In Black and White Bioscope: Making Movies in Africa, 1899 to 1925, the distinguished historian of southern Africa Neil Parsons documents a remarkable moment in the history of filmmaking in Africa. During the years from just before the outbreak of the First World War until 1923, the American businessman I.W. Schlesinger developed and operated a substantial feature movie production enterprise, in conjunction with his near monopoly on film distribution and screening across South Africa and neighboring territories.

Beginning in the 1890s, not long after the first film shows in New York, London, and Paris, films were shown occasionally in makeshift theaters in African towns, and enterprising cinema pioneers filmed brief movies featuring African landscapes to display to North American and European audiences. Parsons provides some details regarding this history and includes useful information on film shows and filmmaking in eastern, western, and northern Africa; but notwithstanding the title, the book focuses almost exclusively on southern Africa and on a cinema tale with Schlesinger at its center. Without question this is a fascinating story. The book, however, is less an account of that history than a compendium of information about it. Produced in the large format of a coffee table volume, Black and White Bioscope includes hundreds of wonderful illustrations, including many stills from the films produced during the Schlesinger era and photographs of film production.

In nineteen brief chapters, Parsons describes the history of filmmaking in very detailed accounts of the production of particular films or groups of films. In addition to illustrations, each chapter contains separate synopses of the films discussed, including information on directors, artistic staff, and actors, as well as the current availability of prints. Chapters conclude with paragraphs outlining the subsequent lives and careers of the main figures mentioned in the text, and Parsons also includes an extensive list of non-fiction films produced in Africa during this period.

Having first arrived on the Rand in 1894, Schlesinger amassed a fortune in insurance, real estate, banking, and other enterprises. Then he turned his business experience and wealth to cinema. He made this move at a time when the film industry was consolidating and growing, and audiences demanded longer movies driven by strong plot lines; filmmaking thus involved much greater expense and production sophistication. At a time when Hollywood was offering visions of ‘Africa’ filmed in California, Schlesinger's Killarney studios and African Film Productions (AFP) could boast epics shot, at great expense, on location in southern Africa's breathtaking landscapes.

Coincidentally, the outbreak of the First World War substantially cut film production in England, creating an opportunity for Schlesinger and the AFP. In a period of seven years, AFP features not only experienced considerable popularity in Southern African cinemas (almost all of which were owned by Schlesinger) but in the United Kingdom market as well. A few had successful runs in the United States. The most successful of the films internationally were those with stories rooted in southern Africa. Feature films such as De Voortrekkers (1916), The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), and The Symbol of Sacrifice (1918) celebrated white conquest, but also presented Africans as formidable adversaries. Local governments were often reluctant to permit filming scenes that involved Africans in violent military action, and white audiences in southern Africa often expressed hostility to films in which Africans played substantial roles. But these seemingly authentic productions were a hit with British and American audiences, even if producers were careful to ensure that spears were rubber tipped and the filming of battle scenes always involved a substantial police presence.

Parsons argues provocatively that a number of these Schlesinger films are genuinely ‘African’ in the sense that Africans in leading roles emerged as fully formed characters. He makes a persuasive case that individuals such as Tom Zulu and Archibald Zonzo Goba were well-respected members of the unofficial AFP troupe of actors who appeared in film after film and were given the opportunity to ‘express the “inner life” of an autonomous individual — a privilege denied to actors simply playing to racial and ethnic stereotypes’ (226). For the reader, however, the key story that emerges, often in great detail, is one that Parsons does not really claim to tell: the history of Schlesinger and the AFP in the global networks of filmmaking. Schlesinger successfully recruited highly experienced directors such as Harold Shaw and Lorimer Johnson (who had made more than fifty movies) to South Africa. Individuals like them and a host of technicians and actors circulated among studios in the United States, Britain, South Africa, India, and Australia. Actors in the traveling theater troupes that traversed the United States, Britain, and imperial territories often took time off to make movies. The biographies that Parsons presents document the subsequent film and theater careers of a substantial number of the (white) individuals who participated in AFP productions.

Unfortunately, the format of Black and White Bioscope is such that this larger context of the evolving international film industry remains obscure. What was it that attracted experienced directors and actors to South Africa? How exactly did the international distribution of the AFP films work? What were the trends in the industry that doomed this nascent film enterprise in the years immediately after the First World War? Readers anticipating a narrative that would integrate this fascinating story into a broader history of film will be disappointed; but scholars of media and film will be grateful for the remarkable research that Parsons has completed and the information that he has compiled.