Colonial film markets in the early 20th century Mediterranean

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ABSTRACT By examining the various scales of film trade in the Mediterranean up to the late 1910s in all their intricacies, this article seeks to shed new light on the history of film circulation across the French, Italian, and British Empires. It uncovers the Mediterranean dimension of itinerant exhibitions and the early stages of film rental, revealing a remarkable variety of routes across the ‘White Middle Sea’ (from Greece to Algeria; from Sicily to Malta and Tunisia; from Egypt to Algeria; from Tunisia to Sardinia; and from Catalonia to western Algeria, among others), as well as previously overlooked trade nodes. Focusing on Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, the study underscores the tensions between regional circuits – sometimes incorporating pre-colonial networks – and imperial markets, as the institutionalisation of distribution gradually led to the centralisation and hierarchisation of exchanges. In addition to investigating the movement of films within this interconnected region, the article addresses the lack of comparative analysis between colonial empires, each approaching the film industry in distinct ways, in order to elucidate what may be common to a colonial cinema economy.