EARNING SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION INDUSTRIES
Exhibition and distribution were always and everywhere mutually dependent, but there was no consensus on how the profits from ticket sales would be shared or what the nature of the social, economic, and political relationships between exhibitors and distributors would be like. Tracing the growth and development of exhibition and distribution in Tanzania illuminates how entrepreneurs built industries that supported profitable local businesses while adhering to local social values. Generating profit from the supply of films was, of course, a goal of distributors across the globe. The greatest profits came from screening each film before the widest possible audience, and because distributors and exhibitors had to share box office proceeds, the greatest returns to distributors came when they also controlled exhibition. In the United States and South Africa, the law allowed distributors to consolidate theaters under their ownership and monopolize film supply, making it difficult for independent alternatives to survive. Distributors in these places also maintained control over exhibitors by requiring them to sign contracts for exclusive supply, thereby precluding the showing of others’ films. These contracts typically lasted for years and often committed an exhibitor to accepting certain quantities of low-grade product for every hit provided. Vertical integration, hostile takeovers, “block booking,” and harsh legal contracts may have comprised one way of organizing these businesses, but this model was flatly rejected by industry pioneers in Tanzania.
Though profit making was always the focus of the East African cinema business, it never eclipsed the importance of having a reputation for honesty and doing right by others as a basis for securing credit and making sales: business was a personal, not a contractual, affair.61 There was no monopoly on distribution; rather, a plethora of players—some large, some small—brought in a diverse range of films, and exhibitors had the ability to search for the best product and the best terms. And because there were no excessively large conglomerates controlling exhibition, distributors had to cultivate clients to get their films screened and earn back the money they spent on obtaining prints and securing the legal right to distribute product in a given territory. No one ever starved another man out of business by refusing to give him good films, nor were there any hostile acquisitions. On the contrary, as both distributors and exhibitors the Tanzanians involved in the industry actively helped others get involved. Culturally specific standards of capitalism and manhood demanded that those with means help those without.
From 1900 through the 1950s, the economics of the exhibition and distribution industries had more in common with nineteenth-century East African patron-client relations than with American or South African cutthroat capitalism. In Tanzania, each party had duties and obligations, and business relations were often couched in ethical terms. Several prominent distributors supplied the majority of the films, but they did not monopolize first-run screenings within their own theaters, passing them along to rivals only after most people in town had seen a film. Instead, the aim was for each theater in the nation to be a first-run venue. Only when supply was exceptionally restricted or when a film was so popular that fans demanded to see it again and again did theaters screen shows for a second or third time. Typically it was owners and managers who requested to run a repeat, not a distributor who made the determination as a means of punishing someone with a film that would flop. Profit-sharing arrangements also reflected a recognition that exhibitors and distributors were mutually dependent. Through the 1950s, box office returns were split evenly between them, rather than having 70 percent or more go to distributors as happened where monopolies or oligopolies prevailed.
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When Hassanali Adamji Jariwalla began importing films for display in Zanzibar, he was already a trader enmeshed in networks handling the finance, supply, and distribution of cloth from India across East Africa. The early film import, distribution, and exhibition business was built upon these established patterns. Many of the South Asian traders who immigrated to East Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century started their businesses with no money. Personal connections or membership in a particular religious community secured them an advance of goods with which to begin trading.62 Wealthier merchants advanced goods to trustworthy clients, who paid for the merchandise only after it was sold. Typically, payment was due after thirty, sixty, or ninety days, but “payable when able” agreements were not uncommon.63 In this way, those with little or no capital could get a start in business, and more established merchants and manufacturers could expand their sales territory and thus their profits while simultaneously enhancing their reputations as benevolent patrons. Although Jariwalla was an established cloth trader, he was a novice when it came to importing and showing films. Initially, he took limited risks and invested only a small amount of capital. He purchased several hand-cranked projectors, which were reasonably priced by the 1910s and available from manufacturers in India. A small piece of white cloth or an old boat sail served as the screen at his early shows, and the dark tropical night was the auditorium. Jariwalla was fronted his films by suppliers in Bombay, and he paid for them only after they were screened. He provided projectors to others up-country, to whom he also advanced cloth and films as new supplies arrived. He was reimbursed for the films and cloth according to whatever terms he and his partners agreed on.64
In the 1910s, Jariwalla received his prints from Ardeshir Irani and Abdulally Esoofally, owners of Alexandra Company in Bombay.65 By that time, Jariwalla was showing some fourteen different short films each week, changing his program every Wednesday and Saturday, so he really needed a top-notch supplier.66 He chose well when he partnered with Irani and Esoofally, who were industry pioneers of incredible magnitude. Like Jariwalla, Esoofally had begun with traveling exhibits and then established regular tent venues in Bombay. In 1914, he partnered with Irani, and four years later, they opened a picture palace named the Majestic, at a time when there were only a handful of permanent venues in all of India. Irani and Esoofally purchased their prints—even of American films—from secondhand outlets in Britain that supplied most of the British Empire.67 But Irani was not content with showing foreign films, and he quickly expanded into production. His studio grew into one of the best in India. Irani produced nearly 250 films over the course of his life, including the first Indian talkie, Alam Ara (Irani, 1931).68 Jariwalla did business with the best, and the East African audiences benefited.
The cost of a print was finite, yet returns from that print could expand exponentially in proportion to the number of people who paid to view it. Irani and Esoofally increased their profits by advancing secondhand prints previously circulated in India to Jariwalla, who in turn tried to circulate these same prints as widely as possible within East Africa. To meet the demands of the local cinemagoing audience and satisfy his own need to boost returns, Jariwalla operated several theaters from the earliest days. In the 1910s, he quickly expanded from one khaki tent in Zanzibar to two, with a third in Dar es Salaam. He then sent his films to other tent venues in Pemba, Tanga, Moshi, Tabora, and Ujiji. (See map I.1.) When he upgraded to more solid structures, he replaced his Zanzibari tents with the Royal and Cinema ya Bati and his tent in Dar es Salaam with the Bharat and the New Cinema, eventually replacing these with the Empire. A short while later, he helped his son build the Azania (which would be renamed the Cameo), a modest venue with seats for some three hundred, built on top of what had been the city dump.69 In the 1920s, there was also another small theater in Dar es Salaam, run by Hassanli Nurbhai and located on Kisutu Road.70