Many studies focus on film in Africa. Few, however, study cinema as a leisure activity: one that has influenced several generations and opened up spaces to dream, discuss or contest. Movie theatres offered a break from the daily routine, as places of escape and of education. Cinema was also potentially subversive, offering an alternative to colonial discourse. 'Tropical Dream Palaces' seeks to trace this history in a West African context: of broadening horizons on the one hand, and of censorship and control on the other. It fills a historiographic void, following cinema's arrival in the region in the early twentieth century up until the Independence era, and also looking further afield to Central Africa and its different models. Goerg addresses questions of film distribution in colonial times; of screening venues, their implantation, spread and different categories; while also focusing on audiences, their gender or age; the acquisition of a film culture; and the impact of screening foreign images. Her book draws on extremely varied sources to paint a broad picture of this cinematographic landscape: archives, the accounts of African and European spectators or administrators, novels, autobiographies, the local press, interviews and iconography.

Sommaire:
List of Acronyms
Introduction
1. From Under the Starry Skies to the Confines of the Movie Theatre: The Interwar Years
2. Regulation, Control and Censorship in the Interwar Years
3. Mobile Cinema and Travelling Entrepreneurs: Cinema in the Village (the Early 1900s to the 1950s)
4. A Window on the World
5. The Spread of Cinema
6. The Independence Generation: Film Culture and the Anti-colonial Struggle in the 1950s
Conclusion
Sources
Bibliography