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REEL PLEASURES
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN, ALLEN ISAACMAN, AND DEREK R. PETERSON
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World
Stephanie Newell, The Forger’s Tale
Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa?
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past
Moses E. Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown
Emily S. Burrill, Richard L. Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!
James R. Brennan, Taifa
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake
David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents
Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara S. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development
Stephanie Newell, The Power to Name
Gibril R. Cole, The Krio of West Africa
Matthew M. Heaton, Black Skin, White Coats
Meredith Terretta, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence
Paolo Israel, In Step with the Times
Michelle R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries
Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls
Alicia C. Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights
Shobana Shankar, Who Shall Enter Paradise?
Emily S. Burrill, States of Marriage
Todd Cleveland, Diamonds in the Rough
Carina E. Ray, Crossing the Color Line
Sarah Van Beurden, Authentically African
Giacomo Macola, The Gun in Central Africa
Lynn Schler, Nation on Board
Julie MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination
Abou B. Bamba, African Miracle, African Mirage
Daniel Magaziner, The Art of Life in South Africa
Paul Ocobock, An Uncertain Age
Keren Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders
Nuno Domingos, Football and Colonialism
Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism
Bianca Murillo, Market Encounters
Thomas F. McDow, Buying Time
Jon Soske, Internal Frontiers
Laura Fair, Reel Pleasures
REEL PLEASURES
CINEMA AUDIENCES AND ENTREPRENEURS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY URBAN TANZANIA
LAURA FAIR
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2018 by Ohio University Press
All rights reserved
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27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1
A version of chapter 3 appeared as “Making Love in the Indian Ocean: Hindi Films, Zanzibari Audiences and the Construction of Romance in the 1950s,” in Cole and Thomas, eds., Love in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 58–82.
A version of chapter 6 was previously published as “Drive-In Socialism: Debating Modernities and Development in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,” The American Historical Review 118, no. 4 (2013): 1077–104.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fair, Laura, author.
Title: Reel pleasures : cinema audiences and entrepreneurs in twentieth-century urban Tanzania / Laura Fair.
Other titles: New African histories series.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2017. | Series: New African histories
Identifiers: LCCN 2017043710| ISBN 9780821422854 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821422861 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446119 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture industry--Tanzania. | Motion picture audiences--Social aspects--Tanzania. | Motion picture theaters--Tanzania.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.T34 F35 2017 | DDC 791.4309678--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043710
Dedicated to Sabri and Nassir
for the joy they brought to the journey and for teaching me about the important things in life
May 2005
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