Cinema and the Idea of Fieldwork in Sol Plaatje’s Journeys

Abstract In the mid-1920s, Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje toured South African countryside showing films he brought from Tuskegee Institute in United States. Plaatje’s cinema tours complemented his educational talks on status of Africans Union Africa alongside material collected for books, speeches and political tours. Focusing itinerant as an element fieldwork, our article asks what can be learned approaching research practices. We consider methods relation to conventional notions social scientific which also relied modern media but were often entangled colonial projects that projected image rural life. Drawing letters, novels, accounts film screenings, essay argues interdisciplinary engagement with practices history is attentive uses mass pedagogical valences screenings. Considering value attached travelling mobility, we argue puts field work inspires new Studies.