colonized countries. Representations of local characters, places, and customs are regularly presented as escapist, apologetic or overtly racist. Today colonial cinema is an important source to understand the mentality of the colonizing societies.
Western European colonialism and colonization was the Western European policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over other societies and territories, founding a colony, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. For example, colonial policies, such as the type of rule implemented, the nature of investments, and identity of the colonizers, are cited as impacting postcolonial states. Examination of the state-building process, economic development, and cultural norms and mores shows the direct and indirect consequences of colonialism on the postcolonial states. It has been estimated that Britain and France traced almost 50% of the entire length of today's international boundaries as a result of British and French imperialism.
The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Han Chinese, and Arabs.
External colonies were first founded in Africa during antiquity. Ancient Greeks and Romans established colonies on the African continent in North Africa, similar to how they established settler-colonies in parts of Eurasia. Some of these endured for centuries; however, popular parlance of colonialism in Africa usually focuses on the European conquests of African states and societies in the Scramble for Africa (1884–1914) during the age of New Imperialism, followed by gradual decolonisation after World War II.
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of imperial power.
The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to develop a history of the British Empire. Historians and their ideas are the main focus here; specific lands and historical dates and episodes are covered in the article on the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation, its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people who became imperialists or anti-imperialists, together with their mindsets. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the histories of the United States, the British Raj, and the African colonies. John Darwin (2013) identifies four imperial goals: colonising, civilising, converting, and commerce.
Settler colonialism is a logic and structure of displacement by settlers, using colonial rule, over an environment for replacing it and its indigenous peoples with settlements and the society of the settlers.
The connection between colonialism and genocide has been explored in academic research. According to historian Patrick Wolfe, "[t]he question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism." Historians have commented that although colonialism does not necessarily directly involve genocide, research suggests that the two share a connection.
Zionism has been described by several scholars as a form of settler colonialism in relation to the region of Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This paradigm has been applied to Zionism by various scholars and figures, including Patrick Wolfe, Edward Said, Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky. Zionism's founders and early leaders were aware and unapologetic about their status as colonizers. Many early leading Zionists such as Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Ze'ev Jabotinsky described Zionism as colonization.
Indigenous response to colonialism has varied depending on the Indigenous group, historical period, territory, and colonial state(s) they have interacted with. Indigenous peoples have had agency in their response to colonialism. They have employed armed resistance, diplomacy, and legal procedures. Others have fled to inhospitable, undesirable or remote territories to avoid conflict. Nevertheless, some Indigenous peoples were forced to move to reservations or reductions, and work in mines, plantations, construction, and domestic tasks. They have detribalized and culturally assimilated into colonial societies. On occasion, Indigenous peoples have formed alliances with one or more Indigenous or non-Indigenous nations. Overall, the response of Indigenous peoples to colonialism during this period has been diverse and varied in its effectiveness. Indigenous resistance has a centuries-long history that is complex and carries on into contemporary times.
Apologies to Indigenous peoples refer to apologies extended by political leaders or representatives, acting on behalf of a political entity or nation, to acknowledge and express remorse for some historical wrong.
References
↑ Stam, R. (1998). "Colonialism, Racism, and Representation" (with Louise Spence), in the Fifth Edition of Braudy and Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 1998).
↑ Slavin, David Henry. (2001) Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919-1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 300 pp. ISBN 0-8018-6616-2.
↑ Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey; Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, eds. (1997-10-30). The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p.89. ISBN978-0-19-874242-5. Documentary-type programmes continued to appeal to middle-class and genteel audiences, and performed a range of significant ideological functions. They were frequently employed as propaganda for the colonial agenda of industrialized nations. The Anglo-Boer war was extensively photographed and filmed from a British perspective in 1899–1900. After 1905 numerous films were taken in the British, French, German, and Belgian colonies of Central Africa, including Chasse a' l'hippopotame sur le Nil Bleu('Hunting hippopotamus on the Blue Nile', Pathe', 1907), Matrimonio abissino ('Abyssinian marriage', Roberto Omenga, 1908), and Leben und Treiben in Tangka ('Life and events in Tangka', Deutsche-Bioskop, 1909).
↑ do Carmo Piçarra, Maria, Rosa Cabecinhas, and Teresa Castro. 2016. “Colonial Imaginaries: Propaganda, Militancy and ‘Resistance’ in the Cinema.” Comunicação e Sociedade 29 (2): 17–23. doi:10.17231/comsoc.29(2016).2407
Alford, Matthew; Secker, Tom (27 June 2017). National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood. CreateSpace. ISBN978-1548084981.
Cowans, Jon. (2018) Film and Colonialism in the Sixties: The Anti-Colonialist Turn in the US, Britain, and France Publisher: Routledge. 292 pp. ISBN0429665024, 9780429665028.
Cowans, Jon. (2015) Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 1946—1959 Johns Hopkins University Press. Project MUSE, ISBN9781421416410
Friedman, Jonathan C. and Hewitt, William L. (eds.) (2017). The history of genocide in cinema: atrocities on screen. London :I.B. Tauris,
Lahti, J., & Weaver-Hightower, R. (2020). Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003057277
Limbrick, P. (2010) Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand Author P. Publisher: Springer. 272 pp. ISBN0230107915, 9780230107915
Mayer, Hervé, & Roche, David (Eds.). (2022). Transnationalism and Imperialism: Endurance of the Global Western Film. Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv26qjhx8
Nunn, Nora (2020) Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, and the Cinematic Legacy of Anne Frank's Diary in the United States, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 14: Iss. 2: 65-89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss2/7
Rice, Tom. (2019) Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire, Oakland, University of California Press. 360pp. ISBN9780520300392
Richards, Jeffrey. (2001). 'Imperial heroes for a post-imperial age: Films and the end of empire', in Stuart Ward (ed.), British culture and the end of empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Shaheen, Jack G. (2012). Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Revised and updateded.). New York: Olive Branch Press, Interlink Publishing Group. ISBN978-1-623-71006-4. OCLC928572276. – originally published in 2001
Slavin, David Henry. (2001) Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919-1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 300 pp. ISBN0-8018-6616-2.
Stam, R. (1998). Colonialism, Racism, and Representation (with Louise Spence), in the Fifth Edition of Braudy and Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 1998).
Imagining Indians (1992): a 1992 film produced and directed by Indigenous filmmaker, Victor Masayesva Jr. (Hopi). The film attempts to reveal the misrepresentation of Indigenous culture and tradition in Classical Hollywood films through interviews with different Indigenous actors from various tribes in North America.[1]
Inventing the Indian (2012): a 2012 BBC film that explores the stereotypical view of Indigenous peoples in the United States in cinema and literature.[2]
Reel Injun (2009): a 2009 Canadian film directed by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah Hayes that covers the portrayal of Indigenous peoples in film.[3]
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