News on Screen

Series

Series Name

Rhodesian Spotlight

Issue

Issue No.

28

Length of issue (in feet)

826

Stories in this Issue:

• 1. Up in the Highlands
• 2. N. Rhodesia’s New Police Depot
• 3. Fishing Methods on lake mweru
• 4. Nyasaland’s Cotton

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

Rhodesian Spotlight synopsis: Cotton production in Nyasaland is centred along the Lower Shire River Valley. Grown by Africans who sell it at the local cotton market, it is processed in the Ginnery then towed down river by paddle steamer. All the fibre is used by mills in Southern Rhodesia.
Rhodesian Spotlight Commentary - Grown entirely by Africans, roughly four fifths of Nyasaland’s cotton is produced in the Lower Shire River Valley. The total value of the crop, including both lint and seed, is somewhere in the region of threequarters of a million pounds annually. When ripe, the cotton is picked by hand, the first stage of a production as picturesque as any in Africa. The entire crop of lint eventually finds its way to the spinning mills in Southern Rhodesia and we shall follow it on part of its interesting journey.
Put into sacks by the growers, it is sold at the nearest of some 30 local cotton markets. Each sack is weighed and checked and payment is make on the spot. The amount depends upon whether it is first or second grade.
Next the raw cotton is taken to the Ginnery. There are three ginneries on the Shire River, this one is some distance upstream. The cotton arrives loosely packed, fibre and seed together. The ginning process separates the fibre from the seed. The seed is used for the extraction of its oil, while the fibre or lint is compressed into bales for shipment down the river to railhead. And now we seem to enter the old world of the Mississippi. Roughly 350 bales at a time are loaded on to barges. Two old stern wheel paddle steamers tow them, the last two still remaining from what was once a large fleet that traded up and down the Zambezi and Shire Rivers. And so the journey downstream to Chiromo starts, as the 50 year old wood burner spouts sparks of defiance and wheezes along towing its charges.
Soon this route will be displaced. But when new roads make this form of transport uneconomical, we shall mourn the passing of the last two wood burning stalwarts of the Shire River.

Keywords

Agriculture

Written sources

Movietone boxfile no.1   Used for synopsis

Credits:

Production Co.

Central African Film Unit

Length of story (in feet)

222

This series is held by:

Film Archive

Name

British Film Institute (BFI)

Email

For BFI National Archive enquiries:
nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk
For commercial/footage reuse enquiries:
footage.films@bfi.org.uk

Web

http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web

Phone

020 7255 1444

Fax

020 7580 7503

Address

21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN

Notes

The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).

Series held

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